Over 110,000 federal employees received a six-figure base salary in 2023, according to records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The records show that the number of employees in the federal public service is 356,096. Of those employees, 110,593 have an annual salary of $100,000 or more.
The estimated payroll of the 110,593 employees alone has a price tag of $13,902,954,944. The price tag of approximately $14 billion doesn’t include the other nearly 240,000 employees.
According to the CTF, the figure of nearly $14 billion is likely a conservative estimate, as retroactive pay raises for 2023 have yet to take effect.
The 110,593 federal employees that took home a six-figure salary is a 7.6% increase from 2022 when 102,761 federal bureaucrats received a six-figure salary.
The records only show a base salary and do not include costs of benefits paid out to bureaucrats.
Compared to the 43,424 federal employees who took home a six-figure salary in 2015, the number in 2023 is a 154% increase.
True North previously reported that the number of employees receiving six-figure salaries increased by 45,426 during the pandemic. However, 312,825 government employees received a pay raise during the pandemic.
True North also previously reported that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has hired nearly 100,000 new employees to the federal public service since being elected.
The federal workforce has swelled by around 40%, paralleled by a 68% surge in federal payroll.
The federal government has no records of its employees ever receiving a pay cut, according to the think tank Secondstreet.
Meanwhile, the taxpayer burden for federal salaries soared to a record high of $67.4 billion in 2023, as the Parliamentary Budget Office reported.
“I have noticed a marked increase in the number of public servants since 2016 and a proportional increase in spending… but we haven’t seen similar improvements when it comes to service,” said Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux.
However, a report from the PBO shows that the increase in six-figure salaries for federal employees follows years of underwhelming performance results.
“Less than 50% of [performance] targets are consistently met within the same year,” according to the 2023 report.
While the CTF obtained the records through an access-to-information request, the taxpayer advocates have previously called on the federal government to release an annual sunshine list — disclosing the number of employees receiving a six-figure salary.
Aside from Prince Edward Island and Quebec, all provincial governments provide annual compensation disclosure lists.
When pay, pension, paid time off, and other benefits are considered, the average compensation for full-time federal employees is $125,300, according to the PBO.
All full-time workers in Canada make $33.55 an hour, according to Statistics Canada. This equates to a salary of just under $70,000 per year.
Government employees in Canada who work for the federal, provincial, or municipal governments enjoyed an 8.5% wage premium, on average, over their private-sector counterparts in 2021, according to the Fraser Institute.
Franco Terrazzano, CTF’s federal director, said that the government must be transparent with taxpayers, which means publishing a sunshine list to disclose the salaries of high-paid bureaucrats.
“We pay the bills, and we deserve to know how many six-figure bureaucrats we’re paying for.”
