The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) is calling on the federal government to rein in its labour costs after a Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) report showed large increases in recent years. .“The Trudeau government needs to take some air out of its ballooning bureaucracy,” said CTF Federal Director Franco Terrazzano in a Friday press release. .“Struggling Canadian taxpayers can’t afford more bureaucrats with bigger salaries.”.The report said the Canadian government’s labour costs are expected to reach almost $55 billion this year, which is about $130,000 per full-time employee. It said compensation per employee increased by an average of 4% each year for seven years. .“Based on the government’s spending plans, PBO projects that over the next five years the number of FTEs will reach over 409,000 by 2026-27,” said the PBO. .“By that time, PBO projects personnel expenditures to reach $59.1 billion.”.The report said the number of Canadian government employees grew by about 49,000 employees, from 342,000 to 391,000, between 2015 and 2020. .“It’s not fair to ask the Canadians who lost their job or took a pay cut during the pandemic to pay higher taxes so the federal government can add thousands of bureaucrats with bigger salaries,” said Terrazzano. .The CTF released a report in January showing 528,347 federal and provincial government employees received a pay raise during the COVID-19 pandemic..READ MORE: CTF: 528,000 government workers got pay rai$e$ during pandemic.Not one government within Canada lowered bureaucrat wages. .“We’ve seen a tale of two pandemics: one full of private sector pain and the other full of financial gain for bureaucrats and politicians,” said Terrazzano.
