The 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….