Canada’s municipalities deliver services that are critical to their citizens’ quality of life. Those services require revenue from taxes, fees and transfers from other governments. Yet municipal budgeting is opaque: in most of Canada’s major cities, non-experts cannot make the simplest...

Cities are the most visible level of government for most Canadians, providing services such as waste collection, policing and transit. Yet their budgets are the most opaque of any level of government. Municipalities generally use accounting in their budgets that does not match what they use in...

In nearly all Canada's larger cities, obscure financial reports – notably inconsistent presentations of key numbers in budgets and end-of-year financial reports – hamper legislators, ratepayers and voters seeking to hold their municipal governments to account. Simple questions like “How...