Rethinking Global Development
Five questions for Canada
Setting the Scene: A New Geopolitical and Geoeconomic Context for Canada
We are in the midst of profound global disruption and disordering. Canada now faces a dangerous and uncertain world – the most challenging global context in generations.1 For Canada this means all dimensions of Canadian foreign policy need to be rethought with a focus on core national interests and values – prosperity, security, sovereignty and democracy. Canada’s approach to the shifting geoeconomic and geopolitical forces of global development is no exception.
Multiple vectors are converging:
- The America First agenda is shattering longstanding norms of trade, economics, security, and geopolitics. Canada, in parallel to vital work on a new economic and security relationship with the US, is looking to strengthen and diversify its international partnership and economic relations.
- There is widespread questioning of development cooperation efforts (e.g., “beyond aid”, “development without aid”), driven in part by fiscal constraints and sharp cutbacks in development funding, but also, and perhaps more fundamentally, by a growing unease with the post-war model of development.2 Advanced economies are looking for a greater strategic return on their investments (economic, security, influence) and emerging-market and developing economies are looking for a relationship reset anchored in mutual interests.
- The power of the “West” as a dominant and organizing force of the world order is shifting. New powers, alliances and global arrangements that are less “Western” centric and “Northern” dominated, are playing an increasingly influential role. But in addition, the West’s ability to promote key values and models of political and social development has been significantly undermined by its own selective pursuit of those principles.
- The multilateral system that has structured international cooperation for eighty years, and that has been largely favourable to Canada’s core interests and values, is under enormous strain – both politically and financially. The fracturing of international institutions and erosion of fundamental norms dramatically increases the vulnerability of smaller and middle powers that have traditionally relied on multilateralism to ensure that the rules guiding international relations reflect the concerns of the many rather than the powerful few.
- Yet the need for international cooperation has not diminished. Advancing sustainable economic growth in Canada, and globally, depends heavily on international trade, investment and transnational innovation partnerships. Tackling climate change means cutting greenhouse-gas emissions everywhere, including in fast growing emerging and developing economies.3 Preventing pandemics means stronger health systems and global disease surveillance. Addressing the worldwide crisis of forcibly displaced people means tackling root causes of conflict, climate and poverty.4
As Canada comes to terms with this challenging, disruptive global context, how can development cooperation, and relations with emerging and developing economies more broadly, best advance Canada’s core interests and values? How can they contribute to a new, independent foreign policy for Canada?
This paper seeks to help spark this discussion by posing fundamental questions related to aims and relevance, focus and priorities, impact and effectiveness. It also asks about capabilities and whether Canada, across multiple sectors, is fit for contemporary purposes. These questions have near term urgency, as the Government of Canada moves quickly to plan budgets, set priorities, reshape its international relations, and prepare for upcoming events. More fundamentally, these questions are critical for all of Canada from a longer-term strategic perspective as the country readies itself for where the world is headed, toward 2035 and beyond.
Five questions for Canada
How can development cooperation advance Canada’s interests and values?
In a period of so much disruption and uncertainty in Canada’s relationship with the US, and mounting challenges to Canadian prosperity, security, sovereignty and democracy, the country is looking to diversify and strengthen its relations beyond North America. What are the implications for how Canada approaches development cooperation and relations with emerging and developing economies? How can Canada cooperate with a wider range of countries and actors to promote its own interests and address global problems such as global trade rules, global health and pandemic preparedness, nature-based climate solutions and adaptation, AI and digital governance, migration pressures? For example:
- Many of the contemporary global challenges that will impact Canadians – future pandemics, climate change, bio-diversity loss, migration pressures, transnational crime – have no military solutions. They depend on sustained forms of international cooperation, including with countries in the Global South.
- Increasingly, Canada’s future prosperity will require seizing trade, investment, and resource development opportunities with newer markets, and working as equal partners with these countries to shape the evolving rules of global commerce.
