The aid package includes $169 million for food, clean water and hygiene and health services, as well as support for women facing sexual and domestic violence.
International Development Minister Harjit Sajjan announced the funding as Canada takes part in an international conference in Brussels on finding a political solution to the conflict in Syria.
Some of the aid will help buy grain for the region, which usually relies on wheat from Ukraine as a staple food source. Canada’s aid is to be funnelled through the United Nations and international aid agencies, including the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and not through Assad’s regime, a spokesman for Sajjan said.
But the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group, estimates that the actual death toll exceeds 600,000, saying thousands have died of torture in government-run prisons.