Federal Government Approval for Public SpendingThe federal government has topped $392 billion in approved spending for the current fiscal year, with two appropriation periods still remaining that will raise the total higher. Parliament approved $6 billion in additional spending for this year beyond the previously legislated amount when members passed the appropriations Bill C-19 last month. The $6 billion portion MPs approved on June 26 included $586 million in new money for the military's Joint Support Ship project, $481 million for a government settlement with survivors of Federal Indian Day Schools, and $468 million for the Child and Family Services program within the Department of Indigenous Services. Other new spending money was effectively pre-approved under terms in the government's pandemic emergency relief bills in March and April, which granted the government extraordinary powers to spend money on any "public health event of national concern." This spending has swelled well beyond what was reported in the main estimates in the budget document published in February. Last year's supplementary estimates included just shy of $5 billion in new spending, bringing the total spent by the government up to that point last year to roughly $305 billion. Final figures for 2019-20 haven't been released yet, but the government has accounted for $313 billion in spending in that fiscal year. The year before, 2018-19, the supplementary estimates included $8 billion in new spending to eventually reach a total of $346 billion. Spending this fiscal year may double that of the previous year. Of the $390 billion of spending approved so far this fiscal year, $131 billion has been passed by Parliament directly, and the remaining $261 billion has been authorized under statutes passed by Parliament. The amount of $139 billion approved so far this year for the Department of Employment and Social Development is up from $65 billion at the same point in time last year, and $69 billion the year prior. National Defence, which typically boasts one of the government's largest budgets, has been approved to spend $24 billion so far this year, third-most among departments. The federal government in 2019 alone paid $23.3 billion in interest charges to service the federal debt to the global moneylenders.
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