Fiscal Monitor Explorer

About this explorer and how to use it

This tool tracks the federal government's finances month by month, as reported in the Department of Finance Canada's Fiscal Monitor, from to : revenues, expenses, the budgetary balance, borrowing and the balance sheet. It opens on 12-month totals of revenues and expenses over the whole period, with headline results from the latest report ().

To use it, pick lines from any of the seven Fiscal Monitor tables and choose how to measure them: monthly or year-to-date amounts, changes from a year or a month earlier, or 12-month totals, in dollars, inflation-adjusted dollars, per person or as a share of GDP. Versus last year sets every line of a table against the same period a year earlier, and Monthly statement shows the whole table as published in any month. Definitions, gaps and changes in the tables are in the Notes.

Report month

The headline cards, Versus last year and Monthly statement use this month's report.

Table

Lines over time

Choose lines

Up to 8 lines, from any table. Totals include the lines above them, so don't add them together.

Values

Units

Measure

Months (over time)

From

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What the data are

The Fiscal Monitor is the Department of Finance Canada's monthly report on the federal government's financial results. Each report gives the month's figures and the fiscal year to date, each beside the same period a year earlier. This tool holds every report from to , compiled by Finances of the Nation.

The figures are unaudited. Results for a full fiscal year are finalized later in the Annual Financial Report and the Public Accounts of Canada, so the last months of a fiscal year in particular can differ from the final numbers. Fiscal years run from April to March: 2026/27 runs from April 1, 2026 to March 31, 2027. All amounts are in millions of dollars, not adjusted for inflation.

The seven tables

Table 1, Summary statement of transactions: revenues, program expenses, public debt charges, the budgetary balance, and how the balance and non-budgetary transactions add up to the financial source or requirement. Finance Canada shows expenses, public debt charges and net actuarial losses as negative numbers in this table; here they are positive, as in Tables 3 and 4, so a rise in spending shows as a rise. The budgetary balance keeps its sign: a deficit is negative.
Table 2, Revenues: by source. Table 3, Expenses: by program. Table 4, Total expenses by object of expense (personnel, rentals, transfers and so on), from April 2018.
Table 5 links the budgetary balance to the financial source or requirement, and Table 6 shows how it was financed: borrowing by instrument and the change in cash. Positive numbers are a net source of funds and negative numbers a net requirement.
Table 7, Condensed statement of assets and liabilities: balances at the end of the month against March 31 of the previous fiscal year. It is not in every report; it usually appears once the previous year's accounts are published.

Measures

Monthly uses the month's figures and Year to date the fiscal-year-to-date figures, from April to the report month. In April the two are the same, so where an April year-to-date figure is missing from the dataset the monthly figure is used.
Change from a year earlier compares with the prior-year figure as published in the same report. Finance Canada sometimes restates prior-year figures, so this can differ from the change between two reports a year apart.
Change from the previous month compares two consecutive reports, so it is blank where a month is missing. In Year to date, it shows the month's addition to the year-to-date total (and resets each April).
12-month total adds up the last twelve monthly figures, ending in the month shown. It smooths out the strong seasonal pattern in monthly revenue and spending and needs all twelve months.
Per cent changes divide by the absolute value of the earlier figure, so a deficit that shrinks shows as a positive change.
Cash balances (Tables 1 and 6) are published only in the year-to-date columns, and Table 7 only as balances; they are the same in both views. For Table 7 lines, the comparison is with March 31 of the previous fiscal year, not with the same month a year earlier.

Units

Millions of dollars are the amounts as published, not adjusted for inflation.
Millions of dollars divide by Canada's consumer price index, set to average 100 in . A year-to-date or 12-month amount is divided by the average index over the months it covers.
Dollars per person divide by Canada's population, averaged over the months covered. Monthly amounts are per person per month; year-to-date and 12-month amounts are per person over those months.
dollars per person make both adjustments.
Per cent of GDP divides by nominal GDP over the same months, so a monthly amount is compared with one month's GDP and a 12-month total with a year's. Balances (cash and Table 7) are divided by GDP over the past 12 months.
Changes are taken after the adjustment, so the change from a year earlier in dollars is a real change, and the change in per cent of GDP is in percentage points.
Where the adjustments come from. GDP, population and the consumer price index are annual series from the FON macro database, which draws on Statistics Canada. They are turned into monthly series that run in straight lines between mid-year points, with those points set so that each calendar year's months average to the annual figure (so a calendar year's 12-month total as a share of GDP matches the annual ratio). Months after the middle of continue the growth rates until the next annual data are published, so recent adjusted figures will be revised.

Gaps and changes in the tables

Missing reports. Tables 1, 2 and 5 are missing for most months of 2005 and 2006 (January to November 2005 and all of 2006), and a few months of Table 3 are missing then too. Lines break where a month is missing, and 12-month totals are blank until twelve months are available again.
Combined releases. Some reports cover two months at once (April and May 2025, for example). The end-of-April cash balance, which those releases leave out, is derived as the end-of-May balance less May's change in cash.
Net actuarial losses. Since September 2020, the reports show net actuarial losses on public sector pensions and other employee benefits separately. Program expenses in Table 1 is kept on the earlier, all-in definition: program expenses excluding net actuarial losses plus net actuarial losses.
Lines that come and go. The tables have been reorganized several times, most notably in April 2018, when the department-by-department breakdown of transfers and operating spending in Table 3 was replaced. Lines that are no longer published are listed under Discontinued lines, with the years they cover.
Pollution pricing. Fuel charge proceeds (Table 2) were published until March 2026. From April 2026, Finance Canada folds them, and COVID-19 income support for workers (Table 3), into other revenues and other transfer payments, restating the prior-year figures to match.
Renamed lines. Lines keep one name throughout. Elderly benefits now appear in the report as the Old Age Security program, and the Canada Community-Building Fund as the Build Communities Strong Fund (Community Stream).
Totals may not add up exactly because of rounding in the published tables. Foreign exchange and derivative assets and liabilities in Table 7 are not included.

Source

Department of Finance Canada, The Fiscal Monitor, monthly issues from . Each month's report is at canada.ca/en/department-finance/services/publications/fiscal-monitor/YYYY/MM.html. GDP, population and prices: Finances of the Nation, FON macro database, from Statistics Canada.

How to cite

Questions or comments? Please email Trevor Tombe (University of Calgary) at .

Licence

This tool and its compiled dataset are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). You may share and adapt them for any purpose, including commercially, as long as you give appropriate credit (see How to cite), link to the licence and say if you made changes. The underlying data from the Department of Finance Canada remain under the Open Government Licence – Canada, and the Statistics Canada data behind GDP, population and prices under the Statistics Canada Open Licence.