A Treasury Board briefing note lists the cost of the federal payroll at nearly $85 billion a year including police and military, per Blacklock’s Reporter.
The agency in a briefing note calculated 1,700,000 current and former public employees are now enrolled in the federal Public Service Health Care Plan.
“Public service employees impact the lives of Canadians every day through an array of services and programs,” said the 2024 brief.
“The federal government is the largest employer in Canada with total compensation cost of $84.9 billion.”
The Treasury Board counted 611,874 employees including 21,504 in the RCMP and 85,781 civilian staff and military personnel in the Canadian Armed Forces. The figure also included employees of Crown corporations like postal workers, VIA Rail conductors and Farm Credit Canada loans officers.
The $84.9 billion annual figure covered salaries, benefits and pensions. Annual pension payments averaged $37,026 per retiree.
“Between 2017 and 2023 the core public administration has grown consistently,” wrote the agency.
The latest figures follow a 2023 warning by Budget Officer Yves Giroux that expansion of the federal payroll was worrisome.
“Yes, it is worrisome,” Giroux testified at the Commons Government Operations Committee.
“What does it look like for cuts?” asked NDP MP Gord Johns.
“We have not looked at the impact of potential reductions in the public service,” replied Giroux.
“Where would that be? What would it look like? What would be the impact on public services? It is something we will consider doing once we are able to get more information.”
The Budget Office calculated that, excluding military and the RCMP, the federal payroll had grown 26% since 2015. Giroux said he found no commensurate improvement in services.
“There is a system that is broken,” Giroux told a 2023 hearing of the Senate National Finance Committee.
“The government will ‘invest’ or will spend that many millions to do this and do that,” he said. “Okay, but what will be the result?”
Yearly Departmental Results reports that purport to track achievements were self-serving documents used to conceal mediocrity, said Giroux.
“Targets in Departmental Results reports are determined in large part by the public servants responsible for delivering the programs themselves: assistant deputy ministers, approved by deputy ministers, approved by ministers,” he said.
“But in my experience ministers are not very well equipped to challenge their own officials.”
“We end up in a situation where it is public servants responsible for delivering programs that set their own targets and they usually set the bar not too high so it doesn’t look too easy, but neither too low so it’s fairly easy to achieve most of the time.”
“Yet by their own assessment they fail to deliver on many of these. So there is a system that is broken.”