Which public promises can actually be checked?
A commitment stated in a concept no official series measures is not a checkable promise, whatever its political weight. Whether a government's stated targets can be held against public data at all is a precondition for every other accountability question this platform asks.
On this page
This question brings together the registered commitments and the comparable measurements needed to check them. Each named gap explains what cannot yet be verified and what evidence would make the comparison possible.
Registered commitments
New temporary resident arrivals of 385,000 in 2026 (370,000 in 2027 and 2028)
Issuer: Government of Canada (IRCC, 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan). Stated in 2026-2028 Immigration Levels Plan.
Latest observed: No matched observation.
Original stated target: 385,000 (persons per calendar year (new arrivals)).
Added 2026-11-11: Budget 2026, Chapter 3: "The Plan sets targets of 370,000 new temporary resident arrivals and 380,000 permanent resident admissions in each of 2027, 2028, and 2029." The deadline recorded for this target is unchanged; the statement for 2027 to 2029 is recorded here as a dated note. Source: Budget 2026, Chapter 3: A more affordable life
Measurement status: No held series measures new arrivals on the plan’s definition. Permit flows include renewals and in-Canada transitions; net non-permanent-resident change also reflects departures and status changes. These different quantities are proxies, not target-compliance observations.
Target deadline: 2026-12-31. Original statement: 2025-11.
Create 250,000 new AI-related jobs over five years, as part of an additional $200 billion of economic growth
Issuer: Government of Canada (Prime Minister's Office, 'AI for All' national AI strategy). Stated in AI for All strategy launch.
Latest observed: No matched observation.
Original stated target: 250,000 (new AI-related jobs over five years (by ~2031)).
Measurement status: No official series attributes jobs to AI adoption on this commitment’s definition. The Labour Force Survey does not identify AI-related positions, and no matched public measurement method is held. Aggregate job growth cannot fill that gap.
Target deadline: 2031-06-04. Original statement: 2026-06-04.
Balance day-to-day operating spending with revenues by fiscal year 2028-29 (fiscal anchor announced in Budget 2025, reaffirmed in the Spring Economic Update 2026)
Issuer: Government of Canada (Department of Finance). Stated in Spring Economic Update 2026, reaffirming Budget 2025.
Latest observed: No matched observation.
Original stated target: 0 (CAD billions, operating balance (day-to-day spending less revenues, Budget accounting basis)).
PBO’s October 20, 2026 outlook projects a $6.2 billion operating surplus in 2028-29 on the government’s operating/capital classification, under PBO’s stated policy and economic assumptions. This is a forecast, not observed compliance.
Forecast source: Economic and Fiscal Outlook – October 2026 (RP-2627-011-S), published 2026-10-20. PBO's fiscal-year Public Accounts projections on its own nominal-GDP assumptions. Only explicitly verified points are retained; missing intermediate values are not interpolated.
Added 2026-11-11: Budget 2026 (tabled November 5, 2026) projects a day-to-day operating balance of $11.2 billion in 2027–28, "one year ahead of the target set in Budget 2025". The deadline recorded here is unchanged. Source: Budget 2026, Annex 1: Details of economic and fiscal projections
Added 2026-11-11: Basis: the projected balance includes row E of Table A1.6, estimated forgone revenue: $16.8 billion in 2027–28, against $4.7 billion for the same year in Budget 2025 and $6.7 billion in the Spring Economic Update. Recorded revenue minus day-to-day spending is -$5.6 billion in 2027–28 and +$3.3 billion in 2028–29 (Countability calculation from the published rows). Source: Budget 2026, Annex 1: Details of economic and fiscal projections
Measurement status: PBO now publishes an operating-budget assessment and October 2026 projection on the government's operating/capital classification. What remains missing here is a matched observed, continuously updated operating-balance series on that classification; the National Accounts split is not interchangeable.
Target deadline: 2029-03-31. Original statement: 2026-04-28.
Achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050
Issuer: Government of Canada (Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act). Stated in Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act, S.C. 2021, c. 22, assented to 2021-06-29.
Latest observed: No matched observation.
Original stated target: 0 (megatonnes of CO2 equivalent, net).
Measurement status: The held ECCC projection ends in 2035. It does not supply a comparable path through 2050, intermediate milestones or an isolated removals measure. A longer scenario on a different basis cannot fill that gap, so no required pace or compliance verdict is inferred.
Target deadline: 2050-12-31. Original statement: 2021-06.
Where institutions disagree
What cannot yet be known
Is the 385,000 new-temporary-resident-arrivals target for 2026 being met?
What is missing: No held public series measures the plan's 'new arrivals' concept. IRCC monthly permit flows count documents becoming effective (including renewals and in-Canada transitions); StatsCan net-NPR change nets out departures.
Consequence: The arrivals target is published as a registered target without a compliance claim; permit flows are shown as labelled proxies only.
Is AI adoption creating, displacing, or reshaping jobs — and is the government's 250,000-AI-job target on track?
What is missing: No official series attributes job creation, displacement, or reshaping to AI adoption specifically. Statistics Canada's Labour Force Survey and business-adoption surveys measure aggregate employment and technology use separately; there is no published methodology linking the two, and the government has not stated how the 'AI for All' strategy's 250,000-job target will be measured.
Consequence: This commitment is published as a registered commitment without a compliance claim. Countability will not publish INFERRED claims attributing employment changes to AI adoption absent an official attribution methodology.
Is the federal government on track to balance day-to-day operating spending with revenues by fiscal year 2028-29?
What is missing: Budget 2026 shows the operating balance met in 2027–28. One line of that calculation is estimated forgone tax revenue ($16.8 billion in 2027–28). The budget states that it 'is not recorded in the government's financial statements and is therefore not observed directly.' No audited statement reports that line or the capital classification the anchor uses.
Consequence: The anchor's outcome will rest partly on the government's own estimate. Countability shows the published calculation and the recorded-revenue figure side by side and makes no compliance finding.
November 11, 2026: scope updated with Budget 2026, tabled November 5. October 27, 2026: scope updated using the October PBO outlook. Earlier wording is shown below.
Earlier wording
Wording replaced on 11 November 2026.
What was missing: PBO now publishes an operating-budget assessment and October 2026 projection on the government's operating/capital classification. What remains missing here is a matched observed, continuously updated operating-balance series on that classification; the National Accounts split is not interchangeable.
Consequence: The October PBO model projects a $6.2 billion operating surplus in 2028-29 under its assumptions. That forecast is shown beside the commitment; it is not an observed compliance finding and does not justify manufacturing an operating balance from unmatched National Accounts components.
What would close it: A published government or StatsCan methodology mapping the Budget's operating/capital expenditure split onto a continuously updated machine-readable series.
Wording replaced on 27 October 2026.
What was missing: No official machine-readable series isolates 'day-to-day operating spending' from capital investment on the same accounting basis the government uses for this anchor. Statistics Canada's National Accounts federal expenditure series (table 36-10-0477) separates final consumption expenditure from non-financial capital acquisition, but does not reproduce the Budget's own operating/capital split — the two decompositions are not confirmed to be identical.
Consequence: This commitment is published as a registered commitment without a compliance claim. Countability will not construct a proxy operating-balance measure by subtracting StatsCan capital-acquisition from federal expenditure absent confirmation that this matches the Budget's own definition.
What would close it: A published government or StatsCan methodology mapping the Budget's operating/capital expenditure split onto a continuously updated machine-readable series.
What trajectory would take Canada from its 2035 target to net-zero in 2050?
What is missing: The current ECCC projection edition held in this record ends in 2035, leaving no trajectory for 2036–2050 on that same basis. The preceding ECCC edition reached 2040. Canada’s legislated net-zero target is for 2050; a scenario extending to that date does not by itself supply a directly comparable target-accounting path.
