Operational asset, or completion of study, plan or asset-management work.
Big Question
Public financeStandingBlocked
Is Canada delivering the infrastructure it funds?
Public infrastructure turns financial commitments into transport, water, power and other services. Following delivery means separating approvals, reported milestones and the wider capital base, while making the limits of old or incomplete project reports visible.
Public infrastructure turns financial commitments into transport, water, power and other services. Following delivery means separating approvals, reported milestones and the wider capital base, while making the limits of old or incomplete project reports visible.
Infrastructure Delivery · assessed 2026-09-09
From a funding commitment to a working asset.
Canada’s infrastructure record has several layers: funded projects, the dates recipients report, and the wider capital base. Each reveals something useful about delivery. They cover different projects, years and owners.
Entries with a reported end16,967Of 20,423 HICC project entries; includes studies and plans
Public infrastructure investment$106.6B2025 · nominal Canadian dollars · all public industries
Latest reported project end2025-03-27The captured project file is older than the capital estimates
This is not a live construction dashboard. The September 9 capture is identical to July 25. Approved contributions are not cash spending; eligible costs are not final costs. A reported end can mean a completed study or plan, as well as an operational asset.
Project approvals: 2002–2025 · capital and asset-life estimates: 1981–2025
A start is recorded. Completion may be pending or unreported.
The file does not establish construction or work status.
These categories account for all 20,423 distinct project identifiers in the captured file. 83.08% carry an end date. That is a share of funding entries across many approval years, not the share of Canada’s needed infrastructure delivered.
Approved federal contributions$70.09BCommitments in this file; not disbursements
Estimated eligible costs$184.22BGenerally not updated over the life of each project
Contributions on ended entries$30.17BApproved funding attached to entries with an end date; not cash paid
Large commitments tell us where public funding is directed. They cannot establish final construction cost, money already spent, cost overruns, or whether an asset supplies enough service for its community.
Approval-year cohorts in the same captured file
| Approval year | Entries | Reported end | Start, no end | Neither date | Approved federal ($B) | End-date share (%) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0.056 | 100.00 |
| 2003 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0.433 | 100.00 |
| 2004 | 17 | 17 | 0 | 0 | 1.393 | 100.00 |
| 2005 | 336 | 335 | 1 | 0 | 1.304 | 99.70 |
| 2006 | 532 | 530 | 1 | 1 | 1.004 | 99.62 |
| 2007 | 874 | 874 | 0 | 0 | 0.832 | 100.00 |
| 2008 | 247 | 247 | 0 | 0 | 2.077 | 100.00 |
| 2009 | 4,211 | 4,203 | 6 | 2 | 5.077 | 99.81 |
| 2010 | 1,732 | 1,731 | 1 | 0 | 3.258 | 99.94 |
| 2011 | 219 | 216 | 3 | 0 | 0.950 | 98.63 |
| 2012 | 26 | 25 | 1 | 0 | 0.715 | 96.15 |
| 2013 | 42 | 38 | 3 | 1 | 0.569 | 90.48 |
| 2014 | 156 | 155 | 1 | 0 | 0.234 | 99.36 |
| 2015 | 530 | 520 | 10 | 0 | 0.966 | 98.11 |
| 2016 | 1,142 | 1,094 | 43 | 5 | 4.749 | 95.80 |
| 2017 | 2,487 | 2,401 | 58 | 28 | 7.560 | 96.54 |
| 2018 | 813 | 743 | 54 | 16 | 6.101 | 91.39 |
| 2019 | 597 | 392 | 165 | 40 | 8.074 | 65.66 |
| 2020 | 1,257 | 870 | 262 | 125 | 2.216 | 69.21 |
| 2021 | 2,685 | 1,942 | 512 | 231 | 9.232 | 72.33 |
| 2022 | 1,473 | 415 | 460 | 598 | 5.452 | 28.17 |
| 2023 | 827 | 209 | 223 | 395 | 4.078 | 25.27 |
| 2024 | 129 | 3 | 32 | 94 | 3.161 | 2.33 |
| 2025 | 84 | 0 | 2 | 82 | 0.596 | 0.00 |
Recent approval cohorts have had less time to report completion. Cohorts are not annual completion counts, and comparing their end-date shares does not isolate a change in delivery speed.
Source: Housing, Infrastructure and Communities Canada — Funding contribution project list with forecast dates. Recipient-reported contribution projects held by HICC. This is not a census of all Canadian infrastructure.
Where institutions disagree
No registered institutional conflict is a direct member of this Big Question — zero is shown, not hidden.
What cannot yet be known
Evidence gap
Is Canada delivering the infrastructure it funds?
What is missing: The project file carries approved contributions, estimated eligible costs and retained forecast dates, but lacks a dated original promise and revision chain, actual disbursements, final costs and a reporting date for every entry. It also mixes assets with studies and plans.
Consequence: Read project status, original promises, spending and service capacity as separate checks. The held record supports the first incompletely and supplies broader capital context; it cannot turn the remaining checks into a single delivery score.
What would close it: A public, stable-identifier record joining original approvals, every dated revision, reported construction and operational milestones, actual spending, final costs and compatible service-capacity measures.
What would change the record
- A public, stable-identifier record joining original approvals, every dated revision, reported construction and operational milestones, actual spending, final costs and compatible service-capacity measures.
- Statistics Canada publishes infrastructure accounts through 2025 — 2026-06-12.
This Big Question organizes the evidence: the commitments, the disagreements, the projections, and the gaps — and it states plainly where the evidence cannot yet reach. When Countability has a current answer, it appears separately on this page with its date, basis, limits, Brief and Receipt. The question stays open; the evidence keeps moving.
Related on this site
- Which public promises can actually be checked? →
- Is Canada rebuilding the capital behind each worker? →
This page holds the current public record for this question. For a more specific question, see Work with Countability.
Work with Countability