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The Trudeau government said it lost tens of millions of dollars through a federal “Equality Fund” due to ‘poor investments’.

Auditors disclosed a federal “Equality Fund” launched with a $300 million taxpayer grant promptly lost a tenth of its value in poor investments, reported Blacklock’s Reporter. The money is supposedly allocated to help women in third-world countries.

“Poor market conditions impacted the early returns on gender lens investments though the Fund has since rebounded,” said a Department of Foreign Affairs audit. “Progress was uneven,” it added.

The Equality Fund was to correct “the funding shortfall for women’s rights and feminist organizations in developing countries,” wrote auditors. “It was meant to … advance gender equality and empower women and girls.”

Fund managers instead spent $5 million in start-up costs and lost a tenth of the remainder in bad investments. “The Equality Fund investment portfolio has an unrealized loss of 10 percent,” said Formative Evaluation of the Partnership for Gender Equality. “Performance has since improved.”

Poilievre commits to ending "foreign aid to terrorists, dictators and useless, Marxist international bureaucracies". Currently the Trudeau Liberals fund Hamas-linked agencies tens of millions through the UN.https://t.co/Kx6xTwZNO4 pic.twitter.com/6z9i0iHcmU

— Rebel News (@RebelNewsOnline) October 13, 2023

The grant is disbursed through an endowment to provide a long term, sustainable source of revenue to fuel feminist initiatives. The $300 million from taxpayers is considered “seed capital”  to be “invested with a 100 percent gender lens.”

The Equality Fund did not disclose where it invested its money. The grant is supposed to finance programs for third-world countries over the next 15 years.

Auditor General Karen Hogan told Global Affairs Canada (GAC) last March it could not demonstrate how foreign aid improved the lives of women and girls. She cites “significant weaknesses” in record keeping.

Hogan found the department struggled to detail progress or provide specifics on projects because of improper record keeping and insufficient information collected.

“Some of the required information had been stored on computers of staff who had since left the department, so officials were unable to find the required information,” reads the report.

“The department missed an opportunity to demonstrate the value of international assistance,” said auditors.

Today the Auditor General released a report showing that the Liberals are not actually measuring the results of their ‘feminist international assistance’ policy.

They like to talk about helping women and girls, but they can’t be bothered to actually measure the impact. #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/gnEwZP2J4C

— Garnett Genuis (@GarnettGenuis) March 27, 2023

Though Canada ranked first in spending on foreign aid for gender equality, the March 27, 2023 audit said the Trudeau government failed to track if the money improved lives.

Auditor General Hogan notes GAC tracked indicators but not actual progress for half its projects. Of those, progress for 24 of its 26 stated policy indicators were not properly tracked.

“Senior management did not and could not review the complete impact of programming. Without a full account of project outcomes, senior management could not respond to evolving conditions and make changes to improve policy implementation,” she said.

“It was highly problematic that critical information, such as project progress reports, could not be readily found,” according to the audit.

Ottawa failed to precisely track where its $3.5 billion in annual bilateral aid went, besides diverting aid for Africa to Ukraine.

READ MORE: https://t.co/loJ24jzHyF pic.twitter.com/ZiPEel7kQR

— Rebel News Canada (@RebelNews_CA) March 31, 2023

International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan and his department accepted the audit findings and intended to shore up its data collection.

“Improving our reporting is imperative for transparency, accountability and decision-making,” Sajjan said at the time. He stressed progress could be assessed through personal visits.

“I have visited a lot of the projects,” the minister said. “I've spoken with a lot of the organizations that are delivering the projects to see first-hand what are the actual results, what are the outcomes.”

The House committee also learned that further investigation by the Auditor General’s Office would not happen as it took too long to get the necessary information.

“It took several months for us to access the requested information,” Hogan told reporters. “That just tells me people aren't using it for day-to-day information and decision-making.”