Global Affairs Canada is seeking to reform its bureaucratic system for funding foreign aid initiatives in an effort to approve funding requests faster and eliminate multiple layers of red tape.

Charities say the Canadian international aid system is extremely cumbersome, providing over $6.5 billion annually in development aid for everything from education and climate change adaptation to gender equality, in addition to humanitarian funding for emerging crises.

Shannon Kindornay, Chief Operating Officer of the Canadian Council for International Co-operation, which represents over 95 non-profit organizations, said, "They know they are risk-averse, they know the systems are outdated, and they know the administrative burden is extremely high." This comprehensive reform, referred to as the "Grants and Contributions Reform Initiative," includes updating how Global Affairs staff assess funding requests from Canadian and foreign aid groups, in addition to the reporting requirements Ottawa includes for tracking results.

The initiative also aims to change a culture that critics say prioritizes avoiding embarrassment at the expense of empowering local groups.

The [Grants and Contributions Reform Initiative] is an important aspect of the Ministry's [Future of Diplomacy Initiative], which aims to build new political expertise through investments in new tools and systems while ensuring the most innovative and efficient investments for the coming years, according to Geneviève Tremblay, spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada: "Years to come."

Groups working in this sector say the current system is often a bureaucratic nightmare, with Ottawa issuing vague guidelines for funding, then updating reporting templates and requirements multiple times throughout the project.

In some cases, a project operating in two different continents will be reviewed by separate geographical teams using the same criteria, as management does not centralize all its operations.

Kindornay said the paperwork partly stems from a culture that began under the previous Conservative government, where bureaucrats focused on avoiding any situation that could lead to unflattering media reports about misusing foreign aid.

She added, "This is still definitely daunting. The prevailing culture is definitely to avoid risk. Management is actually very transparent and knows what the issues are."

Kindornay further stated that Global Affairs Canada funds foreign organizations that manage a full range of charities and global organizations that have worked for decades in one country, to small grassroots groups operating under dictatorships.

She added that funding for the latter can literally involve "sending bags of money across borders to a women's rights organization," making it hard to provide Ottawa with receipts showing how the money was spent, especially in some countries where safety and security are at risk, as asking someone to keep a taxi receipt shows they went somewhere could pose a real danger to that person's life.

Kindornay continued that dealing with these situations requires countries sending the money to accept that they may lose a little funding in a riskier environment, but that there could also be significant gains because they took that risk.

The president and CEO of Save the Children Canada said that even large, long-standing charities struggle to navigate the paperwork in Ottawa. Dani Glenwright added, "It’s a complex system, and there are different processes and expectations across branches."

"If an organization like ours is facing issues and challenges dealing with that, I think local partners and small teams in the countries we want to work with, which is critical to achieving as much efficiency as possible with foreign aid, will really suffer."