Appropriation Act No. 2, 2025-26

This bill authorizes the federal government to withdraw a specific amount of money from public funds to cover government expenses for the fiscal year running from April 2025 to March 2026. Specifically, it grants just over 8.58 billion dollars, an amount drawn from the Supplementary Estimates (A) for 2025-26, which is a mid-year update to the government's spending plans that covers costs not already approved through earlier budget legislation.

The money is directed to two organizations. About 370 million dollars goes to the Communications Security Establishment, Canada's signals intelligence and cybersecurity agency, allowing it to spend revenue it earns from its own operations to offset its costs. The much larger portion, over 8.2 billion dollars, goes to the Department of National Defence, covering operating expenses, capital expenditures, and grants and contributions. This includes funding for equipment, services, and facilities related to defence, payments tied to pension and benefit programs for locally-engaged employees working outside Canada, and salary provisions for certain ministers.

The bill also sets out standard technical rules: the funding is deemed to take effect retroactively from April 1, 2025, money can only be spent for the purposes specified for each item, and adjustments to Canada's public accounts related to this spending can be made after the fiscal year ends but before the official Public Accounts are presented to Parliament. In short, this is a routine spending bill that formally authorizes previously planned government expenditures rather than introducing new policy.

This bill authorizes the federal government to withdraw a fixed sum from the Consolidated Revenue Fund and spend it on the specific departmental items listed in its schedule.

• Total amount authorized — up to $8,580,271,678 may be paid out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2026, matching the Supplementary Estimates (A) for that year.
• Recipients and allocations named — the schedule sets fixed amounts for the Communications Security Establishment ($370,060,088) and the Department of National Defence (three votes totalling $8,210,211,590, covering operating expenditures, capital expenditures, and grants/contributions).
• Spending authority tied to conditions — funds for each item "may be paid only for the purposes, and subject to any terms and conditions, specified in the item," meaning use is restricted to what the schedule describes, not open-ended.
• National Defence commitment ceiling — the Department may enter into commitments totalling $86,760,127,023 across three votes, spanning multiple future years, of which about $52,954,717,761 is estimated to fall due after this fiscal year, subject to allotment by the Treasury Board.
• Revenue offsetting — the Communications Security Establishment and the Department of National Defence are each authorized, under the *Financial Administration Act*, to spend revenues they collect in-year (including from internal support services) to offset their own related expenditures, rather than returning those revenues to the general fund.
• Retroactive and adjustment provisions — all schedule items are deemed in effect as of April 1, 2025, and appropriations may be charged to the accounts of a given fiscal year even after that year ends, up until the Public Accounts for that year are tabled in Parliament, for adjustments that do not require further payments from the Fund.