A senior Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) executive earning $177,000 a year has lost her bid to claim a performance bonus for months she was not at work.
The executive, an assistant director, filed a grievance after being denied $4,995 in bonus pay for a four-month absence in 2022, calling the decision “punitive” and “unfair.”
However, the Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board rejected her claim, ruling that the CRA was simply following policy.
“There is no arguable case that the Agency’s decision was disciplinary,” wrote adjudicator Christopher Rootham. “It was simply following its existing policy.”
CRA rules require executives to be actively working to receive performance-based pay. “The policy provides that executives’ performance is assessed annually,” Rootham wrote, citing the Procedures For Performance Management Of The Executive Group.
The federal government’s “performance pay” program routinely awards five-figure bonuses to executives across departments and agencies. A 2023 review found that 98% of federal managers received a bonus, with the Treasury Board reporting that 6,738 executives across the public service were awarded a total of $190.7 million in extra pay in 2022.
Some Crown corporations have awarded particularly large bonuses. The Canada Infrastructure Bank gave every executive an $85,200 bonus in 2022, while VIA Rail paid $10,000 bonuses to 650 managers during the pandemic, even as it laid off 28% of its workforce.
Despite the widespread use of performance bonuses, the Treasury Board has defended the payments.
“Canada has a world-class public service with employees committed to providing the highest level of service to Canadians,” then-Treasury Board President Mona Fortier wrote in a 2022 report to Parliament.
The bonuses continued even as cabinet warned of economic difficulties. In late 2023, then-Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland acknowledged financial strain for many Canadians.
“Times feel tough,” she said, adding that further broad government support was not feasible without driving up inflation.
