Effective Date: April 1, 2026

Applicable FAM Policies: 310 - Supplementary Appropriations

Applicability: GNWT Departments

INTERPRETATION

The Annual Appropriation Act(s) specify the financial limit of funds available for each department established during the Main and Capital Estimates Processes and provides authorization for expenditures to be made to those maximum amounts.

Approval to increase the amounts included in the Appropriations Acts is achieved through the Supplementary Appropriation process or by Special Warrant. Supplementary funding is a time-limited adjustment to departmental appropriations for emergent or unforeseen expenditures that cannot be mitigated within the department’s current appropriation. Appropriations can be positive or negative and apply only to the fiscal year in which they are approved. All supplementary funding lapses on March 31.

ELIGIBILITY THRESHOLD

Only an unforeseen or emergent expenditure of $215,000 or greater, that cannot be mitigated within the department’s current appropriation, is eligible for a request for a supplementary appropriation.

SUPPLEMENTARY FUNDING ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA

1. The expenditure is offset by equivalent revenues from a third party – typically the Government of Canada, but it could be others – or is offset by significant own-source or self-sustaining revenues (i.e. investments in income-generating assets);

2. The expenditure is cost-shared in accordance with FAM 1410 – Cost-Shared Arrangements;

3. It is a non-cash matter (e.g., amortization changes, grants-in-kind, write-offs);

4. The expenditure is fully offset by an equivalent reduction to another appropriation (including operations-to-infrastructure transfers);

5. The expenditure is an infrastructure carryover (see IB 310.02); 

6. The request was presented during business planning but deferred pending substantiation; or

7. Despite deploying cost avoidance and mitigation measures, the department is unable to contain costs within its existing appropriation.

EXCEPTIONS

Bundled Cost-Shared Arrangements

Notwithstanding the Eligibility Threshold, departments may submit a single supplementary appropriation request bundling multiple related cost-shared agreements where:

• Aggregate total is greater than $215,000 and less than $645,000;
• Each agreement is cost-shared with a third party in accordance with FAM 1410 – Cost-Shared Arrangements;
• Agreements collectively support a single program objective or coherent outcome and require concurrent authority within the same fiscal year;
• The bundle meets the unforeseen/emergent and cannot-be-mitigated tests;
• The request includes an Annex listing each agreement, counterparty, cost-share ratio, amount, timing, and program linkage, and includes a statement of alignment with departmental mandate and GNWT priorities; and
• Bundling unrelated expenditures remains prohibited.

Operations to Infrastructure Transfers

Requests for the transfer of funding from operations to infrastructure remain eligible at a threshold of $50,000, as this aligns with the GNWT’s capitalization threshold for tangible capital assets (see IB 510.02).

ALIGNMENT REQUIREMENT

All requests for supplementary appropriations, including cost-shared arrangements, must include a statement demonstrating how the expenditure aligns with the department’s approved mandate and priorities identified in GNWT strategic or business planning processes.

CIRCUMSTANCES THAT ARE NOT ELIGIBLE FOR SUPPLEMENTARY FUNDING

Departments are expected to collect the data necessary to build rational, evidence-based, decision-making models to predict, as accurately as possible, changes in expenditures during future fiscal years. The inability (for various reasons) to collect the data necessary to forecast does not make an expenditure eligible for supplementary funding. In addition, departments are expected to implement mitigation, cost-avoidance, and cost reduction measures to minimize the need for supplementary funding requests. These form part of the substantiation and due diligence process with the Financial Management Board.

Supplementary funding should not be used for:

• Manageable cost pressures;
• Discretionary expansion of program, service levels, or staffing;
• Expenditures that are known, reasonably predictable and could have been anticipated during the Business Planning process;
• Requests under $215,000; or
• A basket of requests with an aggregate total of above $215,000 but comprised of a series of expenditures less than $215,000, unless included in the Exceptions section.

TERMINOLOGY

Cannot be mitigated within the department’s current appropriation - means that the department cannot incur the expenditure without exceeding its total departmental appropriation for the applicable fiscal year (FAA, s. 71), even after reallocating amounts within its existing appropriation to attempt to address any shortfall of funding due to the unforeseen events. Departments are expected to reallocate available resources to accommodate such events without adversely affecting its core program and service deliverables to the public.

Unforeseen - means “unforeseeable” rather than “presently unquantifiable.”  Supplementary funding requests for expenditures that departments know will happen, even if the exact cost and/or timing is uncertain, do not qualify under FAM policy 310 – Supplementary Appropriations. “Unforeseen” typically refers to circumstances that could not reasonably have been predicted by the department.

Emergent - means events or circumstances that arise quickly and unexpectedly, calling for immediate action.  For greater certainty, emergent includes an emergency.

Emergency -  means a state of emergency that is declared by the Minister responsible for the Emergency Management Act (EMA) in accordance with subsection 14(1) of the EMA, or a state of local emergency that is declared by a local authority in accordance with subsection 18(1) of the EMA.

Capitalization Threshold – means the minimum cost at which an asset is recorded as a tangible capital asset, currently $50,000 as per IB 510.02.