- As existing multilateral institutions are reformed, and new arrangements are created, Canada’s approach to influencing global issues will need to shift. That influence will increasingly require deep relationships with new and emerging powers as they become increasingly powerful in global affairs. While these dynamics and priorities are likely to shape Canada’s relationships with emerging and developing economies going forward, they complement, rather than crowd out, the more traditional humanitarian focus of Canadian development policy. Canadians’ support for humanitarian assistance and poverty reduction, and their expectation that Canada will help people in need around the world, remain strong and will continue to inform Canadian foreign policy.
What are policymakers in the Global South saying?
“First, … policymakers have largely moved on to focus on what comes next. … They see the shift to a mutual interest paradigm in donor countries as an opportunity for an honest dialogue that starts from both sides laying out their respective priorities and finding common ground. … Second…[they] want the pendulum to shift back to programs that support sustained growth and the accumulation of human and physical capital” including “trade and investment but also migration, technology transfer and intellectual property rights, and financial regulations. … And third, [they believe] progress of their countries will depend primarily on their own actions.”
Masood Ahmed, The End of Development Cooperation?, Center for Global Development, 22 July 2025 (https://www.cgdev.org/publication/end-development-cooperation).
How does Canada redefine and reequip itself as a “Global partner” rather than a “Northern donor”?
For too long Canada has viewed developing and emerging economies through either an aid or mercantilist lens, as primarily aid recipients or export markets, but rarely as trade, investment, security and knowledge partners. Yet countries in the Global South are growing in economic dynamism and global heft, with outsized consequences for shared priorities ranging from climate change to pandemic preparedness, migration governance, and biodiversity conservation. These economies are seeking a profoundly different relationship, of equals, rooted in mutual benefit and respect.
How does Canada move from being, and seeing itself, as a primarily a “Northern donor” to becoming a “global partner”? How does Canada widen its aperture on global development and take a more integrated, strategic approach to relations with developing and emerging countries? How does it equip itself to look beyond aid to cooperating on trade, investment, international financial system and debt reform, regional dynamics and global governance?5
Within development cooperation itself, what is the optimal approach and optimal development finance toolkit for Canada?
The post-Cold War framework on development cooperation ruptured in 2025, although cracks had been appearing for some time. Numerous international conversations are being launched6 to reimagine global development. Canada needs to have its own conversation on these issues, both to inform new directions in its own foreign and development policy and to influence these global conversations.
This on-going policy debate raises many core issues, such as:
- How can the promise of private development finance be fulfilled and the portfolio of development finance tools optimized?7
- Which hard questions need to be asked about international assistance’s core purpose, best use, and effectiveness? For example:
- Where are scarce concessional aid dollars most needed and where can they have the greatest impact? While there will continue to be a need for international assistance dollars for humanitarian emergencies, fragile contexts, and global public goods, how should public dollars be prioritized across diverse public and private needs?
- What is working, and what is not? What should be phased out, what should be scaled up?
- Has enough been done to “graduate” middle income countries and free resources for lower income and fragile contexts?
How can Canada help engineer a more effective, streamlined, global development finance architecture that prioritises and delivers results? All parts of the multilateral system are not equally effective, and there is much overlap and duplication of effort. Canada needs to identify a set of priorities for reform and then work with others to double down on consolidation, rationalization, effectiveness, and results.
What issues, countries or regions should Canada prioritize?
Canada cannot be equally impactful in multiple sectors and multiple geographies. Today’s global context adds new urgency to the need to acknowledge that reality and tangibly act on it. Choices will have to be made. Tensions and trade-offs are inevitable. For example:
- In recent years Canada has placed gender equality at the centre of its development and foreign policy efforts and has been credited with spearheading this critical issue and adopting innovative approaches globally. While gender equality has continued merit as a pillar of Canadian international policy, both as a core human right and as a high-return strategic investment, how much attention and resourcing should it receive relative to other economy-wide and systemic issues?
