Major Federal Transfers Explorer

This tool shows the major federal transfers to each province and territory: Equalization, the Canada Health Transfer, the Canada Social Transfer, Territorial Formula Financing and the programs that came before them, from to . It opens on total major cash transfers per person for all provinces and territories together and for four provinces.

To use it, pick governments and a program, then choose how to measure it: dollars, inflation-adjusted dollars, per person, share of GDP, or share of the province's total revenue. Over time tracks it across years; Across provinces compares them in a single year. Every chart and table can be downloaded, as can the full dataset. Definitions, sources and the programs' history are in the Notes.

Compare

Governments

Program

Measure

Years

Over time

From

Across provinces

Fiscal year

Compare with

Include territoriesAdd Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut to the comparison across provinces. Their per-person amounts are many times the provinces'. Mark program reformsDashed lines where the health and social transfers were restructured: EPF and CAP, then the CHST, then the CHT and CST.

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What the data are

The figures are Finance Canada's historical tables of major federal transfers to provinces and territories ( edition), in millions of dollars of entitlements for each fiscal year. Most programs start in 1980/81; Equalization goes back to . Years are fiscal years, April to March, so 2025/26 runs from April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026.

These are the large, formula-driven transfers. Other federal transfers to provinces and territories, such as bilateral health agreements, child care, labour market and infrastructure funding, are not included. All provinces and territories is Finance Canada's Canada total; its components can differ from the sum of the provinces by rounding.

Cash and tax components

Under Established Programs Financing (1977), Ottawa cut its personal and corporate income tax rates so the provinces could raise theirs by the same amount, a transfer of “tax points.” Finance Canada counted the value of those points as part of the EPF entitlement, and of the CHST, CHT and CST entitlements that followed, with cash making up the rest. The tax component is that value. It is revenue the provinces collect themselves, not a payment from Ottawa, and it is not reported after 2013/14. The cash series are the payments. Use the cash series to follow federal spending over time.

Programs

Program reforms

Turn on Mark program reforms to see these periods on the time chart:

Measures

Millions of dollars: nominal values, as Finance Canada reports them.
2020 dollars: deflated by the national consumer price index (2020 = 100) for the calendar year the fiscal year begins.
Per person: divided by the July 1 population in the year the fiscal year begins (2025/26 uses July 1, 2025). Finance Canada's transfer formulas use their own population figures (June 1 estimates before 2024/25), so per-person amounts here can differ slightly from official per capita figures.
Per cent of GDP: divided by nominal GDP in the calendar year the fiscal year begins. Provinces and territories use their own GDP; the all-province and all-territory totals use the sum of their members, and All provinces and territories uses Canada's GDP.
Per cent of provincial or territorial revenue: divided by the government's total revenue in the same fiscal year, from the FON Government Revenue and Expenditure database. Total revenue includes federal transfers and the province's own taxes, including those levied on the transferred tax points.

GDP, prices and revenue are published with a lag, so the newest years show n/a for some measures until those data catch up.

Territories

Nunavut was created on April 1, 1999. Before 1999/00 the Northwest Territories include it, and their population, GDP and revenue here cover both. Territorial GDP is available from 1999/00 (Yukon from 1981/82), so shares of GDP are n/a before then. Territorial Formula Financing is paid only to the territories, so the comparison across provinces shows the territories when it is selected.

Sources

Transfers: Department of Finance Canada, Major federal transfers and its historical tables.
Population, GDP and the consumer price index: the FON macroeconomic database, which draws on Statistics Canada.
Provincial and territorial total revenue: the FON Government Revenue and Expenditure database, built from Statistics Canada's government finance statistics.

How to cite

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

Licence

This tool and its 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 source data remain under their own terms: Finance Canada data under the Open Government Licence – Canada, and Statistics Canada data under the Statistics Canada Open Licence.