The federal budgetary balance for fiscal 2025-26, across four Finance Canada projection vintages, before the audited Public Accounts settle it

Canada's federal budgetary balance (surplus/deficit) for fiscal year 2025-26, as the Department of Finance Canada's own summary fiscal outlook stated it in four successive publications -- Budget 2024, the 2024 Fall Economic Statement, Budget 2025, and the Spring Economic Update 2026 -- each read from that publication's own headline fiscal table. No audited outcome exists yet: the Public Accounts of Canada for 2025-26 will settle this fiscal year in autumn 2026, and this entry pins the projection lineage on the record before that settlement, adjudicating none of it.

A Resolution record follows one institution's figures for a defined quantity. It may contain projections, estimates or measured observations. Each version held here keeps its publication date and source, so a newer figure does not erase the earlier one. What is a Resolution record? →

Awaiting settlement. This record contains forward-looking positions. No audited or final outcome has yet settled the projections; any interim estimate is identified below. Conditional scenarios describe pathways under stated assumptions and are not predictions.

The lineage

Vintage	Issuer	Published	Position	Source
Budget 2024	Finance Canada	2024-04-16	superseded	Source → · accessed 2026-07-10
FES 2024	Finance Canada	2024-12-16	superseded	Source → · accessed 2026-07-10
Budget 2025	Finance Canada	2025-11-04	superseded	Source → · accessed 2026-07-10
SEU 2026	Finance Canada	2026-04-28	superseded	Source → · accessed 2026-07-10
Fiscal Monitor, March 2026	Department of Finance Canada	2026-06-15	current	Source → · accessed 2026-07-20

Vintage	Period	Value	Role	Assurance	Basis
Budget 2024	Fiscal year 2025-26	-38.9 billions of Canadian dollars	projection	unaudited	as first published
FES 2024	Fiscal year 2025-26	-42.2 billions of Canadian dollars	projection	unaudited	as first published
Budget 2025	Fiscal year 2025-26	-78.3 billions of Canadian dollars	projection	unaudited	as first published
SEU 2026	Fiscal year 2025-26	-66.9 billions of Canadian dollars	projection	unaudited	as first published
Fiscal Monitor, March 2026	Fiscal year 2025-26	-55.3 billions of Canadian dollars	preliminary observation	unaudited	as first published

Movement between vintages

This record shows what an institution published and how its figures compare across versions or with later outcomes. It does not rank institutions or grade their forecasting ability.

Comparison	Compared vintages	Movement	Basis
Fiscal 2025-26: Budget 2024 projection vs. FES 2024 projection	Budget 2024 (projection -38.9 billions of Canadian dollars) vs. FES 2024 (projection -42.2 billions of Canadian dollars)	-3.3 billions of Canadian dollars	same issuer
Fiscal 2025-26: FES 2024 projection vs. Budget 2025 projection	FES 2024 (projection -42.2 billions of Canadian dollars) vs. Budget 2025 (projection -78.3 billions of Canadian dollars)	-36.1 billions of Canadian dollars	same issuer
Fiscal 2025-26: Budget 2025 projection vs. SEU 2026 projection	Budget 2025 (projection -78.3 billions of Canadian dollars) vs. SEU 2026 (projection -66.9 billions of Canadian dollars)	+11.4 billions of Canadian dollars	same issuer
Fiscal 2025-26: first projection (Budget 2024) vs. latest captured projection (SEU 2026)	Budget 2024 (projection -38.9 billions of Canadian dollars) vs. SEU 2026 (projection -66.9 billions of Canadian dollars)	-28.0 billions of Canadian dollars	same issuer
Fiscal 2025-26: SEU 2026 projection vs. Fiscal Monitor unaudited year-end observation	SEU 2026 (projection -66.9 billions of Canadian dollars) vs. Fiscal Monitor, March 2026 (preliminary observation -55.3 billions of Canadian dollars)	+11.6 billions of Canadian dollars	same issuer

Evidence qualifications (10)