- Partner countries are increasingly focused on boosting the productive economy, growth and job creation, not to the exclusion of social issues but to generate the investment and revenues needed to invest more in public services. Canada has a lot to contribute on natural resource management, tax and investment regimens, agriculture, and skills development, amongst other things.
- Systemic change is needed across many areas of global development. The global health system needs transformation and Canada is well positioned to lead, given its deep national expertise, particularly on maternal and child health, vaccines, and leveraging the power of AI.
Setting priorities, making choices
In the new geo-economic and geo-political context, Canada is looking to use every instrument at its disposal to advance its economic security and prosperity. Meanwhile developing and emerging economies are seeking to address shortcomings in the current North-driven dynamic and to “shift to a mutual interest paradigm” “as an opportunity for an honest dialogue that starts from both sides laying out their respective priorities and finding common ground,” (Masood Ahmed, 2025). Tensions and trade-offs are inevitable, as resources – political attention, personnel, funding, country presence – are finite and objectives will not always align. But there are many areas of potential ‘mutual shared interest’ at the intersection of Canadian interests and capabilities on the one hand, and partner countries’ priorities on the other. These are areas in which Canada and partner countries can work together both bilaterally and in international fora. Certain issues immediately come to mind: critical minerals, trade policy, climate action, food security and global health and pandemic preparedness. What objectives, principles, guardrails and processes should guide this rethinking?
- State effectiveness continues to be a key determinant of sustainable and inclusive prosperity, and Canada has a stake in strengthening democratic forces and governance.
- With respect to geographic focus: Canada cannot be equally present and impactful in all countries and regions. Canada faces the challenge of strengthening ties with traditional economic partners, on the one hand, and building ties with non-traditional partners on the other. To start, how can Canada use its Indo-Pacific Strategy and nascent Africa Strategy to more systemically pursue “win-win” opportunities using an optimized Canadian toolkit (e.g., technical assistance, financing, trade commission services, and cooperative security mechanisms)?
Questions to guide the rethinking of Canada’s development cooperation efforts
- Where do Canada’s domestic economic interests most directly intersect with contemporary global development challenges (e.g., trade, energy and natural resources, AI, migration, pandemic preparedness)
- Where do Canada’s security interests most directly intersect with contemporary development challenges (e.g., post conflict reconstruction, state effectiveness and governance)
- Where is Canada well positioned to make a distinctive contribution in areas of global need? Where do Southern priorities converge with Canadian capabilities and interests (e.g., global health, natural resource management and critical minerals, climate adaption and nature-based climate solutions).)
- Where does Canada have the potential to shape critical global deliberations with deep expertise and innovative ideas (e.g., global financial architecture, new WTO- trade policy agenda, nature-based and indigenous-led climate solutions, AI and digital technology governance and adoption)
Who needs to be involved in resetting Canada’s engagement in global development? Is Canada, across government, private sector, research and civil society, fit for purpose?
This new era requires consideration of how different stakeholders can best contribute to new paths forward.
Government of Canada
The Government of Canada will need to widen its perspective on global development and take a more integrated, strategic approach to relations with developing and emerging economies. It will need solid technical know-how, deep regional and country expertise, and cross-the-board capability to work with multiple development finance tools. It will also need to look “beyond” aid to trade, investment, technology, regional dynamics and the reform of global governance to advance mutual interest agendas.8 This will require working across departments (for example, on climate and critical minerals), and across the development, trade, and political streams within Global Affairs Canada.
- Canada is well-positioned with its integrated foreign ministry, its newly established development finance institution (FinDevCanada) and the research and innovation expertise of IDRC. The recent OECD DAC Peer Review indicates,9 however, there is room for improvement. It suggests more can be done to build coherence and synergies, for example between trade and development, and between Global Affairs Canada and FinDevCanada. It points to the need to mainstream development finance expertise and to set FinDevCanada up for greater success. It also warns of the risk of diminished development capabilities at a time when deep country and technical expertise is needed.
