1. Canada should continue to use its leadership in multilateral fora, such as the G7 and G20, to advocate for effective international assistance, with a particular focus on promoting gender equality and an inclusive international finance architecture.
2. To meet its commitment to increase the volume of international assistance, Canada should:
a. establish a roadmap with medium-term milestones either in volume or share of gross national income, thus providing budget predictability to the public and its partners,
b. pursue its communication efforts towards policy makers and citizens on the added value and results of development assistance.
3. Global Affairs Canada should strengthen the focus of its development co-operation on local priorities by:
a. ensuring that thematic commitments give sufficient budget flexibility for bilateral programmes to respond to local priorities,
b. continuing to decentralise authority to missions and embassies,
c. continuing to strengthen policy dialogue with national and local authorities.
4. Global Affairs Canada should accelerate the implementation of its Grants and Contributions Transformation Initiative by:
a. integrating lessons from pilots into business systems and maintaining feedback loops with stakeholders,
b. implementing its new portfolio approach to risk management and results monitoring.
5. Global Affairs Canada should accelerate progress on locally led development, for example by designing and favouring programmes where recipients transfer long-term, flexible and core funding to their local partners, building on the Women’s Voice and Leadership programme experience.
6. Global Affairs Canada should improve the balance between tightly earmarked (earmarked for a specific theme and/or country) and softly earmarked funding (contributions to pooled funds and specific-purpose programmes and funds) to its multilateral partners to ensure that its partnerships also promote their integrity and added-value.
7. To maintain development objectives as a pillar of foreign policy, Canada should:
a. further assess and address the transboundary impact of its domestic policies,
b. ensure the relevant parts of the administration have the necessary resources to fulfil their mandate of promoting and supporting the implementation of responsible business conduct by Canadian companies abroad that align with and mutually reinforce development co-operation activities.
8. Canada should keep the strong focus of its development co-operation on gender equality, including the support for women’s rights organisations, and keep-up the work and championing of this topic in a challenging global context.
9. Canada should strengthen accountability on gender equality across the administration to maintain coherence and consistency in the feminist approach, including by strengthening inter-departmental engagement.
10. To accelerate progress on innovative finance:
a. GAC should focus its use of innovative finance in the more challenging contexts, such as underserved markets, including by strengthening the enabling environment and building on lessons learned from its pilot instruments, thereby strengthening complementarity and co‑ordination with FinDev Canada,
b. FinDev Canada should deepen its assessment of additionality and improve its measurement of its development impact.