Federal Bureaucracy Grew Twice as Fast as Canadas Population With $7 Billion Cost: Taxpayer Group

The Canadian government increased its bureaucracy by 86,303 more employees since 2015. Iryna Tolmachova/ShutterstockThe federal government’s bureaucracy has grown at twice the rate of Canada’s population, adding an estimated $7 billion in costs, according to a taxpayer group.From 2016 to 2026, the federal public service grew by 33 percent to 345,282 employees, while the Canadian population grew by 15 percent over the same period.Even as Ottawa cut its payroll by 3.5 percent between March 2025 and March 2026, Ottawa still has 86,303 more employees than it did in 2016, according to Franco Terrazzano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. While the average full-time compensation for a federal bureaucrat is estimated to be $161,900 for 2026, federal bureaucracy growth has outpaced that of Canada’s population, with several departments and agencies more than doubling their number of employees since 2016.“Taxpayers are still paying too much for too many paper pushers in Ottawa,” Terrazzano said. “Prime Minister Mark Carney needs to make the bureaucracy more affordable to provide meaningful tax relief and stop borrowing money.”Terrazzano added that, had the government grown in line with the population, taxpayers would have saved about $7 billion this year. He highlighted seven federal departments and agencies that have grown by more than 100 percent, including Infrastructure Canada (376 percent), Women and Gender Equality Canada (301 percent), RCMP External Review Committee (214 percent), Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (174 percent), Elections Canada (154 percent), Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (150 percent), and Impact Assessment Agency of Canada (116 percent).Meanwhile, the greatest number of employees were added to Employment and Social Development Canada since 2016, with an increase of 13,228 people—a 59 percent hike in the past decade. The Canada Revenue Agency had the second highest number of employees gained since 2016, with 9,290 added to its staff—a 24 percent increase.Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer projects that Ottawa will spend $79.4 billion on the bureaucracy this year, up from a projected $69.2 billion last year. Terrazzano added that the cost of federal bureaucracy also increased 80 percent between the years 2015 and 2024. “The number of federal employees is shrinking a little bit, but Carney still has lots of work to do to shrink Ottawa’s bloated bureaucracy,” he said.A majority of Canadians are in favor of cutting the size of the federal government, according to a 2025 Leger poll. And, according to the poll, half of Canadians feel that federal services have gotten worse since 2016, despite the increase of the size of its bureaucracy.