MISCELLANEOUS:
Official Development Assistance

Official development assistance, or foreign aid, consists of loans, grants, technical assistance and other forms of cooperation extended by governments to developing countries. A significant proportion of official development assistance is aimed at promoting sustainable development in poorer countries, particularly through natural resource conservation, environmental protection and population programs.

Canada’s OECD Ranking
Despite Canada’s international reputation as a compassionate nation, we rank only 11th among the 20 OECD nations for whom data is available. We are well behind the Scandinavian and other European nations who double and sometimes triple the level of Canadian aid.

In 1998, the most recent year for which the OECD had data, Canada dedicated 0.29% of its GDP to official development assistance. In comparison, Denmark and Norway devoted 0.99% and 0.91% of their GDP, respectively, to official development assistance.

Internationally, 0.7% is seen as a threshold that all industrialized nations should surpass. Canadian Prime Ministers dating back to Lester Pearson have promised to raise Canadian assistance to this level but the promises have never been fulfilled. The Netherlands, Norway, Denmark and Sweden are all above this threshold, and have consistently surpassed it for the past twenty years.

Trend
Since 1980, the percentage of GDP that Canada dedicates to official development assistance has fallen by 32.6%. Only the United States, Australia and Germany have cut official development assistance more sharply than Canada. In contrast, nine OECD nations increased their percentage of GDP dedicated to official development assistance between 1980 and 1998 (Austria, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Switzerland).