The Parliamentary Budget Officer’s (PBO) latest report shows that the ballooning public service is costing Canadian taxpayers 32.5% more over the last two years.
Canadian taxpayers are paying $30 billion more than they were in 2019 to sustain costly government employees.
According to PBO Yves Giroux’s report, the rise is attributed to two primary factors. The first being an unprecedented growth in the size of the public sector, while the second is the increase in pay for full-time public employees.
The expenditure on personnel witnessed an astronomical surge of $14.4 billion or a 14.4% annual increase from 2019-2020 to 2021-2022, primarily fueled by one-time expenses.
“Over the past two years, growth in personnel spending was largely driven by a significant expansion of the public service, accounting for approximately 60 per cent of the overall growth in personnel spending,” wrote Grioux.
“While increases in salaries were the largest contributor in total, spending on pensions, overtime and bonuses grew at a faster rate.”
The Canadian Taxpayers Federation blasted the federal government over the report, calling on Ottawa to reign in spending and a costly bureaucracy.
“The Trudeau government needs to take some air out of its ballooning bureaucracy,” said CTF federal director Franco Terrazzano.
“Struggling taxpayers can’t afford more bureaucrats with bigger salaries and bonuses.”
According to data reported by the CTF, over 312,000 federal workers received pay raises during the pandemic.
“Taxpayers can’t afford to pay billions more to fund a bloated bureaucracy,” said Terrazzano.
“Members of Parliament must speak out and reject the unreasonable demands coming from government union negotiators.”
