Currently, Canada spends 0.26% of its GDP on international development. When I held consultations, our partners asked for three things: good policy development, leadership and more money.
On policy, I feel that we are very satisfied with Canada's feminist international assistance policy. On leadership, we're providing it at different levels. We are doing a lot to safeguard the rights of women, girls, and, more specifically, adolescent girls. Canada was one of the first countries to respond to the Rohingya crisis in Bangladesh. We presented a plan that is now triennial. We are ensuring leadership on this front as well.
We agree that official development assistance remains a crucial part of fulfilling the sustainable development goals. We committed to adding $2 billion over five years to carry out the priorities of the feminist international assistance policy, and to investing $1.5 billion for innovation initiatives in development.
In addition to that, we created the Canadian Development Finance Institution, or FinDev Canada, located in Montreal. The institution presented their first project recently. This money does not come from the official development assistance, but it still consists of Canadian funding that serves to lever private investments for development.
We also supported an initiative of the World Bank, called We-Fi, that encourages female entrepreneurship. Canada invested $20 million in this initiative that will seek out $1 billion. The first call for proposals has reached $1.6 billion.
We recognize that official development assistance is fundamental, but we're trying different ways of leveraging funds.