Development Assistance from Canada

Canada's Development Assistance Policies

Canada actively supports the international community's efforts to promote sustainable development and fully endorses the global commitments for poverty reduction articulated in the World Bank's Comprehensive Development Framework and in similar documents by other multilateral bodies.

Canada's current foreign policy framework and its international assistance objectives are spelled out in Canada in the World, the Government's 1995 Foreign Policy Statement. The three foreign policy pillars are: promoting prosperity; protecting Canada's security within a stable world; and projecting Canadian values and culture of Canadians’ desire to help the less fortunate and of their strong sense of social injustice. The mandate of Canada's official development assistance (ODA) is to support sustainable development activities in order to reduce poverty and to contribute to a more secure, equitable and prosperous world.

The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade (DFAIT), which manages the conduct of Canada's relations with foreign governments, actively integrates the principles of sustainable development in its work.

Visit DFAIT's webpage.

While the DFAIT has primary responsibility for the overall foreign and aid policy agendas, delivering Canadian ODA to poor countries and countries in transition is the role of the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA).

The agency's Sustainable Development Strategy 2007-2009, available online, is a follow-up to its 2001 and 2004 sustainable development strategies.

Visit  CIDA's webpage and CIDA’s policy suite.