No audited outcome exists yet. This entry is a pinned projection lineage, not a projection-vs-outturn resolution: every value is one of Finance Canada's own successive projections for fiscal 2025-26, and none is an observed or audited result. The Public Accounts of Canada for 2025-26 (expected autumn 2026, issued by the Receiver General) will settle this fiscal year; when it does, a later reading records the audited outcome and the projection-vs-outturn resolution steps -- nothing here is edited in place. The entry is registered now so the four first-published projections are on the record, hash-pinned, before the outcome that would otherwise reframe them exists.
Every value is restated exactly as Finance Canada first published it and none has been attested by an independent auditor. These two provenance axes are carried on every value so that, when the audited Public Accounts outcome is added, its own assurance and its own basis are stated on the same two axes and never silently conflated with these projections.
This entry compares Finance Canada against itself: the same headline quantity, the same fiscal year, four successive projection vintages of the same summary fiscal outlook. It is a projection-drift record, not a disagreement between institutions -- the pace and direction at which one issuer's own projection for a single year moved as it re-forecast. No direction of movement is described as more or less sound; the signed difference in billions is the disclosed comparison.
The percentage difference is deliberately not computed on any step. The base quantity is a projected budgetary balance -- a negative number (a deficit) in each vintage -- so a percentage change would divide by a negative deficit and invert the intuitive sign (a deeper deficit reading as a 'smaller' percentage move, or vice versa), producing a figure that is neither stable nor meaningful. The absolute movement in billions of dollars is the honest comparison, and it is the only one published.
This example was not chosen for a dramatic swing. The four-vintage path for fiscal 2025-26 (-38.9 -> -42.2 -> -78.3 -> -66.9) is shown in full, including the step where the projected deficit narrowed (Budget 2025 to SEU 2026, +11.4), rather than selected for or against any direction. The headline cumulative movement (first to latest, -28.0) is stated alongside the intermediate steps, not in place of them.
Each value is read from its own publication's headline fiscal table, not from a later document's comparison row -- so Budget 2024's -38.9 is Budget 2024's own 'Budgetary balance' line, not the '-38.9' that the 2024 Fall Economic Statement independently reprints beside its own path (the two agree, which is a cross-instrument corroboration, not the source used).
This entry is filed under the fiscal domain, the closest existing one; it concerns the aggregate federal budgetary balance, not a specific fiscal-anchor compliance measure, and no new domain is created to hold it. Its reading frame is the platform's standing forecast-record question -- a projection lineage held open for the outcome that will one day answer it for this year.
Fiscal Position and Settlement flagship, 2026-07-20: extended additively (design S7 item 7a) with the Fiscal Monitor's own unaudited year-end observation of the same fiscal year (recorded as a preliminary observation) and one new comparison against the final pre-settlement projection. Nothing in the four original publications, values, or resolution steps above was edited. This entry is now the spine of the Fiscal Position and Settlement Brief; it remains a member of the other public questions it already served, unchanged. The audited Public Accounts of Canada 2026 outcome, when tabled, will be appended the same way -- a new publication, a new audited outcome value, and new resolution steps comparing it against every vintage above and against this Fiscal Monitor observation -- never in place of what is here now.
Extended 2026-08-24 with a caveat citing the Spring Economic Update 2026's Annex 1 (a distinct, narrative page from the numeric-data-table publication listed above, which carries the numeric budgetary-balance data table this Resolution's values pin; sha256 e897f8f643f11de99159c33886784b70ae330e12d7e308993532c0a87a05767e, archived and hash-pinned per this record's own archive-at-citation method) -- cited here as evidence for this caveat, not registered as a publication of this Resolution's own value lineage, because it restates no numeric budgetary-balance figure and is not a further vintage of the quantity this entry's five publications and values pin. Quoted verbatim from the page's own text: 'The economic forecast reported here is based on a survey conducted in March 2026' and 'In the March survey, private sector forecasters incorporated the most recent tariff measures, trade policy developments, and their expectations regarding potential tariff de-escalation. Economists generally expected current U.S. tariffs on trading partners, including Canada, to remain in place over the forecast horizon, with no return to broadly open, low-tariff global trade.' The same Annex states, on its