Better Evidence, Better Spending: A Call for Stronger Federal Program Evaluation

August 6, 2026 – As Canada ramps up defence and infrastructure spending, federal policymakers are facing growing pressure to make difficult decisions about other areas of government spending. Yet Ottawa’s evaluation system provides too little evidence to identify which programs deliver the greatest value for Canadians, according to a new C.D. Howe Institute report.

In “Putting Programs to the Test: Strengthening the Federal Evaluation Function,” authors John Lester and Benoît Robidoux argue that the current federal evaluation framework falls short because it does not explicitly require value for money assessments, gives departments too much flexibility in how they measure efficiency, and lacks the data, expertise and institutional incentives needed to produce evaluations that can guide spending decisions. The report outlines practical reforms to strengthen the federal evaluation function, improve evaluation quality and consistency, and provide policymakers with better evidence for allocating public resources.

Drawing on presentations and discussions from the C.D. Howe Institute’s 2026 Workshop on Strengthening the Federal Evaluation Function, the report recommends making value for money assessments a mandatory part of federal program evaluations, based on rigorous benefit-cost and cost-effectiveness analysis where appropriate. It also proposes creating an independent evaluator general to help departments build evaluation capacity and improve the consistency and quality of federal evaluations.

“Governments shouldn’t simply ask whether a program achieves its objectives. They also need to know whether it delivers enough public benefit to justify the resources devoted to it,” says Robidoux, former Senior Associate Deputy Minister at Employment and Social Development Canada. “When fiscal pressures intensify, stronger value for money evaluations give decision-makers better evidence to determine where each additional taxpayer dollar can have the greatest impact.”

The report also recommends expanding the evaluation framework to include spending delivered through the tax system, incorporating a value for money test earlier in the approval process for new programs, making greater use of linked administrative data, and replacing the rigid five-year evaluation cycle with a more flexible approach when programs have already been thoroughly assessed and remain largely unchanged.

“Too often, federal evaluations focus on how program participants are impacted – without identifying the program’s contribution to these outcomes – rather than on whether programs provide value for money when all benefits and costs are accounted for,” says Lester, Fellow-in-Residence, C.D. Howe Institute. “Policymakers also need to know whether a program delivers enough value to justify the tax dollars required to fund it. Stronger evidence will help them make better spending decisions.”

Ottawa describes its overall expenditure management system as “designed to ensure that all programs are focused on results, provide value for taxpayers’ money and are aligned with the government’s priorities and responsibilities.”

Making value for money evaluations of programs mandatory while allowing time to build capacity, appointing an evaluator general, and broadening the scope of the evaluation policy would be big steps toward making this worthy goal a reality, conclude the authors.

Read the Full Report

For more information, contact: John Lester, Fellow-in-Residence, C.D. Howe Institute; Benoit Robidoux, former Senior Associate Deputy Minister, Employment and Social Development Canada; and Lauren Malyk, Manager, Communications, C.D. Howe Institute, 416-873-6168, lmalyk@cdhowe.org. 

The C.D. Howe Institute is an independent not-for-profit research institute whose mission is to raise living standards by fostering economically sound public policies. Widely considered to be Canada’s most influential think tank, the Institute is a trusted source of essential policy intelligence, distinguished by research that is nonpartisan, evidence-based and subject to definitive expert review.

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