Category
Government
Spending, transfers, debt, public-service employment, and the lobbying and donation flows that shape policy. Where federal and provincial money goes and who decides.
Ottawa cut 22,490 public servants. Outside spending rose 10% after inflation.
The public service shrank 6.1% in two years while spending on outside services rose 10% after inflation. The growth sits at National Defence and the Coast Guard it absorbed. Across the rest of government, the outside bill fell 1% after inflation.
Housing is the one budget item Liberal, Conservative and NDP voters agree on
Before the federal budget, a look at what Liberal, Conservative and NDP voters said they wanted more money spent on. Housing is the only item with a majority in all three camps.
U.S. voters rejected data centres 40 times out of 41. Is Canada next?
American voters sided against data centres in nearly every local ballot on Nov. 3. Most Canadians want limits too, whichever party they back. But the question rarely reaches a ballot here, so the fight runs through city halls, regulators and courts.
Americans rate Canada and Australia warmest among G20 countries
Asked to rate 18 G20 countries from 0 to 100, Americans gave Canada 67, tied with Australia for warmest. That is down from 71 in 2018. Pew finds the decline is concentrated among Republicans, especially those 50 and older.
Saskatchewan has nearly 20 times as many local politicians per person as Ontario.
Saskatchewan has one mayor or councillor for every 258 residents. Ontario has one for every 5,093. The councils are about the same size; Saskatchewan just has far more of them.
PBO: Canada's High-Speed Rail Could Cost Up to 113 Billion Dollars. An Old Estimate Was a Third of That.
Canada's Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates the Toronto to Québec City high-speed rail line could cost about 75 billion dollars, with an upper estimate of 113 billion for the baseline route. A 2011 study, for a different route and design, came to 37 billion in today's dollars.
Canada's foreign aid by country: Ukraine got 14 times more than anyone else, almost all of it as loans
Canada sent aid to 135 countries in 2024, but Ukraine took 1.83 billion US dollars, more than the next 34 recipients combined. Strip out loans and Ukraine drops to sixth, behind Haiti, Ethiopia, Mali, the West Bank and Gaza, and Bangladesh. Less than half of all Canadian aid can be traced to a single country at all.
Federal public service fell by 12,683 in Carney's first full fiscal year
That's 54% larger in magnitude than the combined increase during Martin, Harper and Trudeau's first full fiscal years.
Canadians reprice America every time the White House changes hands
The three largest shifts Pew has recorded in Canadian opinion of the United States in 24 years are not wars or trade fights. They are the three most recent changes of president.
Canadians rate China above the U.S. again, and by the widest margin yet
Pew finds 44% of Canadians view China favourably against 33% for the United States, the lowest U.S. reading in Canada since 2002. It is the second time Canadians have rated China the higher of the two, after a narrower crossover in 2017 and 2018.
One shipment on the record in six years: Canada's forced-labour import ban now carries a U.S. tariff
The United States has stopped 42,807 shipment lines under its forced-labour import ban. Canada, bound by the same CUSMA obligation, has one shipment on its public record, later released. Washington has charged a 10% tariff over it since July 24. Ottawa's fix has been consulted on but is not law.
Canada spent 14 billion Canadian dollars on foreign aid in 2025: here's where it actually went
While the United States slashed foreign aid by 57 percent and the rich-country average fell by nearly a quarter, Canada trimmed just over 2 percent. Yet a look at where the money went shows more than half of it now goes to Ukraine or is spent inside Canada on refugees, leaving the smallest share for the developing world in years.
The outsized power of the supply lobby
Tariff-protected dairy, poultry and eggs earn about 16% of Canadian farm revenue. Measured against that revenue, they lobby Ottawa harder than any other part of agriculture, and the pace climbed ahead of the July 2026 CUSMA review.
Carney talks like an economist. Trudeau talked like an advocate.
Two Liberal prime ministers, the same job, sharply different vocabularies. We counted every word in their House of Commons speeches. Mark Carney governs in the language of budgets and the economy; Justin Trudeau spoke in the language of care and climate. It shows in the words each man reaches for most.
A 4.2 billion dollar fix for a problem that's two-thirds not the system
Canada is rushing a new payroll system in to replace Phoenix. But its own Auditor General told a committee that most of the remaining pay errors aren't the software's fault at all — which raises an awkward question about what the 4.2 billion dollars is actually buying.
Canada's military recruitment hit a 30-year high. The surge was officers, and women officer intake nearly doubled.
466 women enrolled as Canadian Armed Forces officers in fiscal year 2025/26 — a 94 percent year-over-year jump and the largest single-year shift for any subgroup in 28 years of DND open data. The composition of the 2025 cohort doesn't match the working-class enlistment story most coverage told.
Coming next
Three federal-government charts in active development.
- Top 20 federal contractors, 2004–2024. Cumulative contract value by vendor across 1.26 million federal contracts. Drawing from open.canada.ca proactive disclosure.
- Federal political donations by party, year-by-year. Every recorded contribution to federal parties and candidates, 2004–2023, from Elections Canada open data.
- Most-lobbied departments and offices. 360,000 lobbying communications by department and DPOH, from the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying.
All three datasets are loaded and indexed. The longform pieces will land alongside the chart in the same publication week. To be notified when these ship, subscribe to the weekly.