fiscal-projections page and also quoted verbatim: 'The fiscal outlook presented in the Spring Economic Update is based on the economic projections from the March 2026 survey of private sector forecasters' -- the sentence that connects the economic survey basis above to the fiscal projections this Resolution's values pin. The operative United States tariff schedule applied to Canadian goods changed materially after that survey closed: three new Section 338 proclamations state an effective date of August 22, 2026, imposing an additional 50 percent ad valorem duty on certain products of Canada set forth in each proclamation's own Annex II, on a discrimination predicate specific to each proclamation, pinned in full in this record's companion 2026 tariff-actions Resolution -- a different shape of action from anything the March 2026 survey could have incorporated. Separately, and not the schedule change above: the same Annex 1 page also states, of Canada's OWN retaliatory countermeasures (a different, Canadian instrument): 'The revenue projections assume these countermeasures will remain in place through 2026-27' and 'The continued application of the countermeasures is subject to outcomes of discussions with the United States to resolve U.S. tariffs applied on Canadian exports of steel, aluminum and motor vehicles' -- quoted here because it is the Annex's own stated tariff assumption on the Canadian side, distinct from the U.S.-schedule divergence above, and because the companion Resolution separately pins the Prime Minister's 2026-08-21 statement suspending trade negotiations. This caveat states only these divergences in kind, timing, and (for the countermeasures) continuation assumption; it does not estimate, forecast, or restate any deficit or GDP figure as a result, and no value in this Resolution is changed by it.
Extended 2026-08-25 with the counter-tariff/support concretization -- a divergence observation only, no deficit or GDP arithmetic, no forecast. On 2026-08-25 the Department of Finance Canada announced Canada's own retaliatory counter-tariff schedule (15, 25, and 50 per cent rates, matching the corresponding U.S. rate for each product, applying to 'products covering $27.6 billion in imports from the U.S.', effective 2026-09-08) and, the same day, 'a $7.5 billion package of new and enhanced measures to protect Canadian workers and businesses, building on the nearly $25 billion in supports the government has implemented over the past 18 months' -- both quoted verbatim from the Department's own news release and backgrounder, pinned in full (as publications and values) in this record's companion Resolution on the 2026 U.S. tariff escalation and Canada's own retaliation. These two documents are cited here, in prose, for this caveat's own divergence observation, and are NOT registered as a new publication entry of this Resolution's own value lineage: they restate no figure this Resolution's five publications and values pin, and adding them here would inflate the vintage/publication count against what the entry actually carries, the same discipline the prior Annex 1 citation above already follows. The divergence: the March 2026 survey behind the Spring Economic Update 2026's fiscal projections (see the prior caveat) could not have incorporated a $7.5 billion spending package or a 27.6-billion-dollar counter-tariff schedule that did not exist until 2026-08-25 -- a further material development on both the revenue side (Canada's own countermeasures, whose continuation the survey's own assumption already covers only through 2026-27, per the prior caveat) and the spending side (new announced expenditure) beyond what that caveat already states for the U.S. tariff schedule alone. No deficit or GDP estimate is stated as a result of this further divergence, per this item's own standing constraint. GDP/growth linkage: none of the documents this record has captured for either the U.S. tariff escalation or Canada's own counter-tariff and support announcement -- the four proclamations, the Prime Minister's two statements, the Department of Finance Canada's news release, backgrounder, and programs pages -- states a GDP or economic-growth figure or assumption of its own; the Spring Economic Update 2026 Annex 1 citation already pinned above states only the survey's tariff-persistence assumption, not a growth figure attached to this specific episode. This record therefore states no GDP-growth linkage: not because none was sought, but because no captured issuer document supplies one, and a model estimate produced by a third party is not a fact this record publishes as one.

Latest source: The federal budgetary balance for fiscal 2025-26, across four Finance Canada projection vintages, before the audited Public Accounts settle it · accessed 2026-07-10

Related on this site

This record shows what an institution published and how its figures compare across versions or with later outcomes. It does not rank institutions or grade their forecasting ability.

This is the current public record for this lineage. See Work with Countability for a commissioned projection-resolution question.

Work with Countability