- The DAC Review also points to the importance of development effectiveness principles, particularly country ownership, to achieve impact. It notes that Canada has had a very top-down, centralized and supply-driven approach in recent years.
Civil society
Canadian civil society must re-imagine the role it should play in this fast-changing context, and where and how it can engage as advocates, connectors and partners. Civil society must be ready to build new partnerships across societies – in Canada and around the world – that maximize the contributions it can bring in terms of resources, knowledge and innovation. Civil society must also help reassert global cooperation as central to Canada’s prosperity, security, and democracy.
Private sector
Many global challenges will require active engagement and leadership from private sector constituencies. Companies will need to consider how their future interests and regulatory requirements intersect across their corporate footprints, supply chains, and market expansion priorities. Likewise, asset owners and asset managers will deploy private capital toward new cross-border objectives on varying timescales, either alongside or independent of public investments and government actors. Meanwhile market regulators and standard setters will play an influential role in aligning requirements for Canadian market actors with those operating in other jurisdictions.
Universities, colleges, and the knowledge ecosystem
Universities and colleges will need to consider how their research, teaching, and external engagement strategies contribute to preparing Canada to thrive and – in some cases – lead in a vastly changed global environment. New approaches to scientific collaboration across borders, along with transformations in how and when learning and skills development can take place, provide opportunities for new internal incentives within post-secondary institutions as well as for innovative external partnerships that can advance these institutions’ core missions. By rethinking their role in how Canada can engage with developing and emerging economies, universities and colleges can become a central plank of generational renewal and intergenerational collaboration for Canada’s long-term international engagement. They can also help lead the way in devising new models of policy-engaged research, beyond traditional knowledge dissemination and toward the co-production of actionable insights with policymakers and other key stakeholders.
Beyond universities and colleges, we must also pay attention to the broader knowledge ecosystem – where Canada is behind compared to many peers – and invest in more organized, robust, nimble and relevant global development knowledge structures that can provide on-going insights to improve Canada’s development policy and the broader global development ecosystem.
Advancing the discussion
This paper has identified a set of core strategic questions for Canada in a fast-changing global environment. These questions may not have easy answers, but a dialogue that begins to address them is urgently needed. The sections above have also highlighted a suite of critical issues that are ripe for more in-depth analysis and discussion in Canada. These include development finance and development effectiveness, global health, critical minerals, trade and development, AI for development.
What other issues are highly consequential and would benefit from multistakeholder discussion in order to inform forthcoming debates around resetting Canada’s foreign and development policies and Canadian contributions and capabilities, e.g., humanitarian response; state effectiveness and democratic governance; security, peacebuilding and development; other?
Documents and research
About the Expert Group
The Expert Group on Canada and the Future of Development Cooperation is an independent, multistakeholder Canadian initiative responding to a pivotal moment in international affairs. The global order is undergoing rapid and destabilizing change. As described by the 2025 Speech from the Throne, “Canada is facing challenges that are unprecedented in our lifetimes.” All dimensions of Canadian foreign policy are being rethought by Canadians inside and outside government, with a sharp focus on the country’s core interests: prosperity, security, sovereignty and democracy. Canada’s approach to its relations with emerging and developing economies, and the shifting geoeconomic forces of global development, are no exception.
The Expert Group brings together leaders from academia, civil society, public policy, and think tanks who are committed to supporting a substantial rethinking of Canada’s relations with emerging and developing economies and global development efforts. Members are united by a belief that new outlooks, bold ideas, strategic dialogue, and diverse perspectives are urgently needed to shape a more coherent, future-ready Canadian role in the world.
The Group aims to catalyze critical debate and inform fresh approaches. It seeks to foster an ‘eco-system’ of policy experts, practitioners, and stakeholders to contribute meaningfully to ongoing discourse and policy development on Canadian foreign and development cooperation policy. It is rooted in principles of non-partisanship, openness, evidence, cross-disciplinary exchange, and diversity of views.
