The 2026 Guide
Index

Funding

The department is at the centre. For almost every service, about 95 percent, the department funds and approves it from money it already holds. For the exception, about 5 percent, when a service needs new money or is large or complex, the department asks the Treasury Board, which releases the money and grants permission.

Every government service costs money, and someone has to approve spending it. Funding is how a service gets that money and the permission to spend it, across its whole life: getting it built, keeping it running, and paying to retire it at the end.

It is the other half of buying. Procurement is how a service is bought; funding is how it is paid for and approved. A service can have a supplier ready to start and still go nowhere until the money and the permission are in place.

For most services this is more routine than people expect. About nineteen in twenty services are small enough that the department funds and approves them itself, from money it already holds, and they never go to the Treasury Board. This page covers that common path first. The exception, a service that needs new money or is large or complex enough to need the Treasury Board's approval, comes at the end.

Where the money comes from

A department does not hold one pot of money. A service is usually paid for from one or more of these:

  • Money the department already has. The ongoing budget a department gets each year to run its programs, called its reference levels, or the A-base. A service funded from here, within the department's own limit, is approved inside the department and needs nothing from the Treasury Board.

  • New money from a federal Budget. When the government decides to pay for something new, it sets the money aside in a federal Budget. That money is promised, not yet in the department's hands. The Treasury Board has to release it before the department can spend it.

  • Money moved from another priority. The department shifts money it already holds from one thing to this one.

A Budget sets money aside; it does not hand it over. It is closer to an IOU (a written promise to pay). To turn the promise into money it can spend, a department has to produce a plan and take it to the Treasury Board. So new money always arrives in two steps: it is set aside, then it is released.

The funding work, in detail

The common path: almost every service

Most services stay inside the department. When a service runs on money the department already holds, and is not too large or complex for it to manage on its own, the department costs it, funds it, and approves it. There is no submission to the Treasury Board and no central sign-off.

The first call is the department's own corporate services, the finance and planning people who handle the money side. Across a service's whole life, the money story runs like this, mostly in their hands:

CREATE

  1. 1

    A whole-life cost. The finance team builds the estimate, including what it will cost to run year after year, not just to build.

  2. 2

    A confirmed source of funds. Existing budget, or money moved from another priority.

  3. 3

    A place on the department's investment plan. The department's own governance approves the service and commits the budget.

LIVE

  1. 4

    Funding that holds once it is live. The service keeps running on the budget secured for it, and any time-limited funding is renewed before it runs out.

SUNSET

  1. 5

    Money set aside for the exit. Before the current funding ends, the department budgets for moving or retiring the service.

When a service goes to the Treasury Board

Column diagram: a small project stays under the limit and is approved inside the department; a larger one crosses the limit and needs Treasury Board.
The limit is not a fixed amount. It depends on the department and the kind of project.

A service crosses into the exception when it needs new money the department does not have, a new authority (such as running a new grants program), or when it is too large or complex for the department to approve on its own.

How large is too large is not one national number. Each department is trusted with a level of project it can manage on its own, set by its Organizational Project Management Capacity Assessment (OPMCA). Each project is sized by a Project Complexity and Risk Assessment (PCRA). When a project's PCRA is above the department's level, it goes to the Treasury Board; below it, the department decides on its own.

Getting the money then means producing a plan, and that plan is a Treasury Board submission. A large service also passes a set of other checks along the way, from an early concept case to an architecture review, and the money comes only at the end, on a fixed yearly cycle, so a large request that starts late waits for the next cycle. The full sequence, in order, with who signs off at each step, is laid out in the lifecycle of a digital service. Funding is one part of it.

Whose job it is

Funding is shared across a department:

  • The department's corporate services are the first door: they walk a team through costing, the source of funds, and the investment plan.
  • The finance team and the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) produce the cost estimate and stand behind the numbers.
  • The business owner of the application owns the business case and the decisions about what the service needs and what it should cost.

(The fuller set of players for the exception, when a large or complex service goes to the Treasury Board, including legal, the Treasury Board Secretariat analyst, and the minister, is shown in order in the lifecycle of a digital service.)

Comparison

Two ways to fund a service

Pax

Meet Pax, a program manager. They treated funding as part of the work from the start:

  • costed the whole life of the service and said how rough the early numbers were
  • confirmed the source of funds first, with the finance team involved early
  • used Gender-based Analysis Plus to shape the design, so it served the people who would use it

The result: the request cleared the first time, the budget matched the real cost, and the next year of funding was known in advance.

The official instruments behind funding

Everything official this subject brings with it, and where in a service's life each one comes up. The full detail, including who does the work and what the business owner personally does, is in the table on the home page.

  • Concept caseOnly ifsourceSubmission

    A short, early write-up of the problem, the rough size of the investment, and the direction being considered, produced before a business case and before any solution is chosen.

    • DiscoveryCheckFillSubmit
  • Project complexity and risk assessment (PCRA)Only ifsourceAssessment

    A 64-question scoring tool that rates a project from level 1, sustaining, to level 4, transformational. The score decides who is allowed to approve the project: the minister, or the Treasury Board.

    • DiscoveryCheckGatherFill
    • GrowthKeep current
  • Treasury Board submissionOnly ifsourceSubmission

    The formal request to the Treasury Board for authority and money when the project is beyond what the minister can approve alone. It carries a chief financial officer attestation and commits the department to specific benefits.

    • DiscoveryCheck
    • AlphaFillSubmit
  • Benefits realization plan and project close-out reportOnly ifsourceSubmission

    The written statement of what good this project is supposed to do, and the later report confirming what was actually delivered and whether the promised benefits arrived.

    • DiscoveryFill
    • StabilizationSubmit
    • MaturityKeep current

Further reading

Assumptions this page makes

You are already working to the Government of Canada Digital Standards, design with users, iterate and improve frequently, work in the open, use open standards, address security and privacy, build in accessibility, empower staff, be good data stewards, design ethical services, and collaborate widely, and to the law on privacy, security, official languages, and accessibility. The standards say how the government works in the digital world. The six Government of Canada digital competencies say what every public servant has to be able to do to work that way, and the team page covers them. This guide builds on those.