"Remember that Donald Trump did not destroy the Canadian economy through tariffs" the text inside a February 6, 2025 Instagram reel says.
The post's image shows a list of purported large Canadian contributions to countries and groups next to a picture of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Other versions of the meme which supposedly depicted a summary of Canada's foreign aid spending spread across Instagram, Threads, Facebook, X and TikTok around the same time.
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Screenshot of an Instagram post taken February 12, 2025
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Screenshot of a TikTok taken February 13, 2025
Since the focus on international funding by the United States was spurred by disclosures from the tech billionaire Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency, Canadian accounts began calling for a transparency overhaul of their country's spending. False claims about foreign aid from the United States and Canada were previously fact-checked by AFP.
Similarly, the purported aid figures next to the picture of Trudeau are incorrect, just as they were when AFP first debunked the meme in 2018.
The most recent international assistance report available, for 2022-2023 (archived here), shows Canada spent Can$16 billion (US$11.2 billion) on foreign aid, much higher than the total it presented for 2016-2017 (archived here), but still not the same as the $5 billion sum alleged on social media. The report also said $2.14 billion was spent on refugees, compared to some versions of the meme which...
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