(Ottawa) The government does not know if the $3.5 billion given annually under its Feminist International Assistance Policy is producing the expected results. Not only are the Global Affairs Department’s indicators missing the mark, but project documentation is also poorly managed, according to the Auditor General’s most recent report.
Karen Hogan notes that 24 of the 26 indicators developed by the Department of Global Affairs to judge progress “did not measure results”. The Department is therefore unable to “properly report” the impact of funded projects.
For example, it did not measure girls’ school attendance after the construction of toilets to compensate for the lack of sanitation facilities. They are often absent from school during their periods because they do not have access to toilets. Mme Hogan notes that this is, however, “one of the measures described in the policy to ensure the follow-up of successes”.
Another example, the Ministry provides the number of people who have benefited from nutritional support in certain countries, but not the result of the program which would rather be measured by the improvement in the health or the life expectancy of the beneficiaries.
Know how many meals [sont donnés] is a good indicator of progress, but not a good indicator of achieving the long-term goal of this policy, which is to improve the lives of women and girls.
Karen Hogan, Auditor General of Canada
Mme Hogan also notes “significant weaknesses” in file management, a recurring problem already targeted in 2021. The Ministry was unable to provide all of the documentation requested by the Auditor General. Either the staff had not systematically filed the project data, the retention and updating of the information was deficient, or some of the information requested was unrecoverable since it was on the computers of employees who had left their post since.
The Auditor General was able to obtain complete documentation for 50 of the 60 projects required. For one of them, the Ministry was unable to provide any documents.
“Aberrant” and “shocking”
“The government is unaware of the achievement of the objectives of its own policy, but worse still, it does not even give itself the means to achieve them,” denounced Bloc Québécois MP Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné. “It’s absurd for a country that claims to be proud of its international aid! »
“For a government that calls itself feminist, this is simply shocking,” said NDP International Development Critic Heather McPherson. “The NDP calls on the government to stop pretending to stand up for women’s rights and to act on its promises to them and to human rights on a global scale. »
International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan said he has seen first-hand that some of the funded projects have yielded results. “It is our partners who have the information,” he indicated, adding that it must be collected and transmitted to the senior managers of the ministry.
“The fact that the minister thinks that spending a few days on a project site supersedes the important analytical work that the government is supposed to do objectively is really, really worrying,” retorted the Tory spokesperson. in international development, Garnett Genuis.
The Auditor General recommends that Global Affairs Canada improve the way it manages information and modify its performance indicators, which the Department is committed to doing.
Aid to sub-Saharan Africa
The audit also noted that Canada had not met its target of sending half of bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa, because “the department reallocated funds to meet needs arising from the pandemic […] and the invasion of Ukraine”. M’s officeme Hogan said there was a lack of specific information about how much money was so reallocated.
Minister Sajjan challenged the analysis made by Ms.me Hogan of the reallocation of funds. He says the Liberals instead spent more on development aid and that this caused them to miss their target for the percentage of development dollars going to Africa.
The Feminist International Assistance Policy was adopted in 2017 during the first term of Justin Trudeau’s Liberals. It aims to promote gender equality as well as empower women and girls. Half of the sums are intended for projects in sub-Saharan Africa. Canada is ranked first among countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development with Iceland for the percentage of international aid allocated to gender equality.
With The Canadian Press