New data shows that the Trudeau government has been on a public sector hiring spree since first elected in 2015, adding nearly 100,000 new employees to the federal public service.
Critics say this has increased the size and cost of the bureaucracy, while failing to improve its performance.
According to Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat figures analyzed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), the federal government employed 357,247 public servants as of March 31, 2023.
This is an increase of 21,290 from the previous year and 98,000 from when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took office in 2015.
The CTF has criticized the government for its excessive spending on bureaucrats in a new press release.
Federal Director of the CTF Franco Terrazzano said Canadians don’t need a big government but one that works for them efficiently.
“Was there a bureaucrat shortage in Ottawa before Trudeau took over?,” Terrazzano said.
“Canadians need a more efficient government, not a bloated government full of highly paid bureaucrats.”
The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) reported in April 2023 that the federal bureaucracy ballooned by a whopping 31% increase in costs for taxpayers over the past two years.
In its report, the PBO also said in March 2023, fewer than 50% of the government’s performance indicators are achieved by the public sector.
“Taxpayers have paid for hundreds of thousands of pay raises, hundreds of millions in bonuses and for tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats and the government still can’t meet half of its own performance targets,” said Terrazanno.
“Trudeau needs to take some air out of the ballooning bureaucracy.”
Average annual earnings for full-time federal workers has reached $125,300 – well ahead of what most Canadians earn.
