Nearly 100,000 bureaucrat positions have been added to the federal government since 2016, according to data from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.
According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, there are currently 357,965 federal bureaucrats earning an average salary of $125,300, including pension and other perks.
“The last thing Canadians need is a bloated government full of highly paid paper pushers,” said Franco Terrazzano, federal director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, in a statement.
“If politicians want to provide tax relief and start paying down the federal debt, they need to shrink government bureaucracy.”
The CTF pointed out that taxpayers would have saved roughly $7 billion per year if the federal bureaucracy had grown at the same rate as Canada’s population over the decade.
Certain agencies and departments have become more bloated than others over that period, with Infrastructure Canada seeing a 375 per cent increase since 2016.
Women and Gender Equity Canada also saw a 334 per cent increase, while the RCMP External Review Committee grew by 229 per cent.
Additionally, Elections Canada is up by 173 per cent.
The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada and the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada both grew by 158 per cent and 154 per cent, respectively.
The Impact Assessment Agency of Canada also saw an increase of 127 per cent.
Despite the federal government reducing its size by 9,807 employees over the last year, it still has 98,986 more employees than it did nine years ago, making a 38 per cent increase.
“It’s good to see the bureaucracy shrinking a little bit, but it’s still too bloated and too expensive,” said Terrazzano.
The department that has added the most employees since 2016 is Employment and Social Development Canada, which added 16,842 new employees, a 75 per cent increase.
The Canada Revenue Agency saw the second-largest increase over the past nine years, adding 13,015 employees — a 33 per cent jump.
The rapid expansion of bureaucracy also comes with a hefty bill for Canadians, costing taxpayers $69.5 billion in 2023-24, according to PBO estimates.
For context, federal bureaucrats cost taxpayers $40.2 billion in 2016-17, or 72.9 per cent less than the 2023-24 fiscal year.
The additional salaries also come with additional raises and bonus pay as well.
The federal government granted over one million pay raises between 2020 and 2023 and distributed more than $1.5 billion in bonuses since 2015.
Despite their additional perks, bureaucrats hit less than 50 per cent of Ottawa’s own performance targets, according to a March 2023 PBO report.
Terrazzano said the Carney government, which ran on a platform of “capping” but not “cutting” the public service sector, needs to do a lot more than just cap if it’s serious about making life more affordable for Canadians again.
“Prime Minister Mark Carney’s promise to cap the bureaucracy doesn’t go nearly far enough and just entrenches the Trudeau government’s costly bureaucrat hiring spree,” Terrazzano said.
“Taxpayers need politicians to cut the bloated bureaucracy and make pay and perks more affordable.”