Trudeau’s bureaucrat hiring spree is out of control

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

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.

Related Topics:#CanadianTaxpayersFederation #FrancoTerrazzano CanadaBureaucracy CanadaGovernmentWorkers CanadaPublicServants

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Trudeau Government Capping the Canadian Economy (and Energy Industry) Just to Impress International Agencies

Published on November 7, 2024

Todayville

From EnergyNow.ca

By Kasha Piquette

The incoming Trump Presidency has promised to “unleash American energy” with plans to “free up the vast stores of liquid gold on America’s public land for energy development.” This week, the Trudeau government unveiled the draft details of its plans for a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from the Canadian oil and gas sector. These proposed regulations would cap all greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 35 percent below levels in 2019 with the lofty goal of achieving a 40-45 percent reduction by 2030.

It is a plan that the province of Alberta and others contend would be a cap on production and cause elevated prices for consumer goods across Canada, cost up to 150,000 jobs and reduce national GDP by up to C$1 trillion ($720 billion).

These proposals would make Canada the only oil and natural gas-producing country to attempt an emissions cap on such a scale. The regulations propose to force upstream oil and gas operations to reduce emissions to 35 percent less than they were in 2019 by 2030 to 2032. Notably, while hydrocarbon production increased from 2019 to 2022, Canadian emissions from the sector declined by seven percent.

Perhaps significantly, and much to the apparent annoyance of Alberta’s Premier, the Federal announcement was made slightly ahead of the UN COP29 Climate Summit in Azerbaijan. Per the Paris Agreement, each country submits its climate ambitions to UN as National Determined Contributions (NDCs). However, the federal government has also passed the Net Zero Accountability Act, which, by December 1st, 2024, could require even more aggressive reduction targets for 2035. Does this mean that the federal government may be positioning itself to announce even more ambitious emission targets – all to be announced at that conference?

It is unclear whether, how and in what form, the emissions cap will come into effect. With the next federal election slated for late October 2025 and polls that show the current Liberal-NDP coalition government to be far behind the opposition Conservatives, the federal carbon tax and the proposed emission cap have an uncertain future.

Other business interests have voiced concerns about Canada’s increasingly discordant, incoherent climate policies and regulations, which have caused the Canadian oil and gas sector to be at a competitive disadvantage in the global energy market. Clearly, Alberta considers that the Federal government has, once again, overstepped its constitutional bounds with the proposed emissions cap and, along with its victorious Supreme Court challenge against the Impact Assessment Act, has vowed to launch more court challenges. Alberta and other Provinces have contended that, with regional exemptions, the federal carbon tax is being applied unfairly as a patchwork of standards with Alberta, New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Nova Scotia, and the opposition Conservative party, mounting a growing chorus against the Liberal government’s broader price on carbon. By contrast, the proposed regulations for an emissions cap have been aimed specifically at one industry sector – one that is largely concentrated in western Canada.

Meanwhile, Canadian oil production, aided by the new export capacity of the TransMountain Pipeline completed this year, has grown to a record 5.1 million barrels per day making Canada the prime (60%) source of US crude oil imports in 2023. Meanwhile, the industry has been engaged in considerations for the potential development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to trap greenhouse gasses underground. However, this untested technology would cost billions, needs to be proven on a larger scale and requires industry cooperation combined with all levels of government support.

The Federal announcement, and the hostile reaction from Alberta and possibly other oil-producing provinces, mean that once again, Canadian investment in the oil and gas sector will be confronted with ever more uncertainty as they encounter time-consuming court challenges. These competing political agendas ensure that major Canadian investment decisions will, once again, be deferred while other international jurisdictions race to develop their hydrocarbon export capabilities, investments that are unencumbered by any emissions caps.

Canadians need to consider carefully how these policies and debates are affecting our energy security and standard of living as Canada. In addition to carbon pricing, Canada has already promulgated regulations for EV mandates in the transportation sector, policies that have required tens of billions in subsidies. It has also introduced the complex clean fuel standard and the proposed national clean electrical standards. These policies are affecting not just Canada’s productivity, GDP and exports. By attacking the Western provinces, Ottawa is unnecessarily creating regional tensions and a less politically stable federation. We need to think about how co-operative federalism can be re-established in ways that account for the basic needs of all Canadians – and not just accommodate arbitrary targets for emissions designed to impress international agencies.

Kasha Piquette is an Alberta-based strategic energy advisor and a former Deputy Minister of Alberta Environment and Protected Areas.

Economy

Ottawa’s new ‘climate disclosures’ another investment killer

Published on November 3, 2024

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Matthew Lau

The Trudeau government has demonstrated consistently that its policies—including higher capital gains taxes and a hostile regulatory environment—are entirely at odds with what investors want to see. Corporate head offices are fleeing Canada and business investment has declined significantly since the Trudeau Liberals came to power.

According to the Trudeau government’s emissions reduction plan, “putting a price on pollution is widely recognized as the most efficient means to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.” Fair enough, but a reasonable person might wonder why the same politicians who insist a price mechanism (i.e. carbon tax) is the most efficient policy recently announced relatively inefficient measures such “sustainable investment guidelines” and “mandatory climate disclosures” for large private companies.

The government claims that imposing mandatory climate disclosures will “attract more private capital into Canada’s largest corporations and ensure Canadian businesses can continue to effectively compete as the world races towards net-zero.” That is nonsense. How would politicians Ottawa know better than business owners about how their businesses should attract capital? If making climate disclosures were a good way to help businesses attract capital, the businesses that want to attract capital would make such disclosures voluntarily. There would be no need for a government mandate.

The government has not yet launched the regulatory process for the climate disclosures, so we don’t know exactly how onerous it will be, but one thing is for sure—the disclosures will be expensive and unnecessary, imposing useless costs onto businesses and investors without any measurable benefit, further discouraging investment in Canada. Again, if the disclosures were useful and worthwhile to investors, businesses seeking to attract investment would make them voluntarily.

Even the government’s own announcement casts doubt that increasing business investment is the likely outcome of mandatory climate disclosures. While the government says it’s “sending a clear signal to corporate boards and shareholders, at home and around the world, that Canada is their trusted partner for putting private capital to work in the race to net-zero,” most investors are not looking to put private capital to work to combat climate change. Most investors want to put their capital to work to earn a good financial return, after adjusting for the risk of the investment.

This latest announcement should come as no surprise. The Trudeau government has demonstrated consistently that its policies—including higher capital gains taxes and a hostile regulatory environment—are entirely at odds with what investors want to see. Corporate head offices are fleeing Canada and business investment has declined significantly since the Trudeau Liberals came to power. Capital per worker in Canada is declining due to weak business investment since 2015, and new capital per-Canadian worker in 2024 is barely half of what it is in the United States.

It’s also fair to ask, in the face of these onerous polices—where are the environmental benefits? The government says its climate disclosures are needed for Canada to progress to net-zero emissions and “uphold the Paris climate target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels,” but its net-zero targets are neither feasible nor realistic and the economics literature does not support the 1.5 degrees target.

Finally, when announcing the new climate disclosures, Trudeau Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said they are an important stepping stone to a cleaner economy, which is a “major economic opportunity.” Yet even the Canada Energy Regulator (a federal agency) projects net-zero policies would reduce real GDP per capita, increase inflation of consumer prices and reduce residential space (in other words, reduce living standards).

A major economic opportunity that will increase business investment? Surely not—mandatory climate disclosures will only further reduce our standard of living and impose useless costs onto business and investors, with the sure effect of reducing investment.