Opening Statement before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts

International Assistance in Support of Gender Equality—Global Affairs Canada

(Report 4—2023 Reports of the Auditor General of Canada)

20 April 2023

Karen Hogan, Fellow Chartered Professional AccountantFCPA
Auditor General of Canada

Mr. Chair, thank you for this opportunity to discuss our report on international assistance in support of gender equality, which was tabled in the House of Commons on March 27th. I would like to acknowledge that this hearing is taking place on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe people. Joining me today are Martin Dompierre, the assistant auditor general who oversaw the audit, and Susan Robertson, the director who led the audit team.

Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls is a priority concern across the world, one that is captured in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. In 2017, Canada launched its Feminist International Assistance Policy, which applies to all of Global Affairs Canada’s spending for international assistance.

When women and girls have equal opportunities to succeed, they can be powerful agents of change, driving economic growth and improving the quality of life for their families and communities. Under the Feminist International Assistance Policy, Global Affairs Canada committed to funding projects to improve gender equality and the conditions of the world’s poorest and most marginalized populations.

The audit focused on whether the department supported gender equality in low- and middle-income countries and reported on the results for the approximately $3.5 billion it spent on bilateral assistance projects each year since the launch of the policy.

We found that the department was unable to demonstrate that its spending improved the lives of women and girls. Significant weaknesses in the department’s information management practices resulted in missing or incomplete project files that could not support decision making or demonstrate due diligence. As a result, the department is unable to track overall outcomes against policy goals.

This is a serious issue. We recommended that the department take immediate action so that it can fully report on the outcomes of the projects it funded. This is crucial to demonstrating the value of these investments and to ensuring that women and girls are benefitting from the programs that Canada is funding.

Global Affairs Canada also needs to address how it measures longer‑term outcomes. We found that the department focused on short‑term outputs, with only 2 of 26 policy indicators measuring outcomes. An example of this was a project to build washrooms and handwashing stations in schools to make them more welcoming for girls who might otherwise miss class when they are menstruating. The department did not track this project’s outcomes, such as whether school attendance and completion rates improved for girls over the long term.

We found that, although Global Affairs Canada implemented a thorough process to assess the extent to which gender is integrated in its projects, the department could do more to incorporate different identify factors. For example, while it regularly included age, it did not routinely consider other factors, such as ethnicity, family size and structure, or rural or urban location. The department should improve the integration of intersecting identity factors in its project development so that it can deliver more inclusive programming.

Mr. Chair, this concludes my opening remarks. We would be pleased to answer any questions the committee may have. Thank you.