Canada's access to information laws make it hard to find out how billions of our foreign aid tax dollars are spent, says an Ottawa researcher.

Amir Attaran, a professor at the University of Ottawa, said part of the problem is Canada's foreign aid money is now funnelled through third party agencies in other countries — such as the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) — that are not required to release the information to the Canadian public.

This year, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), which administers 80 per cent of Canada's aid dollars, had a budget of almost $2.5 billion.

Attaran is conducting research to find out the progress of development projects in Afghanistan funded by almost $300 million from CIDA.

That information is very important, Attaran said.

"If we do not have progress reports that are timely and complete, we do not know whether our investment in Afghanistan for foreign aid is achieving results and that is unacceptable," he said.

Attaran filed an access to information request as part of his research and said he was told by a CIDA official that the foreign agencies running the projects must OK any information that's released.

"Because the money from Canada is pooled with that of other countries, those other countries may have a right of veto over whether Canadians can know how the money was spent," he said.

"Did it really make the lives of the Afghan people better or didn't it?"

Canada could demand information, expert says

Alasdair Roberts, an expert on government secrecy at Syracuse University, said the World Bank and the UNDP have an abysmal record for releasing information, despite having very good transparency rules on paper.

But he said Canada could demand greater transparency from those agencies.

"There's nothing blocking the Canadian government from saying that we want audits for programs that are being funded with Canadian money and that we intend to release those audits under Canadian access law," he said.

On Monday, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor told the House of Commons that the government will provide details of development work where it is appropriate.

But Liberal foreign affairs critic Keith Martin said the secrecy about how the money is spent is only one disadvantage of funding development projects via third party agencies.

"When monies are going to large organizations like the World Bank, not only do we lose control — we also lose credit on the ground," he said, adding that people in countries benefiting from our aid seldom work directly with Canadians anymore.