Government Finances Explorer

About this explorer and how to use it

This tool shows revenue and spending for the federal government and every province and territory, from to , in one consistent set of categories built from Statistics Canada's historical and current government finance statistics. It opens on program spending per person, in 2020 dollars, for Ottawa and the four largest provinces.

To use it, pick governments and an item, then choose how to measure it: dollars, inflation-adjusted dollars, per person, share of GDP, or share of the total. Over time tracks it across years; Across governments ranks the provinces in a single year. Every chart and table can be downloaded, as can the full database. Sources, definitions and breaks in the series are in the Notes.

Compare

Governments

Item

Measure

Years

Over time

From

Across governments

Fiscal year

Compare with

Include territoriesAdd Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to the comparison across governments. Their per-person amounts are several times the provinces'. Mark changes in data sourceDashed lines where the underlying Statistics Canada series change. Some items shift at these points for definitional reasons.

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What the data are

The database covers the revenue and expenditure of the federal government and of each provincial and territorial government from to . Provincial and territorial figures are for their general governments: ministries, agencies and funds, but not municipalities, school boards, government business enterprises, or the Canada and Quebec Pension Plans. Federal figures likewise exclude the CPP. Years are fiscal years, April to March, so 2024/25 runs from April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025.

All provinces and territories is the sum of the thirteen provincial and territorial governments. It is not consolidated, so transfers between provinces (which are small) are counted on both sides. Before 1999/00 the Northwest Territories include what is now Nunavut.

Sources

Three sources are spliced together, each used for the years it covers best:

Provincial natural resource revenue for 1988/89 to 2007/08 comes from a separate FON compilation, because the FMS table does not report resource royalties for most of that period. GDP, population and the consumer price index come from the FON macro database, which draws on Statistics Canada.

Measures

Millions of dollars: nominal values, as reported.
2020 dollars: deflated by the national consumer price index (2020 = 100).
Per person: divided by the July 1 population in the year the fiscal year begins (2024/25 uses July 1, 2024).
Per cent of GDP: divided by nominal GDP in the calendar year the fiscal year begins. Provinces and territories use their own GDP; the federal government and the all-province total use Canada's.
Per cent of total: revenue items and the budget balance as a share of total revenue; spending items as a share of total expenditure.

Items and how they are built

Total expenditure since 2008/09 is GFS expense with depreciation (consumption of fixed capital) replaced by gross capital spending, so capital is counted when it is bought. Earlier years are FMS and PFHD totals, which already treat capital this way. Program expenditure is total expenditure less debt charges.
Budget balance is total revenue less total expenditure. It will differ from balances in public accounts, which count capital through depreciation and use different consolidation rules.
Quebec abatement. Quebec residents get a 16.5-point abatement of federal personal income tax, and Quebec collects more of its own tax in its place, with an offsetting reduction in federal transfers. To keep Quebec comparable with other provinces, the abatement is counted as federal income tax and as a federal transfer to Quebec, and taken out of Quebec's own income tax. The amount is shown as a memo item for Quebec.
The main revenue items add up to total revenue: income taxes, consumption taxes, customs duties, payroll taxes and social insurance contributions, property taxes, transfers from other governments, natural resource revenues, sales of goods and services, and other own-source revenue. Their sub-items (for example personal income taxes) are parts of them.
Other own-source revenue is a residual: total revenue less the other main items, built the same way for every government and year. It is mostly investment income (interest, dividends and enterprise profits other than liquor and gaming), fines, and licences and permits. There are no “other income taxes” or “other consumption taxes” lines: the first is only ever rounding, and the second dips below zero through rounding in some years. So the listed consumption taxes don't add up to the total; the gap is amusement, racetrack and other small taxes.
Consumption taxes follow the GFS definition throughout: federal customs duties are always a separate line, and provincial motor vehicle licences are always counted as a consumption tax.
Items overlap: totals contain their components. Don't add items together.
A $0 is a zero reported by the source; a blank (n/a) means the item isn't reported for that government and year. Provincial customs duties are always blank, since only Ottawa can levy them.

Breaks in the series

Category definitions differ between sources, so some items jump where one source hands over to the next (turn on Mark changes in data source to see where). The larger ones:

Natural resource revenues: before 2008/09 these include resource taxes and licences; from 2008/09 they are royalties only, with land sales and bonus bids in other own-source revenue. Statistics Canada records most of Newfoundland and Labrador's offshore oil royalties as transfers from Ottawa through 2008/09, so for those years they appear there rather than here.
Payroll taxes and social insurance contributions: before 1988/89 the provincial figures are health and social insurance levies, which include health premiums.
Detailed components (for example tobacco taxes, or oil and gas royalties) are only available in some years.

Headline totals (total revenue, total expenditure, program expenditure, debt charges, income and consumption taxes, transfers) are the most comparable over time.

How to cite

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

Licence

This tool and its database 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 source data remain under their own terms: Statistics Canada data under the Statistics Canada Open Licence.