Canada Spends Logo
Follow Build Canada

Explore our Budget 2026 analysis

Federal Government Spending

What the federal government took in and spent, and what each ministry spent, from the audited Public Accounts of Canada.

Revenue and spending, 2016-17

The government’s consolidated revenues and expenses, as its audited financial statements report them (Public Accounts, Volume I, accrual basis). The chart sorts them into Canada Spends’ spending categories; the methodology explains how.

Revenue, 2016-17

$293B

total federal revenues

Spending, 2016-17

$311B

total federal expenses

Deficit, 2016-17

$17.8B

expenses minus revenues

Sources and methodology
View this chart in full screen

Spending by ministry, 2016-17

Each ministry’s departments, agencies, Crown corporations and, for Parliament, its offices, with what each spent net of the revenues it kept (Public Accounts, Volume II). Open a ministry to see its organizations.

These add up to $246B of net expenditure, not the $311B of expenses above. The financial statements are on an accrual basis and consolidate spending that isn’t part of any ministry’s net expenditure; net expenditure is what organizations spent, less the revenues they kept. The methodology explains the difference.

Sources

Each organization is under the ministry it was under that year, and each ministry has the name it was published under that year; see the methodology.