Two meaningful (more or less) nation-wide fiscal consolidations in my lifetime -a big one in the early 1990s and a smaller one in the 2010s.

Both were achieved almost entirely via reducing spending as a share of GDP, not increasing revenues.

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/blogs/trudeau-government-and-provincial-governments-across-canada-can-learn-from-past-fiscal-consolidations

Here's the federal government in the 1990s. Revenues vs spending as a share of GDP.

Here are the provinces as a group in the 1990s. Revenue vs spending.

And here's the federal government in the 2010s. Provinces broadly similar.

In all cases, the big gap closed by the spending line dropping rather than the revenue line rising.

None of this is to say that there *couldn't* be a nation-wide fed/prov fiscal consolidation focused on revenue - just that I don't think there's been one in my lifetime.

Blog pulling these thoughts together here:

http://www.fraserinstitute.org/blogs/trudeau-government-and-provincial-governments-across-canada-can-learn-from-past-fiscal-consolidations

data drawn from http://financesofthenation.com  REAL dataset.