Holding Canada’s Cities to Account: An Assessment of Municipal Fiscal Management (PDF link):
http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/Backgrounder_145.pdf
"The Results: Surrey, British Columbia, and Markham and
London, Ontario, were the only municipalities
that met, at least partially, as many as five of our
six criteria. Markham and Surrey were unique in
having taken measures to report budgets on the
same accounting basis as their year-end financial
statements, while London partly met a number of
criteria of good budgeting practice.
At the other end of the spectrum, Hamilton
met none of these criteria of good budgets, and is
the only municipality to receive a failing grade.
Hamilton’s operating budget supported by
property taxes does not present gross expenditures
on a department-by-department basis in the main
budget document, meaning that answering a
straightforward question such as which activities
had the largest annual increase in expenditures
requires a detective exercise. Further, Hamilton
does not report municipal utility expenditures at
all in any of its main budget documents.
Brampton, Halifax, Sudbury, and Windsor met
only one criterion of good budget presentation,
and each received a “D."