Canada's Official Development Assistance Statistics — OECD/DAC

Canada is one of 24 donor countries that is a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC). The DAC promotes international dialogue and study on development and sets standards for reporting and monitoring aid.

Every year, GAC collects information on international assistance flows provided by Canadian governments (federal, provincial and municipal), compiles the data in a structured format, and then reports it to the OECD/DAC, in accordance with internationally agreed definitions. The DAC in turn publishes the data collected from all donors.

In order to ensure comparability amongst donors, OECD data is prepared on a calendar-year basis and presented in millions of U.S. dollars. Government of Canada reports, such as the Canada’s International Assistance Data, are prepared on a fiscal year basis (April 1 to March 31) and in Canadian dollars.

It is also important to understand that, in Canada, there are two definitions of official development assistance (ODA). First, there is the international definition created by the OECD/DAC, which is used to prepare the statistics reported on its website (links below). Second, there is the definition set out in Canada's Official Development Assistance Accountability Act. These two definitions are compatible, however, the OECD/DAC definition also includes assistance from provincial/territorial or municipal sources. For more information on how Canada defines its assistance, please consult Understanding international assistance terms.

The detailed rules describing whether certain activities may be counted as ODA comprise about 100 pages split up in three manuals, edited by the OECD. More information on this topic can be found in the methodology section of the OECD/DAC website.

To access Canada's data from the OECD/DAC statistical website, select one of the common datasets from the table below.

Table 1: Canada's Official Development Assistance Statistics - OECD/DAC

Dataset	Abstract	Coverage	Flow Type	Amount Type	Availability	Important Notes
Total ODA by type	Canada's official total ODA figures (including the ODA/GNI ratio), broken down by type of aid	Total ODA (Bilateral and Multilateral)	Disbursements (i.e., actual expenditures)	Current USD millions	Preliminary aggregate-level estimates for the previous calendar year (fiscal year) are usually available in April Final figures are posted in December	Amounts are net of previous ODA loans repayments
Bilateral ODA by recipient	Destination of Canada's ODA broken down by recipient (continent and country, when available)	Bilateral ODA	Disbursements (i.e., actual expenditures) net of previous ODA loans repayments	Current USD millions	Available for the previous calendar year are in December	Amounts are net of previous ODA loans repayments
Multilateral ODA by organization	Breakdown of Canada's core contributions to multilateral organizations presented by type of organization funded	Multilateral ODA	Disbursements (i.e., actual expenditures) net of previous ODA loans repayments	Current USD millions	Available for the previous calendar year are in December	Notes to International Financial Institutions are presented on an issuance basis
Bilateral ODA by sector	Canada's Bilateral ODA data broken down by DAC sector (i.e., the sector of the economy the aid is intended to foster)	Bilateral ODA	Project Commitments (i.e., budget amount)	Current USD millions	Available for the previous calendar year are in December	A commitment is the total project budget amount at project approval
Hint: It is possible to export the datasets above in formats compatible with popular spreadsheet and statistical software by clicking on export in Excel and other exports in the OECD Stat portal.
Detailed project-level data (Creditor Reporting System Aid activity database)	This is the most detailed dataset on aid data available from the OECD. Data is presented at the project or activity level.	Bilateral ODA	Disbursement and Project Commitments	Current and Constant (2009) USD millions	Available for the previous calendar year are in December	Starting in 2009, whenever appropriate. Canada reports multiple sectors/countries per project
Hint: To access project/activity details, simply click on the desired year. The Query Wizard for International Development Statistics application will load a view of the projects/activities for the chosen year. Once the page is loaded, it is possible to export the entire dataset for the year, by clicking on export as a CSV format.