Time to cut government fat(cats)!

News release from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

You’re not just paying for more government bureaucrats than ever.

You’re also paying for more government executives than ever to oversee those bureaucrats as they fail to deliver for you.

The federal government’s c-suite has ballooned by 42 per cent since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took power. And those executives are paid up to $255,607 every year, on top of the bonuses and benefits they rake in.

And speaking of overpaid government executives…

CBC President Catherine Tait might take a bonus and severance pay out when she leaves the state broadcaster in the new year.

All that and more in this week’s Taxpayer Waste Watch. Enjoy.

Franco.

Time to cut the fat(cats)!

Forget Springfield, Ohio, we’ve got a problem with cats of a different sort in Ottawa – government fat cats.

Everywhere you look – from the Prime Minister’s Office to the Crown corporations to the departments – the cost and size of the bureaucracy is up.

Take the federal c-suite, which has increased by 42 per cent under the watch of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

There were 6,414 executives in the federal government when Trudeau took power.

Fast forward to today, and that number has jumped to 9,155.

That means Trudeau isn’t just ballooning the size of government in general, he’s also swelling the ranks of its most expensive bureaucrats.

Records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation reveal growth among every class of executive under Trudeau.

The salaries for those executives range from $134,827 to $255,607 per year, not including benefits or bonuses.

And you better believe those executives are taking bonuses.

About 90 per cent of federal executives get a bonus each year, according to additional records obtained by the CTF.

In fact, Trudeau dished out $202 million in bonuses in 2022, with the average bonus among executives being $18,252.

All told, compensation for federal executives was $1.95 billion that year, which represented a 41 per cent increase over 2015.

The size of the entire federal bureaucracy has also increased by 42 per cent under Trudeau, with more than 108,000 new bureaucrats added to the taxpayer dole.

Spending on federal bureaucrats hit a record high last year, at $67.4 billion, representing a 68 per cent increase since 2016.

Meanwhile, spending on consultants has also reached a record high, with expenditures for 2023 sitting at $21.6 billion.

So let’s get this straight.

Trudeau ballooned the government c-suite by 42 per cent.

He’s added 108,000 new bureaucrats.

He’s spending 68 per cent more on those bureaucrats, while also dropping more money on outside consultants than any prime minister in Canadian history.

And yet, despite all this new staff, all this outside help, and all this spending, government departments still can’t hit 50 per cent of their performance targets each year.

How is that even possible?

Can someone – anyone – explain what the heck is going on?

Because only one thing is for certain: taxpayers are getting screwed.

CBC President Catherine Tait won’t rule out bonus, severance

The president of everyone’s favourite state broadcaster – Catherine Tait – was back in Ottawa this week to answer questions about CBC bonuses.

During her testimony at the House of Commons Heritage Committee, Tait was asked by Conservative MP Damien Kurek if she would commit to not taking a severance pay out or a bonus when her term at the CBC ends in January 2025.

“I consider that to be a personal matter,” Tait said.

Does that sound like a “personal matter” to you? We certainly don’t think so.

Tait taking a taxpayer-funded bonus or severance pay out, on top of her six-figure, taxpayer-funded salary, is the furthest thing in the world from a “personal matter.”

It’s your money, so you have every right to know.

Canada falls behind on tax competitiveness

The results are in and they’re not good…

The Tax Foundation’s 2024 International Tax Competitiveness Index was released this week. The report compares tax systems for the 38 countries that belong to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

And the report shows that Canada has fallen behind many of our peers on tax competitiveness.

Canada ranked 17th on overall tax competitiveness, two spots worse than last year.

Canada ranked 31st on individual tax competitiveness.

Canada ranked 26th on business tax competitiveness.

Canada ranked 25th on property tax competitiveness.

The report also noted that Canada’s capital gain tax is “well above” the OECD average.

VIDEO: Here’s why Trudeau’s carbon tax is a scam

The Trudeau government is running a $7-million ad campaign to try to spin Canadians on the carbon tax.

The CTF is fighting back with a campaign of our own.

In the video below, CTF Federal Director Franco Terrazzano refutes Trudeau’s favourite talking points with cold hard facts and explains why the carbon tax is a scam.

Related Topics:#CanadianTaxpayersFederation #FrancoTerrazzano CBCPresidentCatherineTait GovernmentBureaucrats

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Worst kept secret—red tape strangling Canada’s economy

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

In the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S.

According to a new Statistics Canada report, government regulation has grown over the years and it’s hurting Canada’s economy. The report, which uses a regulatory burden measure devised by KPMG and Transport Canada, shows government regulatory requirements increased 2.1 per cent annually from 2006 to 2021, with the effect of reducing the business sector’s GDP, employment, labour productivity and investment.

Specifically, the growth in regulation over these years cut business-sector investment by an estimated nine per cent and “reduced business start-ups and business dynamism,” cut GDP in the business sector by 1.7 percentage points, cut employment growth by 1.3 percentage points, and labour productivity by 0.4 percentage points.

