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About and methodology

How Where It Goes works

Where It Goes is an independent, non-partisan website that shows how the Government of Canada spends money: by theme, per tax filer, by province and over time. It is not affiliated with the Government of Canada or any political party, and it takes no position on spending or tax policy.

Data last updated · data version 55725d92

Where the figures come from

Every figure is published by the Government of Canada or Statistics Canada and downloaded by script. Nothing is typed in by hand, estimated or filled in where a source publishes no figure. The main sources are the federal budget's fiscal tables, the audited Public Accounts of Canada, the Departmental Results Reports published through GC InfoBase, and Statistics Canada tables for population, tax filers, prices and GDP.

Accounting bases

Government spending can be measured in more than one way. The site labels the basis of every chart and never mixes two bases in one chart.

Budget plan (accrual)
The budget's fiscal tables: revenue, expenses, the deficit and debt. The latest completed year (2024–25) is reported as actual and matched to the Public Accounts; later years are projections and are marked “proj.” Used for the headline figures, the budget-tables view, the revenue-to-spending flow and the cost-per-taxpayer section.
Themes: program spending plus two benefits
Actual spending by program from the Departmental Results Reports, reconciled to Public Accounts expenditures for every organization and year. Employment Insurance benefits and the Canada Child Benefit are not appropriated, so they are absent from that source; they are added to the themes from the Public Accounts consolidated statement (accrual), and labelled wherever they appear. Government payments into the Employment Insurance Operating Account are listed on the Employment Insurance page but not added, because the benefits they fund are already counted. Other items that are not appropriated are not in any theme, so the themes total is lower than the budget's total expenses.
Transfer payments (Public Accounts)
Grants and contributions by program, with the largest recipients. They overlap with program spending, so the two lists are never added together.
Authorities used by department (Public Accounts)
Used for the department view only.
Public Accounts statement
The audited consolidated statement of revenues and expenses, used for the ten-year trends.

How figures are calculated

  • Fiscal years run from April 1 to March 31. “2024–25” is April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025.
  • Per tax filer = spending ÷ the number of people who filed an income tax return (Statistics Canada table 11-10-0047). The latest published count at or before the start of the fiscal year is used and never projected. For 2024–25 that is 29,965,100 filers (2023); the page says so when the count is older than the spending year.
  • Per person = spending ÷ the July 1 population of the year the fiscal year starts (Statistics Canada table 17-10-0005). For 2024–25: 41,162,593 (July 1, 2024).
  • An allocation of cost, not a tax bill. Federal spending is funded by all revenue (income tax, GST, corporate tax, EI premiums and others) and by borrowing, so a per-head figure is a way to compare amounts, not what any one person pays.
  • Of every $100 splits total spending by group and rounds so the parts add to exactly $100 (largest remainder).
  • Provincial figures are only the amounts the Public Accounts allocate to a province or territory. Nothing is allocated by population. Per person divides by that province's July 1 population.
  • Real (inflation-adjusted) values use the annual average Consumer Price Index for the calendar year in which each fiscal year starts. Share of GDP divides by nominal GDP for the same calendar year. Both are approximations because fiscal and calendar years differ.
  • Revenue to spending: the budget does not trace individual dollars, so each revenue source is shown spread across spending lines in proportion to their size.
  • Themes group programs by what the money is for, in any department, using a published rule set. Indigenous programs are those whose recipients or purpose are specifically Indigenous.

How the data is checked

Before the site is built, automated checks must pass: parts add up to stated totals; budget figures for completed years match the audited Public Accounts within rounding; provincial amounts add up to the national line; program spending matches Public Accounts expenditures for every organization within $1,000; and every source program is assigned to exactly one theme. If a check fails, nothing is published. Each dataset records its source address, retrieval time and a checksum of the file it came from.

Update schedule

The data is refreshed when the government publishes a new federal budget, an economic and fiscal update, or the Public Accounts (usually in the fall). Statistics Canada denominators are refreshed at the same time. The “last updated” date above and in the footer is the most recent retrieval of any source.

Download the data

The tables behind the charts, as CSV files, built from the same data as the pages. Licensed under the Open Government Licence - Canada and the Statistics Canada Open Licence; please credit the original sources.

  • themes.csv · Federal spending by theme and fiscal year · Program spending (Departmental Results Reports, reconciled to Public Accounts) plus Canada Child Benefit and EI benefits from the Public Accounts statement (CAD)
  • programs.csv · Federal program spending and benefits by program and fiscal year · Departmental Results Reports actual spending reconciled to Public Accounts, plus Canada Child Benefit and EI benefits from the Public Accounts statement (CAD); column added_to_theme says whether a row counts in its theme total
  • budget-lines.csv · Federal budget fiscal table lines by fiscal year · Budget plan, accrual (CAD billions); 2024-25 actual, later years projected
  • provincial-transfers.csv · Major federal transfers by province and territory · Public Accounts actuals (CAD millions)
  • trends.csv · Ten years of federal spending lines · Public Accounts actuals (CAD billions, nominal)

Privacy

  • The site sets no cookies and has no accounts, forms or advertising.
  • Visits are counted with Vercel Web Analytics, which records aggregated page views (page, referrer, country and region, browser, operating system, device type) without cookies.
  • The optional “tax you paid” figure in the cost-per-taxpayer section is calculated in your browser and never sent anywhere.
  • Your light or dark theme choice is stored in your browser's local storage.

Corrections

If a figure looks wrong, check it against the linked source first: every chart names its source table and retrieval date. Errors are corrected at the source data level, never by editing a single figure, and every correction passes the same checks before it is published.

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