What is this site?

Follow the Grant is a transparency tool that makes every federal government grant and contribution in Canada searchable, shareable, and understandable. The Government of Canada publishes this data as open data, but the official portal is unintuitive. Follow the Grant takes the same data and presents it in a way that lets any Canadian see exactly where their tax dollars are going, organized by riding, recipient, and department.

Data Sources

Primary source: Open Government Portal. This dataset contains every grant and contribution awarded by federal departments and agencies, updated quarterly.

MP data: Member of Parliament names and party affiliations are sourced from ourcommons.ca Open Data, covering the 42nd through 45th Parliaments.

The “Eyebrow-Raiser” Ranking

Grants on the homepage “Eyebrow-Raisers” section are ranked by an internal scoring algorithm that weights several factors: dollar amount relative to the department median, proximity to a federal election, description keywords associated with public interest, and recipient type. This score is used purely for ranking and is not a judgment on whether a grant is wasteful or inappropriate.

Pre-Election Spending Analysis

The pre-election spike ratio compares average monthly grant spending in the 6 months before an election to the average monthly spending in the 12 months before that window. A ratio of 2.0x means spending doubled during the pre-election period. We analyze this pattern across federal elections in 2019, 2021, 2025.

Important: Correlation with election timing is not evidence of political motivation. Grant programs have their own funding cycles, and increases may reflect fiscal year-end patterns, policy announcements, or application backlogs.

Limitations

• Location ≠ Impact: Many grants are assigned to a specific riding based on the recipient's address, but the funds may benefit a wider region or the entire country. Riding-level totals may not reflect the true geographic distribution of benefits.
• Hidden Beneficiaries: The data only tracks the primary recipient. If an organization redistributes the grant money to third parties, the ultimate beneficiaries and their locations are not reported.
• Timeframe: Only grants and contributions awarded since 2018 are tracked, as data prior are inconsistent and incomplete.
• Federal Spending: The dataset only includes grants and contributions. It excludes other forms of government spending, such as direct procurement contracts, operational expenses, and federal salaries.
• Non-project Funding: “Mandated or Core Funding” entries are not shown as they are not tied to specific projects and contain no details. Most of these are regular transfers from Indigenous Services Canada to various Tribal Councils.
• Excluded Transfers: Major federal-to-provincial funding, such as Equalization payments and the Canada Health and Social Transfers, are not included.
• Privacy Redactions: Certain grants and contributions are intentionally withheld from the public dataset to comply with the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act.
• Inflation Adjustments: Historical grant amounts are presented in nominal dollars and have not been adjusted for inflation, which may affect historical comparisons.
• Per-capita Statistics: Per-capita comparisons rely on census population data, which is updated much less frequently than the quarterly grant data.
• Reporting Lags: The source data is updated quarterly and may lag behind actual grant awards by several months.

Contact & Feedback

Found an error? Have a suggestion? Reach us by email: contact@followthegrant.ca