A searchable database of Canadian foreign development spending temporarily appeared empty in early February 2025, but claims Canada's government removed the public information after criticism of US aid programs are unsubstantiated. Global Affairs Canada said the database was experiencing technical difficulties but spending details for individual projects remained accessible.

"Global Affairs Canada has wiped their entire public database on foreign aid spending," the text inside a February 6, 2025 Instagram photo claims.

Other posts on Instagram, X, Facebook and TikTok alleged that the department in charge of Canada's global activity and diplomatic relations intentionally deleted a repository of international funding projects that had previously been available online.

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Canadian accounts were sharing screenshots from the database to highlight and criticize foreign aid spending under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau shortly before the purported data "wipe" was raised online.

Some implied the database was taken offline to avoid criticism after the stir created when the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by tech billionaire Elon Musk, released data on public spending by the United States on what he claimed represented fraud or waste.

However, the Development Canada X account -- dedicated to international development -- rejected the claims, saying the lack of display was due to a technical error.

"We are working to resolve the issue," it said in a February 6 post (archived here). "The claims that it was taken down on purpose are false."

AFP reached out to Global Affairs Canada for comment and was directed to the posts from Development Canada.

Archives of the project browser landing page indicate that it was frozen and could not retrieve any visible projects as recently as February 7.

As of February 12, the page still displays as empty and includes a message saying the database is experiencing slowdowns but that data is available (archived here). Inputting certain filters or searching for specific file names currently brings up visible lists of projects.

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Project data unchanged

A February 5 X post, shared the day before the website outage, included a screenshot that appeared to show the largest grants in the project browser. Sorting the live page of the tool by descending budget on February 12 generates the same results.

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Some social media users pulled up archived versions of the database from before it crashed, to point out projects they claimed were unnecessary. The details for several of these projects remain available on the government website, contradicting claims that Global Affairs Canada deleted the information to cover up disputed spending.

In one example, a user expressed disbelief that Canadian tax dollars were going towards a project called, "Strengthening Sexual and Reproductive Health in Benin, Burkina Faso and Mali (PLURIELLES)," by taking a screenshot of a December 2, 2024 archive of the database and claiming it had been wiped.

However, searching the name of the project in the live version of the tool retrieves matching results to the post (archived here).

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AFP searched for four other projects users mentioned and generated the same result: the browser retrieved live versions of the project, which matched archives of the same pages. The links to the posts and the live and archived web pages are listed below.

Information for all the projects (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) is also available in a second disclosure database of grants and contributions from the Canadian government (archived here, here, here, here, and here).

Several other health and climate-focused projects (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) highlighted by users were visible in the live versions of both the Global Affairs Canada project browser (archived here, here, here, here and here) and the proactive disclosure database (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, archived here, here, here, here and here) .

Read more of AFP's reporting on misinformation in Canada here.