Ottawa won’t release its budget for Canada Day festivities in the capital

A construction crane is seen as a cloud of smoke hovers above the ground during a fireworks show on Canada Day in Ottawa on Monday, July 1, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

OTTAWA — The federal government has set a budget for Canada Day programming in the National Capital Region this year but is refusing to say what it is.

The budget for Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa and across the river in Gatineau, Que., typically ranges in the millions of dollars and pays for things like fireworks displays, performances and national broadcasts.

A spokesperson for Heritage Canada said in a statement that while there is a budget for the events, the department won’t provide the number until after the celebrations are over.

“To ensure the most accurate information is made public, the total cost will be available upon request after the final tallies have been completed this summer,” the spokesperson said.

Neither Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault nor Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne responded to requests for comment about the budget for Canada Day this year.

This is the first Canada Day since U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to annex the country and embroiled much of the world in a trade war.

Angus Reid polling from early in the trade dispute in February showed a jump in national pride in the face of Trump’s “51st State” talk.

Some 44 per cent of respondents said at the time they were “very proud” to be Canadian — up 10 points since just a few months earlier and reversing a long trend of declining national pride tracked by the pollster.

A wave of “buy Canadian” sentiment followed after the U.S. levied tariffs against Canada.

A late May poll from Research Co. suggested three in five Canadians were still avoiding buying American goods when they could, though that was down four percentage points from a poll in March.

Because the Angus Reid and Research Co. polls were conducted online, they can’t be assigned a margin of error.

In recent years, Heritage Canada has spent between $4.25 million and $5.5 million on July 1 festivities in the National Capital Region.

Those figures fell below $3 million in 2020 and 2021 as the event went virtual during the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the Canada 150 celebrations in 2017, the federal government spent more than $9 million over the course of three days that featured a royal visit from King Charles and Queen Camilla, who were the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall at the time.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 25, 2025.

Craig Lord, The Canadian Press