With the Conservative government’s first majority budget coming up on Thursday, Global News decided to take a closer look at how Ottawa currently spends your tax dollars.
The biggest ticket item? Old Age Security payments.
Using Budgetary Expenditures data from the last Main Estimates document and Statements of Revenues from the Public Accounts of Canada, Global News created a graphic showing how Ottawa makes and spends its money.
The Department of Finance accounts for over 37 per cent of government spending. However, this is mostly because transfers to provinces are included under its spending. Interest payments also account for a large portion of Finance spending.
Old Age Security payments are the single largest government expenditure – about $30.6 billion, or 13.3 per cent of all federal expenses. Canada Pension Plan and Employment Insurance payments are much smaller, around $3.2 billion.
- Posters promoting ‘Steal From Loblaws Day’ are circulating. How did we get here?
- Video shows Ontario police sharing Trudeau’s location with protester, investigation launched
- Canadian food banks are on the brink: ‘This is not a sustainable situation’
- Solar eclipse eye damage: More than 160 cases reported in Ontario, Quebec
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, often rumoured to be facing possible cuts, is a comparatively small item in the government’s total spending, at only about $1.1 billion or 0.5 per cent of government spending.
The Main Estimates outline the federal departments’ planned spending for the next year, 2012-13, and it is presented to Parliament along with supply bills to be approved – setting departmental budgets for the next year. When the budget is released on March 29, 2012, it will essentially be making changes to the expenditures already approved in the Main Estimates.
The Public Accounts of Canada, used to create the “Revenue Sources” pie chart, are the government’s consolidated financial statements and show how funds were actually spent. Because the latest volume available is from 2010-11, these figures were used only for the one chart.
It is important to not make direct comparisons between the charts derived from the Estimates and that derived from the Public Accounts as they present different information and use different accounting practices.
Also some programs, in particular the Child Tax Benefit, do not appear in the Main Estimates, and as such are not reflected in the graphic.
Comments