The federal government approved pay raises for more than 336,000 public servants last year while departments continued to miss nearly half of their own performance targets, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.The records show 336,188 federal employees — about 78% of the public service — received salary increases in 2025. By comparison, just 596 employees, or 0.14%, saw their pay reduced."Taxpayers have every reason to question why the vast majority of bureaucrats are taking bigger paycheques when departments can barely pass their own test," said Franco Terrazzano, the CTF's federal director."Federal bureaucrats shouldn't feel entitled to more money every year just because they're on the taxpayer payroll."The CTF noted annual pay increases have become routine across the federal public service.About 385,000 federal employees received raises in 2024, while Ottawa approved more than one million pay increases between 2020 and 2023.Despite repeated requests, the federal government has not disclosed the total cost of those wage increases."This isn't the first time the government has refused to disclose compensation costs," the CTF said, noting it has launched legal challenges against both the CBC and the Bank of Canada over compensation disclosure."Taxpayers are on the hook for another wage hike, but the government won't tell Canadians the price tag," said CTF general counsel Devin Drover."That's another failure of Canada's broken access-to-information system. Taxpayers pay these wages and they have a right to know the bill.".The taxpayer group also argues the raises come despite poor departmental performance.Federal performance reports published by Ottawa show departments failed to meet at least half of their own targets in two of the past five years. The best performance came in 2024, when departments achieved just 54% of their stated objectives.The report also cites Fraser Institute research showing government employees earned an average wage premium of 4.8% over comparable private-sector workers after accounting for factors including age, education, industry and gender.Meanwhile, the Public Service Alliance of Canada is negotiating new collective agreements and has criticized the federal government's wage offers as "insulting" and "unacceptable.""What's really insulting and unacceptable is how much the bureaucracy costs taxpayers and how little it delivers," Terrazzano said."Prime Minister Mark Carney needs to shrink the federal bureaucracy to stop borrowing money and provide Canadians with the tax relief they need."Carney has previously pledged his government would "spend less," while Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne has said the size of the federal public service must return "to a more sustainable level."However, Parliamentary Budget Officer projections indicate the cost of the federal bureaucracy will continue to rise.The PBO estimates the public service will cost taxpayers $79.4 billion this year, exceeding the inflation-adjusted cost of the bureaucracy during former prime minister Justin Trudeau's final year in office.According to the Public Accounts, the overall cost of the federal bureaucracy increased 80% between 2015 and 2024.The CTF also pointed to a Leger poll showing half of Canadians believe federal government services have deteriorated since 2016 despite the expansion of the public service. The same poll found most Canadians support reducing the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy.
