The cost of the federal bureaucracy under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is continuing to climb, reaching nearly $70 billion annually amid a ballooning public sector. Despite the increased costs, performance from bureaucrats has not risen accordingly.
A report issued Wednesday by the Parliamentary Budget Officer revealed that taxpayers are paying $69.5 billion for federal personnel spending in 2023-24.
The year after Trudeau took office, 2016-17, taxpayers paid $40.2 billion for federal bureaucracy, meaning the costs have since increased by 72.9% during that timeframe.
A taxpayers’ advocacy group said that the added cost doesn’t equate to better services.
“The cost of the federal bureaucracy increased by 73% since 2016, but it’s a good bet most Canadians aren’t seeing anywhere close to 73% better services from the government,” said Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation Franco Terrazzano. “Taxpayers are getting soaked because the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy is out of control.”
Spending on bureaucracy during the first five months of this year has increased by 8% compared to last year, reaching $29 billion, according to the report.
The PBO previously highlighted that despite the Liberals handing out over $400 million in bonuses, federal departments failed to meet their performance targets.
“Less than 50% of (performance) targets are consistently met within the same year,” said the PBO.
However, 90% of federal government executives receive a yearly bonus. Since 2015, over $1.5 billion in bonuses have been paid to federal employees.
“We’ve seen an increase in the number of public servants and in public expenditures, but year after year, despite the fact that departments choose their own performance indicators and the targets, they don’t seem to be getting significantly better at reaching them,” Giroux testified to a parliamentary committee.
Further, since 2016, the federal public service has increased by 108,793 bureaucrats, a rise of 42%. During the same period, Canada’s population increased by 14% or just over five million people.
The private sector has grown similarly to Canada’s population, rising from 11,709,000 to 13,430,100 between 2016 and 2024, an increase of 14.7%.
“Had the bureaucracy only increased with population growth, there would be 72,491 fewer federal employees today,” said the CTF.
Almost half of all Canadians want to shrink government bureaucracy.
After being told that the public sector had grown at roughly triple the rate of the private sector, 47% of Canadians said the number of federal government employees should be reduced.
“The government added tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats, rubberstamped hundreds of millions in bonuses and awarded more than one million pay raises and all taxpayers seem to get out of it is higher taxes and more debt,” Terrazzano said. “For the government to balance the budget and provide tax relief, it will need to cut the size and cost of Ottawa’s bloated bureaucracy.”
The added costs come after the Parliamentary Budget Officer recently revealed that the Liberals’ deficit will reach $46.8 billion this year, instead of the initially promised $40 billion.