Lorne Gunter: Federal workforce reduction plans show Carney Liberals won't bring spending under control

Ontario Conservative MP Vincent Ho asked a simple question in the House of Commons. He received a simple (yet horrifying) answer.

Ho asked, “With regard to the federal public service, how many employees had an annualized salary of over $150,000?” The Treasury Board told Ho the number was 12,971 which works out to 3.5 per cent of the total federal workforce.

If that doesn’t sound too bad to you, consider this: That is an 84 per cent increase in high-earners from just one year earlier. In 2024, there were just 7,201 federal civil servants making in excess of $150K. But wage settlements and generous raises nearly doubled the number — in one year!

And since Ho only asked about salaries, the Treasury Board response does not include bonuses which average over $17,000 per federal executive and are paid to about 85 per cent of senior civil servants.

I know a dollar doesn’t go as far as it used, even150,000 of them. Still, that’s pretty cushy work if you can get it.

These numbers also help demonstrate why the Carney government is going to have to shrink its civil service if it is going to get federal spending under control. Under the Trudeau government, the federal workforce grew by 42 per cent, and because they were being paid so handsomely, the federal payroll increased by 68 per cent.

The trouble is, the Carney wants to avoid laying off civil servants at all costs. And I mean that literally.

This week, more than 68,000 federal employees over the age of 50 received information packages informing them they could leave their jobs five years early and still receive full pensions. Currently, pensions are prorated until employees who leave early reach their regular retirement age.

This offer amounts to about a $194,000 windfall (on average) for federal bureaucrats who choose to leave early. Unfortunately, there is no similar windfall for taxpayers.

Contrary to the Carney government’s stated goal of helping balance the budget, if a full 37,000 civil servants take the buyout, the total cost for the Early Retirement Incentive will be $1.5 billion. Meanwhile, the annual savings from the reduced payroll will be just $82 million, according to a footnote in last month’s budget.

Once again, Canadian taxpayers come out on the short end of the deal.

Also, while a 10 per cent cut to the civil service sounds like a lot, it’s only a quarter as many as were hired by successive Liberal governments. There has been no talk of rolling back federal employment to the level it was at when the Trudeau government went on its hiring spree.

If Ottawa ever does manage to cut its payroll by 10 per cent, it will still have nearly 331,000 employees.

Statistics Canada also points out the one in four Canada workers, 25 per cent of the total, are now employed in public sector — municipal, provincial and federal. That’s a lot of bureaucrats and civil servants, but also teachers, nurses, police, soldiers, border agents, custodians and Crown corporation employees, such as those who work for the CBC.

This has a tremendous impact on our politics. Elections often become bidding wars over which party will hire the most new government workers, fund health and education the most, or raise public-sector pay by the greatest amount.

It gives lib-left parties that favour Big Government a tremendous advantage from the start, which makes it very difficult to elect real cost-cutting governments.

Adding more proof to the idea that they Carney government isn’t truly interested in reducing spending, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has uncovered that Prime Minister Carney’s two-day cabinet retreat in Toronto before Parliament reconvened cost taxpayers $532,000, including $78,700 for “audiovisual service” and $38,300 for accommodation and meals.

For just two days! That’s vastly more than Justin Trudeau ever spent.

Do you trust a government that would spend that much on its own two-day getaway to get federal expenditures under control?