Economy
Trudeau’s bureaucrat hiring spree is out of control
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2023/11/tvrd-fraser-institute-trudeau-image-2023-11-24.jpg)
From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Author: Franco Terrazzano
Bureaucrats love to think of themselves as “public servants,” but who is really serving who around here?
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau added another 10,525 bureaucrats to the taxpayer payroll last year. Since becoming prime minister, Trudeau has added more than 108,000 new federal bureaucrats.
That’s a 42 per cent increase in the federal bureaucracy in less than a decade.
Ask yourself, are you getting 42 per cent better services from the federal government? Unless your paycheque comes from taxpayers, the answer is a big fat NO.
While Trudeau’s bureaucracy grew by 42 per cent, Canada’s population grew by 14 per cent.
That means there would be 72,491 fewer federal paper pushers had Trudeau kept growth in the bureaucracy in line with population growth.
It’s not just the size of the bureaucracy that’s ballooning – the cost is too.
The total cost of the federal payroll hit $67 billion last year, a record high. That’s a 68 per cent increase over 2016.
Trudeau gave federal bureaucrats more than one million pay raises in the last four years alone.
Since taking office, Trudeau also rubberstamped about $1.4 billion in taxpayer-funded bonuses to bureaucrats working in federal departments.
The bonuses were paid out despite the Parliamentary Budget Officer finding “less than 50 per cent of [performance] targets are consistently met.”
Then there’s the bonuses at failing Crown corporations.
CBC dished out $15 million in bonuses last year, while their President and CEO Catherine Tait whined about “chronic underfunding” and begged the government for more taxpayer cash. The CBC takes more than $1 billion from taxpayers every year.
The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation dished out $102 million in bonuses over the last four years, while Canadians couldn’t afford to buy a home. The bonuses rained down, despite the CMHC repeatedly claiming it’s “driven by one goal: housing affordability for all.”
The Bank of Canada dished out more than $60 million in bonuses over the last three years, even though it failed to do its one and only job: keep inflation low and around two per cent.
The average annual compensation for a full-time federal bureaucrat is $125,300, when pay, pension and perks are accounted for, according to the PBO.
There are now more than 110,000 federal bureaucrats taking home a six-figure base salary – an increase of 154 per cent since Trudeau took power.
Meanwhile, data from Statistics Canada suggests the average annual salary among all full-time workers in Canada was less than $70,000 in 2023.
Here’s why all this matters:
First, it’s an issue of fairness. The last few years have spelled hardship for Canadians who don’t work for the government, but do pay the bills.
Countless Canadians were sent to the ranks of the unemployed, lost their business and struggled to afford rising rents and costly grocery trips.
They’re paying higher taxes so more highly-paid bureaucrats can take bigger paycheques.
Second, more than half of the federal government’s day-to-day spending is consumed by the bureaucracy. That means any government that wants to fix the budget dumpster fire must shrink the bureaucracy.
Let’s recap:
Taxpayers paid for 108,000 new federal bureaucrats. Taxpayers paid for more than one million pay raises over the last four years. Taxpayers paid for more than $1 billion in bonuses.
And bureaucrats barely meet even half of their performance targets – targets they set for themselves.
It’s clear Trudeau’s bureaucratic bloat isn’t serving taxpayers. It’s time to find a pin and pop Ottawa’s ballooning bureaucracy.
This column was first published in the Western Standard on July 202, 2024.
Economy
Historic decline in Canadian living standards officially reaches five-year mark
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/04/tvrd-fi-people-taxpayers-canadians-image-2024-04-12.jpg)
From the Fraser Institute
By Jake Fuss and Grady Munro
Indeed, according to a recent study, from the middle of 2019 to the end of 2023, GDP per person fell from $59,905 to $58,134—a 3.0 per cent drop over four and a half years.
On Friday, Statistics Canada released its estimate of gross domestic product (GDP) for the second quarter of 2024, which confirmed that despite growth in the overall economy, individual living standards for Canadians declined once again. As a result, the ongoing decline in Canadian living standards has officially reached the five-year mark.
GDP—the final value of all goods and services produced in the economy and the most widely used measure of overall economic activity—grew by 0.5 per cent from April to June of 2024 (after adjusting for inflation). But while the economy continues to grow in the aggregate, inflation-adjusted GDP per person—a broad measure of individual living standards that adjusts for population—actually fell by 0.1 per cent during the second quarter of 2024, down to $58,005.
In other words, while the overall economy is growing, individual living standards are falling. This apparent disconnect is due to Canada’s growing population, and the fact that the rate of economic growth is not fast enough to account for the amount the population has increased. Specifically, while the economy grew by 0.5 per cent from April to June of 2024, the total population grew by 0.6 per cent (or 242,673 people).
