The Minister of International Cooperation for the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Honourable Beverley J. Oda, announced today during the Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4), that Canada will become a signatory of the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI).

“Accountability and transparency are the hallmarks of Canada’s international assistance and Aid Effectiveness Agenda,” said Minister Oda. “Increasing aid transparency is key to fostering the accountability needed for ensuring development effectiveness and results […] We look forward to working with others to further improve transparency in both donor and recipient countries to achieve the results our citizens expect and deserve.”

IATI aims to improve the public availability and accessibility of information on aid. With today’s announcement, CIDA is taking a further step that will allow donors, partner countries, civil society organizations and citizens to access and use Canadian information and compare it with data from 22 other participating organizations and countries.

We look forward to Canada publishing their aid information to the IATI Registry so that it can be seen in the context of other donors’ aid flows. Only with a combined picture of all aid flows can donors and recipients be sure they are using their resources to best effect.

Timely, accessible, and comprehensive information on Canadian aid will mean governments receiving money from CIDA can be better informed when planning future spending, CIDA can plan where to spend their money more effectively in relation to the others, and Canadian citizens will be able to ensure their country’s aid money is getting to where it’s needed most.

Engineers Without Borders Canada have been working towards this development with impressive campaigning throughout 2011. We congratulate them on keeping up the pressure to realise this huge achievement.

We hope to see more donors signing up to IATI during the High Level Forum, and hope that all donors renew their commitments to aid transparency by agreeing to publish their information to the IATI Registry by 2015.