Bloated federal civil service costing Canadian taxpayers billions: CTF

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OTTAWA — The Mark Carney Liberals may be giving Canada’s morbidly obese federal bureaucracy a much-needed shot of Ozempic, but recently released data show the problem could easily have been avoided.

Released this week, a new analysis by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation suggests that Canada could have saved $ 7 billion over the past decade if growth within Canada’s public service had been constrained to population growth.

“Taxpayers are still paying too much for too many paper pushers in Ottawa,” said Franco Terrazzano, the federation’s federal director.

“Prime Minister Mark Carney needs to make the bureaucracy more affordable to provide meaningful tax relief and stop borrowing money.”

Newly released information suggests the government reduced federal public servant payrolls by 12,683 employees between March 2025 and March 2026 — but government data show that Canada has 33% more public servants now than it did in 2016 — or just over 86,300 employees.

Some departments and ministries, the federation found, have seen their employee rolls swell by several hundred per cent since 2016, the biggest offender being Infrastructure Canada, which increased its workforce by 376% over the past decade.

Women and Gender Equality Canada, a department of Canadian Heritage, grew 301% over the same time period, as did the RCMP External Review Committee (214%), the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (174%), Elections Canada (154%), the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (150%), and the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (116%).

According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), federal bureaucrats earn around $161,900 annually on average.

A PBO report earlier this year said Canada’s bureaucracy cost taxpayers $71.4 billion in 2024-25.

In 2015-16, that number stood at $39.6 billion, representing an increase of 80% in 10 years.

Total compensation per full-time federal employee reached $143,271 last year, “marking a second consecutive year with historically high growth in spending per FTE,” the report added.

This year, the federal government is forecast to spend $79.4 billion on the bureaucracy, according to public accounts.

“The number of federal employees is shrinking a little bit, but Carney still has lots of work to do to shrink Ottawa’s bloated bureaucracy,” Terrazzano said.

Half of Canadians say federal services have gotten worse since 2016, despite the massive increase in the bureaucracy, according to a Leger poll. Most Canadians support cutting the size and cost of the bureaucracy, according to the poll.