Finance Canada
Help with Using this Web Site

Disclaimer

These documents are the final versions of Department of Finance publications. The Department assumes no responsibility for any discrepancies that may have been transmitted with the electronic version. The printed versions of the documents stand as the official record.

Design Standards

The Finance Canada WWW site has been designed for use with MS Internet Explorer version 3 or more recent and Netscape version 3 or more recent. It has been designed for use with a computer screen resolution of 600 X 800 pixels. The "Web-safe" colour palette of 216 colours has been used.

Finding What You Need

Check What's New

Keep current by checking What's New.

What's New lists everything added to the Finance Canada WWW site in the previous 30 days, in reverse chronological order. It changes constantly as new documents are added.

Click on any navy blue linked text to see the full text of the corresponding document.

Use the Site Map

The Site Map is accessible from all core pages. It provides a listing of the site which can be used to link directly to any part.

When to Browse & When to Search

Browsing: The contents of the Finance Canada WWW site have been organized along subject lines. If you know where the information you need is likely to be, follow the links through the pages to access what you need.

Searching: Use Search, accessible on the navigation bar of every core page, to search the contents of all  Finance Canada WWW site documents.

The search engine can search for the following kinds of information:

• a single word or a list of words;
• a phrase (words in a specific order);

A number of advanced searching techniques can be used including: truncation, use of Boolean operators, and fuzzy searching. Searches can be saved by bookmarking them (Netscape) / adding to Favorites (Internet Explorer) to be reused.

Tips for searching have been provided to help you with this.

Using the Advanced Search, you can:

• produce more useful targeted results by searching specific years and/or particular types of content, such as news releases, publications, etc.
• follow up immediately with a federal- government-wide search if you didn't find what you wanted on the Finance Canada site.
• find videos, slide shows or multimedia presentations, reflecting the growing importance of voice and image-based Web presentations.

Document Formats

Most of the documents on the Finance Canada WWW site are available in HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) format, the lingua franca of the Internet.

Some documents - mainly those with many statistical tables or other graphical elements not well displayed in HTML - are posted in Adobe Acrobat format (*.pdf).

• Using the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

News Releases and selected publications are also available in MS Word on the FTP site.
Draft legislation is available on the FTP site in WordPerfect 5.1 format.

• Using the Finance Canada FTP site to download word-processed documents.

1999 Budget publications are available in WordPerfect format as self-extracting archives for downloading only.

• Using Downloadable WordPerfect files.

To enjoy the Finance Canada multi-media features, you will need to download and install the appropriate players. Click on the links below to obtain the required plug-ins:

	Shockwave - animation player (Macromedia Web site). 1999 Budget.
	Flash - animation player (Macromedia Web site). 1999 Fall Update and 2000 Budget.
	RealPlayer - video player. Budget 2000 and Economic Statement and Budget Update.

Error Message

If you receive an error message "Parameter is incorrect" when accessing a page on this site, confirm that the active language preference setting in your browser is either English or French. If it is not, change it to either English or French.

Internet Explorer

• select View - Internet Options - General;
• Click on the "Languages" button;
• Highlight "English" or "French" and click on the "Move Up" and "Move Down" buttons to change its position.
• if English is not in the list, add it.
• ensure that it is at the top of the list of Languages, using the "Move Up" and "Move Down" buttons if necessary.
• Click on OK to accept the changes.

In Netscape

• select Edit-Preferences (version 4) or Options - General Preferences (version3) from the menu bar at the top of the screen.
• in the Preferences dialog box, confirm that English (or French) is at the top of the list.
• if not, highlight it and use the "Up" and "Down" arrows to move it to the top of the list;
• if English (or French) is not on the list at all, add it;
• ensure that it is at the top of the list of Languages, using the "Up" and "Down" arrows if necessary.
• Click on OK to accept the changes.

Contact Info

For comments or questions regarding the information content of this site:
Consultations and Communications Branch, Finance Canada
140 O'Connor St., Ottawa, Canada
K1A 0G5
613-992-1573.
consltcomm@fin.gc.ca.

For printed copies of Finance Canada publications:
Distribution Centre, Finance Canada
613-995-2855
Fax 613-996-0518.
services-publications@fin.gc.ca.

For comments or questions regarding site maintenance or HotLinks contents:
webmaster.webmestre@fin.gc.ca.