Ottawa's Feminist Foreign Policy: A Full Accounting

Canada ran a $78 billion deficit in Budget 2025.¹ Beef is up nearly 14% year-over-year.² A family household now spends roughly $17,500 a year just on food.³ Canadians are being told the country is in a trade war and needs to tighten its belt.

Yet, at the same time, Ottawa spent years building what it formally called a "Feminist International Assistance Policy,”⁴ and directing billions abroad under its banner. Here is what that actually looked like.

The Policy Architecture

The framework is called the Feminist International Assistance Policy, or FIAP for short. It isn't a minor program — not at all, as a matter of fact. The policy directed that 95% of bilateral international development assistance should integrate gender equality, of which 15% has gender equality as the main objective.⁵ That directive applied to the entirety of Canada's international assistance envelope, which totalled $7.89 billion in 2024-25,⁶ $6.24 billion of which was allocated to Global Affairs Canada.⁷

Nearly eight billion dollars in a single year, with almost all of it required, by policy, to have a gender lens attached. There is nothing inherently wrong with making sure women are treated fairly, protected from violence, and given true, genuine opportunities to succeed. In fact, that is a good and necessary goal in any just society. Supporting women’s education, access to healthcare, and economic participation — especially in vulnerable regions — can produce measurable benefits. But when nearly $8 billion is distributed under the FIAP framework in a single year, it is fair to ask the question if whether or not we are prioritizing outcomes, or simply checking ideological boxes?

Because at the same time FIAP and Global Affairs Canada allocate billions in spending abroad, Canadians are dealing with rising food costs, housing challenges, and economic strain. Aid should be effective, flexible, result-driven and not be driven by ideological quotas. A nation cannot spend in abstraction while its people live in constraint. Prudence must sit beside principle.

But, What Did FIAP Actually Fund?

The specific numbers are striking when laid out in sequence.

In November 2024, Canada's Minister of International Development announced $35 million to support gender equality and women's empowerment initiatives across Africa, with an emphasis on collaboration with local organizations and communities to ensure "culturally appropriate solutions."⁸

That same month, Canada announced $231 million CAD in total funding for African countries, with gender equality listed alongside food security and climate as a designated priority area.⁹

At the UN General Assembly in September 2024, Ottawa committed to a string of individual projects.¹⁰ Among them: $9.5 million over five years to improve the rights and opportunities of women and girls in Ghana by increasing their participation in the labour market, health care, education, leisure, and civic life — and to change "social norms and attitudes about care work."¹¹

The largest commitment is the one that draws the least attention. Canada committed to spending $1.4 billion annually on global health — with $700 million of that specifically dedicated to sexual and reproductive health and rights.¹³ Every year. As a floor.

By comparison, Canada includes gender equality objectives in 97.9% of its humanitarian aid¹² — against a DAC member average of 19.1%. Canada's numbers aren't at the high end of its peer group. They are in a category of their own.

The Carney Reversal

During the federal election campaign, Carney explicitly denied he would reduce Canada's aid budget: "My government will not cut foreign aid," he said in April. "Our vision is that this is a time for Canada to lead."¹⁴

Budget 2025 then announced a $2.7 billion reduction to the International Assistance Envelope over four years — directly contradicting that pledge (though, hopefully this makes Carney focus funding on Canadians instead).¹⁵ The cuts break down as follows: $470 million in 2026-27, $590 million in 2027-28, and $861 million in each of the two years after that.¹⁶

The government says this returns foreign aid to pre-pandemic levels,¹⁷ without specifying what the current baseline actually is. That, seemingly to many, looks as if it is an evasion. It allows ministers to claim fiscal responsibility without accounting for a decade of ideologically-driven program expansion that ballooned those baselines in the first place.

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