Number of federal executives grew by 42% since 2015 under Trudeau Liberals

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OTTAWA — The Trudeau Liberals added thousands of executives to the ranks of Canada’s public servants since 2015, government documents reveal.

According to human resources statistics published online by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, Canada currently employs 9,155 public servants in the executive categories, responsible for interpreting policy and managing government departments and agencies.

That’s up from the 6,340 executives recorded in 2015.

“The government has ballooned the bureaucracy across the board, but even more concerning is that this government is swelling the ranks of its most expensive bureaucrats,” said Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“Trudeau should go after the fat cats first and that means cutting back the size and cost of the federal c-suite.”

Salaries for public servant executives, according to pay tables published online, range from $158,601 for EX-01 level employees, to a maximum of $255,607 for top-level EX-05 executives.

Remuneration for federal executives topped $1.95 billion in salary in 2022, the most recent year in which that data is available, and represents a 41% increase from what the executive payroll was in 2015.

Polling over the summer suggests Canadians want to shrink the size of Canada’s bloated public service, which grew by 10,000 employees last year, placing the population of Canada’s bureaucracy at a record-high 367,772 people.

Canada’s public service ranks swelled by 42% under the Trudeau government, while inflation only rose by 14% across the same time period.

Earlier this year, the Toronto Sun reported that while Canadians struggle with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis, public servants and employees of government agencies earned hundreds of millions of dollars in overtime.

Last summer, it was reported that federal executives earned $1.5 billion in bonuses between 2015 and 2022, according to documents obtained by an access to information request.

That came just months after separate reporting that determined federal public servants took home $200 million in bonuses in 2022, despite frequently missing performance targets.

“Taxpayers are paying through the nose because everywhere you look the size and cost of government is ballooning,” said Terrazzano.

“If any politician is serious about fixing the budget and cutting taxes, they will have to shrink Ottawa’s bloated bureaucracy.”

bpassifiume@postmedia.com
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