While the report only covered regulatory growth through 2021, in the past four years an avalanche of new regulations has made the already existing problem of overregulation worse.

The Trudeau government in particular has intensified its regulatory assault on the extraction sector with a greenhouse gas emissions cap, new fuel regulations and new methane emissions regulations. In the last few years, federal diktats and expansions of bureaucratic control have swept the auto industry, child care, supermarkets and many other sectors.

Again, the negative results are evident. Over the past nine years, Canada’s cumulative real growth in per-person GDP (an indicator of incomes and living standards) has been a paltry 1.7 per cent and trending downward, compared to 18.6 per cent and trending upward in the United States. Put differently, if the Canadian economy had tracked with the U.S. economy over the past nine years, average incomes in Canada would be much higher today.

Also in the past nine years, business investment in Canada has fallen while increasing more than 30 per cent in the U.S. on a real per-person basis. Workers in Canada now receive barely half as much new capital per worker than in the U.S., and only about two-thirds as much new capital (on average) as workers in other developed countries.

Consequently, Canada is mired in an economic growth crisis—a fact that even the Trudeau government does not deny. “We have more work to do,” said Anita Anand, then-president of the Treasury Board, last August, “to examine the causes of low productivity levels.” The Statistics Canada report, if nothing else, confirms what economists and the business community already knew—the regulatory burden is much of the problem.

Of course, regulation is not the only factor hurting Canada’s economy. Higher federal carbon taxes, higher payroll taxes and higher top marginal income tax rates are also weakening Canada’s productivity, GDP, business investment and entrepreneurship.

Finally, while the Statistics Canada report shows significant economic costs of regulation, the authors note that their estimate of the effect of regulatory accumulation on GDP is “much smaller” than the effect estimated in an American study published several years ago in the Review of Economic Dynamics. In other words, the negative effects of regulation in Canada may be even higher than StatsCan suggests.

Whether Statistics Canada has underestimated the economic costs of regulation or not, one thing is clear: reducing regulation and reversing the policy course of recent years would help get Canada out of its current economic rut. The country is effectively in a recession even if, as a result of rapid population growth fuelled by record levels of immigration, the GDP statistics do not meet the technical definition of a recession.

With dismal GDP and business investment numbers, a turnaround—both in policy and outcomes—can’t come quickly enough for Canadians.

Matthew Lau

Adjunct Scholar, Fraser Institute

Business

‘Out and out fraud’: DOGE questions $2 billion Biden grant to left-wing ‘green energy’ nonprofit`

Published on February 22, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The EPA under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a ‘green energy’ group that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the Biden administration awarded $2 billion to a “green energy” nonprofit that appears to have been little more than a means to enrich left-wing activists such as former Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams.

Founded in 2023 as a coalition of nonprofits, corporations, unions, municipalities, and other groups, Power Forward Communities (PFC) bills itself as “the first national program to finance home energy efficiency upgrades at scale, saving Americans thousands of dollars on their utility bills every year.” It says it “will help homeowners, developers, and renters swap outdated, inefficient appliances with more efficient and modernized options, saving money for years ahead and ensuring our kids can grow up with cleaner, pollutant-free air.”

The organization’s website boasts more than 300 member organizations across 46 states but does not detail actual activities. It does have job postings for three open positions and a form for people to sign up for more information.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project, along with new EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, are raising questions about the $2 billion grant PFC received from the Biden EPA’s National Clean Investment Fund (NCIF), ostensibly for the “affordable decarbonization of homes and apartments throughout the country, with a particular focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities.”

PFC’s announcement of the grant is the organization’s only press release to date and is alarming given that the organization had somehow reported only $100 in revenue at the end of 2023.

“I made a commitment to members of Congress and to the American people to be a good steward of tax dollars and I’ve wasted no time in keeping my word,” Zeldin said. “When we learned about the Biden administration’s scheme to quickly park $20 billion outside the agency, we suspected that some organizations were created out of thin air just to take advantage of this.” Zeldin previously announced the Biden EPA had deposited the $20 billion in a Citibank account, apparently to make it harder for the next administration to retrieve and review it.

“As we continue to learn more about where some of this money went, it is even more apparent how far-reaching and widely accepted this waste and abuse has been,” he added. “It’s extremely concerning that an organization that reported just $100 in revenue in 2023 was chosen to receive $2 billion. That’s 20 million times the organization’s reported revenue.”

Daniel Turner, executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Beacon that in his opinion “for an organization that has no experience in this, that was literally just established, and had $100 in the bank to receive a $2 billion grant — it doesn’t just fly in the face of common sense, it’s out and out fraud.”

Prominent among PFC’s insiders is Abrams, the former Georgia House minority leader best known for persistent false claims about having the state’s gubernatorial election stolen from her in 2018. Abrams founded two of PFC’s partner organizations (Southern Economic Advancement Project and Fair Count) and serves as lead counsel for a third group (Rewiring America) in the coalition. A longtime advocate of left-wing environmental policies, Abrams is also a member of the national advisory board for advocacy group Climate Power.