While the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives warned last week that over 57,000 federal public service jobs could be cut between now and 2028 due to Prime Minister Mark Carney’s restraint measures – assuming they occur – the reality is that a downsizing of the federal civil service is long overdue.

During Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government from 2015 to 2024, the federal bureaucracy grew in size by 43%, from 257,034 employees to 367,772, an increase of 110,738.

That far outstrips the 15% increase in Canada’s population between 2015 (35,606,734) and 2024 (41,012,563).

The 43% growth rate of the federal public service also outpaced the 18.5% real growth rate of the economy, the 15.5% growth in total employment and the 25.5% growth of employment across the entire public sector, counting all orders of government.

As Peter Nicholson, a former senior federal public servant and business executive who cited these figures in a policy paper last month for the Johnson-Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Saskatchewan observed:

“There is no reason to expect the growth of the civil service to match, much less exceed, population growth … By 2024, the number of federal public servants per 1,000 population had reached the highest ratio (9.0) in at least 40 years during which governments of various ideological stripes........

© Edmonton Sun