Consequence: The net-zero commitment is registered without a compliance verdict. The record does not hold a continuous, comparable trajectory from the current ECCC projection through 2050. Countability therefore states no invented pace as an official requirement and does not substitute a different scenario or accounting basis.
The projection record
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. See the full public Resolution record →
Federal annual balance: dated projections and audited settlement
The audited annual outcome beside the retained projections and unaudited observation, on the same Public Accounts fiscal-year basis. Earlier framing is preserved below.
comparable · difference -3.3 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later publication's projected value minus the earlier one's, for the same fiscal year (2025-26), in billions of Canadian dollars. A negative number means the later projection is a larger deficit than the earlier one; no direction is judged better or worse. This is a same-issuer vintage comparison: it states how Finance Canada's own projection for this year moved between two publications, not whether either is closer to an outcome -- no audited outcome exists yet. percentage difference is not computed: the base is a projected budgetary balance (a negative number, a deficit), so a ratio of two deficits inverts the intuitive sign and does not yield a stable or meaningful percentage.
comparable · difference -36.1 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later publication's projected value minus the earlier one's, for the same fiscal year (2025-26), in billions of Canadian dollars. Same-issuer vintage comparison; no audited outcome exists yet. percentage difference is not computed for the same reason as the Budget 2024 versus Fall Economic Statement 2024 comparison (the base is a projected deficit).
comparable · difference 11.4 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the later publication's projected value minus the earlier one's, for the same fiscal year (2025-26), in billions of Canadian dollars. A positive number means the later projection is a smaller deficit than the earlier one. Same-issuer vintage comparison; no audited outcome exists yet. percentage difference is not computed for the same reason as the Budget 2024 versus Fall Economic Statement 2024 comparison (the base is a projected deficit).
comparable · difference -28.0 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the latest captured projected value minus the first projected value, for fiscal 2025-26, in billions of Canadian dollars (the cumulative movement across all three re-projections). This is the entry's headline figure: how far Finance Canada's own budgetary-balance projection for this year has moved between its first publication and the most recent this entry captures. Same-issuer vintage comparison; no audited outcome exists yet. percentage difference is not computed for the same reason as the Budget 2024 versus Fall Economic Statement 2024 comparison (the base is a projected deficit).
comparable · difference 11.623 · same issuer. Numeric difference: the Fiscal Monitor's unaudited year-end observation minus Finance Canada's final pre-settlement projection, for fiscal 2025-26, in billions of Canadian dollars. A positive number means the observed year-end position is a smaller deficit than the final projection. Both values are the same issuer (Finance Canada) on the same accounting basis (Public Accounts) and the same fiscal year, so this is a same-issuer, same-basis comparison between a projection and the government's own in-year administrative observation of that projection's own year -- not a comparison against an audited outcome, which does not exist yet. percentage difference is not computed for the same reason as the Budget 2024 versus Fall Economic Statement 2024 comparison (both bases are deficits).
comparable · difference -0.416 · cross-issuer. Audited outcome minus the earlier published figure, in billions of Canadian dollars for fiscal 2025–26 on the Public Accounts annual balance basis. Differences retain the rounding of historical published projections; no forecast-accuracy ranking, favourable/unfavourable judgment, percent comparison or causal inference is made.
comparable · difference 2.884 · cross-issuer. Audited outcome minus the earlier published figure, in billions of Canadian dollars for fiscal 2025–26 on the Public Accounts annual balance basis. Differences retain the rounding of historical published projections; no forecast-accuracy ranking, favourable/unfavourable judgment, percent comparison or causal inference is made.
comparable · difference 38.984 · cross-issuer. Audited outcome minus the earlier published figure, in billions of Canadian dollars for fiscal 2025–26 on the Public Accounts annual balance basis. Differences retain the rounding of historical published projections; no forecast-accuracy ranking, favourable/unfavourable judgment, percent comparison or causal inference is made.
