EDITORIAL: Carney must downsize federal government

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Prime Minister Mark Carney’s pledge to streamline the federal government so that it “spends less and invests more” will never happen if he relies on the bloated bureaucracy he inherited from his predecessor.

From 2015 to 2024, the civil service under Justin Trudeau grew from 257,034 employees to 367,772, a 43% increase — far surpassing the 15% hike in Canada’s population during that period, the 18.5% real growth rate of the economy and the 15.5% increase in total employment, including the private sector.

Despite this rapid increase the Trudeau government by 2023 was also spending, according to parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux, $21.4 billion annually hiring outside consultants — 106% more than the $10.4 billion spent in 2015.

Meanwhile, “total personnel spending increased by 15.7% to $65.3 billion in 2023-24, from $56.5 billion in 2022-23.”

A recent policy paper by former senior public servant and business executive Peter Nicholson for the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan — “Is the federal public service too big? An analysis of public service employment trends: 2015-24” — zeroed in on the problem.

He cited a letter to the clerk of the privy council, written by then outgoing chief information officer Catherine Luelo in 2023, noting that federal departments “have not met an idea they don’t like,” and are always creating new standalone programs … to implement about 700 commitments in ministers’ mandate letters.

“Meanwhile, the incentives to kill existing programs are much weaker … every program develops a constituency of beneficiaries, including the bureaucrats who manage the program and … the external consultants … called on periodically to evaluate it! Thus there is an inbuilt tendency for the program … and its public service cadre, to grow cumulatively and become more and more complex and fragmented … More generally, the labour relations environment in the heavily-unionized public service, and the quasi-tenured position of more senior members, also serve to promote cumulative headcount growth — i.e., easier to hire than to fire.”

In March, the government reported the civil service had been reduced by 9,807 positions compared to last year, marking the first annual decrease in a decade.

Carney has instructed most federal departments to cut program spending by 15% by the 2028-29 fiscal year, but whether it will happen remains an open question.

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