The brutal truth of public finances is, governments don't really have much wiggle room. Much of the spending is baked into the plan long before any politicians even get elected. In general terms, about a quarter of any budget goes to transfers to individuals those elderly benefits we started with, but also Employment Insurance and Children's Benefits. Crown corporations, public debt charges and national defence combine for another 18 per cent.
That's nearly 70 per cent of a budget all but spent before you even get to your ideas around jobs, innovation, tax cuts or whatever buzzwords dominate that year's leadup to the budget. Governments inevitably focus the budget on that discretionary chunk of spending.
But can we have a proper, informed debate on public spending when all those sunk costs are buried in the back of the book and left out of most conversations? Yalnizyan says the conversation is too often focused on how much we're paying in taxes and not enough on what we're buying with those tax dollars. As if to drive the point home, the budget makes it abundantly clear where its revenues come from — the vast majority comes from you and your personal income taxes.
Yalnizyan says this only serves to highlight the extent to which we don't measure benefits nearly as well as we measure and explain costs. This includes assistance for learning, skills training and social housing. It also includes funding for programs for First Nation and Aboriginal people as well as transfers from the CRA to qualifying individuals and corporations through credits and deductions that support farmers, researchers, the arts and other worthy causes.
Search for:. Share Shares British Columbia reported the highest growth in social protection spending for the second year in a row, up The increase in social protection spending was mainly attributable to housing and social development as well as children and family development programs.
Total provincial, territorial and local government spending on economic affairs rose 6. For the second consecutive year, the increase in Ontario was mainly due to the Electricity Price Mitigation program. Alberta's increase was mainly due to expenses from the province's crude-by-rail program. Alberta and British Columbia experienced divergent wildfire seasons in , and wildfires had a significant impact on their agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting expenses.
According to media reports, in , wildfires burned more land in Alberta than any year in the past four decades. Conversely, British Columbia's spending fell by over one-fifth -2 2. The wildfire season in British Columbia was the second-least-active since The Canadian federal, provincial, territorial and local governments took unprecedented economic measures to help limit the spread of the virus. Although the COVID -1 9 pandemic impacted government expenditures at the end of this period, the impacts being felt in the current fiscal year, ending March 31, reference year , will be much more significant.
This information provides an important picture of how governments spend money, and the role governments play in delivering services. Future data improvements may include the functionalization of capital expenditures and the consumption of fixed capital. The consolidated provincial, territorial and local government PTLG estimates are often used for provincial and territorial comparisons since there can be different delineations of responsibilities between levels of government in various jurisdictions.
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