The Group’s work is hosted by the Max Bell School of Public Policy, McGill University.
All members of the Expert Group participate in their personal capacity, not in their organizational roles. In alphabetical order, the founding members are:
Megan Aikens, Director, Strategic Partnerships and Gender Equality at Canadian Partnership for Women and Children's Health
Julia Anderson, Canada Strategy Lead, The Gates Foundation
Margaret Biggs (Chair), Matthews Fellow in Global Public Policy, Queen’s University
Robert Greenhill, Executive Chair, Global Canada
Nilima Gulrajani, Principal Research Fellow, ODI Global
Kate Higgins, CEO, Cooperation Canada
Chris Hogan, Former Deputy Minister, Environment and Climate Change Canada; former Foreign and Defence Policy Advisor to the Prime Minister
John McArthur, Director and Senior Fellow, Center for Sustainable Development, The Brookings Institution
Khalil Shariff, CEO, Aga Khan Foundation Canada
Jennifer Welsh, Director, Max Bell School of Public Policy
Footnotes
1 Jennifer Welsh, “Tough Choices for Canada in a New Geopolitical Environment,” in Canada Among Nations 2023, N. Hillmer, P. Lagasse, and V. Rigby, eds. (Palgrave Macmillan, 2024).
2 Masood Ahmed, “The End of Development Cooperation?,” Center for Global Development, 22 July 2025 (https://www.cgdev.org/publication/end-development-cooperation). ODI Global’s work on The Future of Aid (https://odi.org/en/topics/the-future-of-aid/). Heba Aly and Nilima Gulrajani, “This is the beginning of the end of international aid. What will the new world look like?,” in The Independent, 21 May 2025 (https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/foreign-aid-cuts-trump-us-uk-b2755220.html).
3 Amar Bhattacharya, Homi Kharas, and John McArthur, Keys to Climate Action: How Developing Countries Could Drive Global Success and Local Prosperity, The Brookings Institution, 2023 (https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/Chapter-1.-Keys-to-Climate-Action-Overview.pdf); and Amar Bhattacharya, Homi Kharas, and John McArthur, “Developing countries are key to climate action, “Commentary, Brookings Institution, 3 March 2023 (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/developing-countries-are-key-to-climate-action/).
4 Minouche Shafik, “Development Without Aid,” Project Syndicate, Project Syndicate, 18 April 2025 (https://www.project-syndicate.org/onpoint/aid-cuts-call-for-new-development-framework-by-minouche-shafik-2025-04).
5 The Africa Action Plan that Canada spearheaded at Its G8 Summit in Kananaskis in 2002 integrated disparate international policy tracks into one comprehensive development framework: security and development, finance and debt, aid and trade, and governance.
6 Future of Development Cooperation Commission (see details on page 4 on the Sevilla Platform for Action: https://financing.desa.un.org/sites/default/files/2025-06/Sevilla%20Platform%20for%20Action_Overview_FINAL.pdf); World Economic Forum, Global Future Council on Reimagining Aid (https://initiatives.weforum.org/global-future-council-on-reimagining-aid/home).
7 Homi Kharas, “Fulfilling the Promise of Private Development Finance,” Project Syndicate, 15 September (https://www.project-syndicate.org/magazine/derisk-investment-in-sustainable-development-to-mobilize-private-finance-at-scale-by-homi-kharas-2025-09).
8 Amar Bhattacharya, Homi Kharas, Charlotte Rivard, and Eleonore Soubeyran, From aid-driven to investment-driven models of sustainable development, Brookings Institution, June 30, 2025 (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/from-aid-driven-to-investment-driven-models-of-sustainable-development/).
9 OECD Development Co-operation Peer Reviews: Canada 2025, May 2025 (https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2025/05/oecd-development-co-operation-peer-reviews-canada-2025_eab23d33.html).