These data confirm that Canadians are still suffering a historic decline in living standards.
Indeed, according to a recent study, from the middle of 2019 to the end of 2023, GDP per person fell from $59,905 to $58,134—a 3.0 per cent drop over four and a half years. This was the second-longest and third-deepest decline in living standards since 1985, and was only exceeded in both respects by a decline that lasted more than five years (from June 1989 to September 1994).
Unfortunately for Canadians, this recent decline in living standards persisted through the first three months of 2024, and now the newest data show the decline has continued into the second quarter of 2024. Therefore, as of June 2024, inflation-adjusted GDP per person stood 3.2 per cent below the level it was in the middle of 2019. Again, despite a few brief quarters of positive per-person economic growth since 2019, the general decline in inflation-adjusted GDP has officially reached the five-year mark.
Due to the continued persistence of weak economic growth combined with remarkable population increases, Canadians have suffered a marked and prolonged decrease in living standards over the last five years. This puts Canada just six months away from experiencing the longest decline in individual living standards of the last 40 years—a milestone no one should be eager to reach.
Authors:
Economy
British Columbia’s finances go from bad to worse during Eby’s first full year
![](https://www.todayville.com/calgary/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2024/08/tvrd-fi-bc-premier-david-eby-image-2024-08-30.jpg)
From the Fraser Institute
By Tegan Hill and Grady Munro
You might be able to justify higher spending if it improved programs and services for British Columbians—but it hasn’t. In fact, despite substantial increases in spending in recent years, the province’s health-care wait times have increased and student test scores have declined.
The recent move by BC United to suspend its campaign, essentially clearing the way for a two-party race in this fall’s provincial election, made headlines across British Columbia. But another recent event, which failed to garner much media attention, included some jaw-dropping numbers that will impact provincial finances for years to come.
Last week, the Eby government recently released its year-end report for the 2023/24 fiscal year—this government’s first full year in office. Unfortunately for British Columbians, provincial finances went from bad to worse as the government ran a larger-than-projected budget deficit and accumulated significant debt.
First, let’s take a closer look at the government’s budget—David Eby’s first official budget as premier—which projected a $4.2 billion operating deficit for the 2023/24 fiscal year (the government expected to spend $81.2 billion while only bringing in $77.7 billion in total revenues). For context, in its last budget the Horgan government had also planned to run a $4.2 billion deficit in 2023/24, but expected to take in $7.5 billion less in revenues. Put differently, the Eby government could have ran a budget surplus if it stuck to Horgan’s spending plan. Instead, the Eby government chose to spend away that $7.5 billion.
Given that per-person (inflation-adjusted) program spending was already at its highest level since 1965 (the earliest year of available data) under the Horgan government in 2021 (even excluding COVID-related spending), that’s a massive influx of new spending.
Now, the year-end report shows that the Eby government increased spending even further—$3.5 billion more than its original plan in the 2023 budget. Overall, it ran a $5.0 billion operating deficit in 2023/24, despite once again taking in more revenues ($1.9 billion) than it had originally planned. Again, the government chose to spend away every single dollar of extra revenue, and then some.
And the eye-popping deficit is only part of the picture as longer-term spending on things such as schools, highways and bridges, isn’t included. After accounting for long-term spending on capital projects, the B.C. government accumulated $11.3 billion in net debt (total debt minus financial assets) in a single year from 2022/23 to 2023/24. Government debt must ultimately be financed by taxpayers who spent $3.3 billion in debt interest payments in 2023/24. That’s money no longer available for programs such as health care or education.
According to the Eby government, “with a slower world economy and a growing population, we cannot afford to have a deficit of services. When we provide the services and support people need to have a good life, it makes our economy stronger and more resilient.”
You might be able to justify higher spending if it improved programs and services for British Columbians—but it hasn’t. In fact, despite substantial increases in spending in recent years, the province’s health-care wait times have increased and student test scores have declined. Put differently, according to key indicators, B.C.’s performance on health care and education—the two largest areas of government spending—have worsened despite higher spending.
Higher spending also hasn’t paid off for the B.C. economy, which is stagnating. The province’s per-person GDP, a broad measure of living standards, is expected to be lower this year than in 2018. And the Eby government expects negative growth in per-person GDP this fiscal year.
Unfortunately for British Columbians, the latest year-end report on B.C.’s finances shows the Eby government took a bad fiscal situation and made it worse with higher spending and an even larger budget deficit. The next government, whoever that may be, must deal will this fiscal mess.
Authors:
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