Canadian Provincial Government Budget Data, 1980/81 to 2013/14

Abstract

Statistics Canada has stopped publishing data on Canadian provincial government budgets, leaving researchers without the ability to examine the fiscal policy choices of those governments. We present a data set describing the budgets of each of the ten provinces spanning the period 1980/81 to 2013/14. Our data are similar to those published in the Department of Finance's Fiscal Reference Tables but provide a finer breakdown of revenue and expenditure into major categories. We illustrate the value of our data set by using it to examine long-term trends in provincial budgets that can be understood only with access to a long time series.