comparable · difference 27.584 · cross-issuer. Audited outcome minus the earlier published figure, in billions of Canadian dollars for fiscal 2025–26 on the Public Accounts annual balance basis. Differences retain the rounding of historical published projections; no forecast-accuracy ranking, favourable/unfavourable judgment, percent comparison or causal inference is made.
comparable · difference 15.961 · cross-issuer. Audited outcome minus the earlier published figure, in billions of Canadian dollars for fiscal 2025–26 on the Public Accounts annual balance basis. Differences retain the rounding of historical published projections; no forecast-accuracy ranking, favourable/unfavourable judgment, percent comparison or causal inference is made.
- Original pre-settlement caveat, retained as history: 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.
- Original pre-settlement caveat, retained as history: 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.
- Original pre-settlement caveat, retained as history: 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.
What would change the record
- IRCC publication of new-arrival counts on the levels-plan definition.
- A published government measurement methodology for the AI-jobs target, or an official statistical series attributing employment change to AI adoption.
- A published government or StatsCan methodology mapping the Budget's operating/capital expenditure split onto a continuously updated machine-readable series, and an audited or independently reproduced estimate of the forgone-revenue line.
- An official emissions trajectory on a stated, comparable basis through 2050, or numeric interim milestones for 2040 and 2045, with the treatment of removals specified.
- A NATO or Canadian institution publishing a continuously updated, single-definition defence-expenditure/GDP series on a fixed cadence with a stable methodology note -- or Countability building and maintaining its own reconciled series from the underlying appropriation/expenditure and GDP primitives, which is out of scope for this reading.
- A system operator, a regulator, or Statistics Canada publishing a continuously updated, openly licensed series of requested connection capacity (national, or provincial and aggregable), by project class.
- Either government publishing a continuously updated, openly licensed series of duty collections or tariff coverage on Canada–U.S. trade at product grain — or customs releasing duty-assessed values beside trade values on a compatible classification.
- Statistics Canada publishing the multifactor-productivity decomposition (table 36-10-0208-01 or a successor) for reference years 2024 and 2025, closing the lag to within a year or two of the current quarter.
- A proponent stating its own demand in a public filing; an issuer publishing station load attributable to a single customer; or a regulatory instrument compelling plant-grain disclosure. None is currently on the record for these projects.
- A transmitter or distributor publishing per-user apportionments of shared station capacities, in a planning document or a rate filing. The next Needs Assessment cycle for any region with a shared constrained station is the natural place to watch.
- The issuer posting assessments for active large applications as a matter of course, or posting the specific assessments for the register's four largest active applications. Each such posting immediately converts a register row into a checkable engineering quantity.
- The current planning cycle naming and quantifying the need: the Northwest Region's Integrated Regional Resource Plan, which the 2025 Needs Assessment commits the working group to develop after the Scoping Assessment, is the natural place. A connection application from a named mine appearing in the connection register, a Hydro One leave-to-construct filing for the Greenstone line stating the load it is sized to serve, or an IESO study naming Ring of Fire load would each close it.
- A producer stating a project-level shipping commitment in a public filing, a regulator publishing shipper-level allocations, or a proceeding placing contract volumes on the public record.
- The board (or its administrative-tribunal service) publishing hearings-held and hearings-scheduled series on a stated cadence, at any grain from national totals down.
- The operator or the applicant publishing the station-group load forecast — in an assessment appendix released publicly, a distributor's rate or expansion filing, or a regional planning report that states the same forecast at the same grain. A subsequent addendum in this lineage that quantifies the exceedance would also close it.
- A regularly updated reading of goods and services exports to non-U.S. destinations on the balance of payments basis, from Statistics Canada tables.
This page brings together the evidence, institutional disagreements and gaps behind a continuing question. Where the record supports an answer, it appears with its date, sources, limits, Brief and Receipt. New evidence can change that answer.
Follow these updates · RSS feed
This page holds the current public record for this question. For a more specific question, see Work with Countability.
Work with Countability