Report card · Fall 2026
What was actually spent
Did your government spend what it said it would? Did its auditor sign off? How quickly did it tell you? Pick your government for the short version in plain language, then dig into every figure if you want to.
The three marks on each card are spending against budget, the audit opinion and timeliness, in that order: ✓ met · ◐ partly met · ✗ not met.
Across Canada
How the 13 governments did
Spending against budget
Did total spending stay close to the budget the government set for itself?
✓ 6 met ◐ 4 partly ✗ 3 not met
Audit opinion
Did the independent auditor sign off on the financial statements without reservation?
✓ 12 met ◐ 1 partly ✗ 0 not met
Timeliness
How soon after the year ended did the public get the audited results?
✓ 7 met ◐ 4 partly ✗ 2 not met
The scorecard
Fourteen governments, three questions
No overall grade: each rating stands on one figure you can check. Choose a government to see every number we extracted from its audited statements, with the page it came from.
Prince Edward Island is not rated. We could not obtain its audited 2025-26 Public Accounts: the province's website blocks the automated tools we use to collect documents. P.E.I. will be added once we have retrieved and checked them. Nunavut is rated on 2024-25, its latest audited year.
Cities and regions
Peel Region, its cities, and Toronto
Our first look at local government covers the 2025 audited statements of the Region of Peel, Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, plus Toronto. Residents of Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon pay for both their city and Peel Region. Councils approve their budgets on a different accounting basis from the audited statements, so we show spending against the budget figure in the statements but don't rate it. The audit opinion and timeliness are rated as for the provinces.
The two marks on each card are the audit opinion and timeliness: ✓ met · ◐ partly met · ✗ not met.
How we rate
We grade stewardship, not policy
Whether a government should run a deficit, cut taxes or spend more on health is a political choice, and we don't grade it. We ask only whether it did what it said, followed the rules, and told the public on time. The thresholds are the same for every government.
Spending against budget
Did total spending stay close to the budget the government set for itself?
- Met: Spent no more than 2% over budget (or under budget)
- Partly met: More than 2% and up to 5% over budget
- Not met: More than 5% over budget
Audit opinion
Did the independent auditor sign off on the financial statements without reservation?
- Met: Unmodified (“clean”) opinion
- Partly met: Qualified opinion: the reason is stated
- Not met: Adverse opinion, or the auditor could not give one
Timeliness
How soon after the year ended did the public get the audited results?
- Met: Within 180 days
- Partly met: 181 to 270 days
- Not met: More than 270 days, or a deadline set in law was missed
Where the numbers come from
Every figure comes from the government's own audited financial statements (its public accounts), which an independent auditor has examined. The budget we compare against is the budget column printed in those same audited statements, so actual and budget are on the same basis. For each government we downloaded the official document, kept a copy, and extracted the figures, with the help of AI tools, into a worksheet that records the page each one came from. A script then checked every figure against the text of that page. (One page in the Northwest Territories' statements has no text layer, and two figures in Brampton's statements are split across the text; we checked those by reading the page image.) Brampton's reserves section also uses the City's budget books and reports to Council, which we kept and checked the same way, each linked from that page.
We extracted the figures from the governments' PDF documents. We show the extracted numbers, not the PDFs, and link to each official document so you can check them yourself.
What this report card is not
It is not an audit. We did not examine any government's books; independent auditors did that, and we report what their audited statements show. A rating of “not met” is not an accusation of wrongdoing. Spending can run over budget for good reasons, such as a disaster or a new program the legislature approved during the year. Where the documents give a reason, we say so.
Not yet rated
We have not yet rated spending within what each legislature approved, or the quality of each government's disclosure. Both need a fixed checklist applied the same way to everyone, and they will be added in a later report card.
Right of reply and corrections
Any government rated here can respond. We will publish its response in full, alongside its section. If you find an error, tell us through the contact form on our About page. We will correct it and note the correction on this page; we will never change a figure silently.
Figures collected and checked November 6, 2026. Download every extracted figure with its source document and page: CSV · JSON.
Help us cover every government
This first report card covers the federal government, provinces and territories, Peel Region and its cities, and Toronto. Next come Crown corporations and more of Canada's cities. We accept no government funding, ever.