Methodology

Source

Everything on this site comes from one government dataset: Proactive Disclosure – Grants and Contributions on open.canada.ca, published by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Federal departments and agencies add their grant and contribution agreements to it every quarter. This build uses the full CSV file of 2026-10-09 (1,327,352 rows). Field meanings follow the dataset's data dictionary.

Each agreement links to its record on the government's search portal ("Government record", which shows the record's latest amendment) and to an open.canada.ca API query that returns exactly that record's rows ("data"). Nothing is added from other sources except the riding populations and the links to foreignaid.publicly.ca described below. Names, titles and descriptions are quoted as recorded.

Counting each agreement once

The dataset has one row per agreement and per amendment, and some departments file amendments and re-filings under new reference numbers. Adding up every row would count the same money several times: the 1,327,352 rows add up to $1092.2B, while the agreements they describe total $749.2B. Three steps:

1. Rows to records: the latest amendment of each reference number

A record is one organization's reference number. The data dictionary says the value field "should report on the total grant or contribution value, and not the change in agreement value", so only the row with the highest amendment number counts. The organization is part of the key because 26,496 reference numbers are used by more than one organization for different agreements. Result: 1,195,266 records, $956.8B.

2. Records to agreements: the same agreement number and recipient

Many departments file an amendment, or re-file an agreement in a later quarter, under a new reference number that repeats the agreement number. Within one organization, records with the same agreement number and the same recipient (compared without capital letters, accents or punctuation) are one agreement. Agreement numbers that are blank, a placeholder such as "N/A", or shared by more than 5 recipients (program codes such as NSERC's "RGPIN") do not join records: each such record stays its own agreement. Result: 981,410 agreements, of which 38,035 combine several records.

3. The agreement's value

For most organizations the value is the latest record's value (highest amendment number, then latest amendment date, then latest start date), as the data dictionary requires. 6 organizations instead publish each amendment's or top-up's own amount as a separate record. For them the records are added up, except that a record within 10% of the running total is taken as a restatement of the total and replaces it (2,244 records). The organizations were identified from the data: amended totals are usually close to the record before them, separate amounts are not. An organization adds amounts when fewer than 20% of its later records are within 25% of the record before, over at least 100 later records. Every refresh recomputes this and asks for a person's review if the result changes.

Two examples from the data

Health Canada, agreement number 1819-HQ-000119 with Government of Ontario - Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care (1819-HQ-000119). 7 records add up to $13,111,443,741 if counted naively; this site counts $2,200,446,413 (latest record).

Indigenous Services Canada, agreement number 2324-HQ-000010 with First Nations Health Authority (2324-HQ-000010). 4 records add up to $16,417,973,717 if counted naively; this site counts $8,205,622,618 (running total).

Checks

No official total of agreement values exists to compare with, so the checks are of two kinds.

Exact checks, every refresh. The downloaded file must have exactly as many rows as the open.canada.ca API reports for the dataset (1,327,352 in this build). Random records are fetched again from the API and must match the value this site uses. Random agreements' rows are re-read from the downloaded file. The sum of agreement values must equal the sum of what each record adds.

Context: the Public Accounts of Canada. The Public Accounts report what each department spent on transfer payments each year. Spending in a year and the value of agreements signed that year are different things (agreements often run several years; statutory and major transfers such as Old Age Security or the Canada Health Transfer are not proactively disclosed; small grants need not be listed individually), so the two are compared over the same years, 2018-19 to 2024-25, and the ratio is shown, not judged. For the organizations whose records are added up, the last column shows what the ratio would be if only each agreement's latest record counted.

Definitions

• Value: the agreement value in Canadian dollars as recorded, as amended (step 3). It is a commitment over the agreement's whole term, not a payment. Negative values are recorded reductions and are kept.
• Fiscal year: April to March, of the agreement's start date. $4.9M in agreements with no usable start date (missing, or before 2000 or after 2031) count in totals but in no year.
• Department: the organization that published the record, with its most recent name in the data.
• Program: the program name as recorded, within one department. Spelling variants are separate programs.
• Recipient: the legal name as recorded, grouped when names differ only by capital letters, accents, punctuation or a French version after "|". Different names for the same organization are not merged. 109,013 names that are recorded as individuals or sole proprietorships, or written as "Surname, Given name", are not ranked and get no page, although their agreements stay searchable as published. Aggregate entries such as "batch report" or "Payment made to individual" stand for many payments and are not ranked either. Both count in every total.
• Agreement type and recipient type: the codes in the record (grant, contribution, other transfer payment; the dictionary's eight recipient types). Records with no type are shown as "not recorded".
• Outside Canada: the recipient's country in the record is not Canada. That is where the recipient is, not necessarily where the money is spent. 2,859 agreements link to foreignaid.publicly.ca: to its page about the agreement when that page cites the same reference number, or to the Global Affairs project with the same project number.
• Original value and increase: the original value is the agreement's amendment 0 record; agreements whose amendment 0 is not in the data have no original value. Increases are not computed for the organizations whose records are added up, because their first record is one amount among several.

Ridings

259,289 rows name a riding that was matched to an official list; 1,066,425 rows name none and 1,638 could not be matched. Matching uses the name to tell the 2013 and 2023 maps apart, and the agreement's start date when both maps have the same district. Amounts per resident use the 2021 census populations published by Elections Canada (2013 map) and in the 2023 Representation Orders (Canada Gazette). See Ridings. Riding totals say nothing about who represents a riding.

Limits

• The dataset is what departments chose to file. Disclosure rules changed over time: early years hold far fewer records, and the most recent quarters are still being filed.
• Some departments enter different things in the same field (for example an agreement number in the title). Records are shown as filed.
• Step 2 can join two genuinely separate agreements that share an agreement number and recipient, and step 3 can read an increase that happens to be within 10% of the running total as a restatement. Every agreement lists the records it combines, each linked to the government, so any case can be checked.

Updates and corrections

The data is checked for changes every month: departments file quarterly and late filings arrive at any time. Report a mistake on the corrections page; every correction is logged there. This build: 2026-10-10.