Canada’s 375,000 federal public employees now make, on average, $114,000 in salary & benefits. This amount is expected to rise to $129,800 in the next 3 years.
The report which revealed these figures was released by the Parliamentary Budget Officer. It also stated the following:
“Total compensation (per full-time employee) in the federal workforce outpaced not only CPI (inflation), but also that of the Canadian business sector and provinces and territories over the study period.”
Greg Thomas, of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, discusses these outrageous revelations.
Link problem.
Robert, you might want to ALSO note the number of Federal bureaucrats the CPC punted this year. There’s hundreds gone.
Remember Robert, the stick works better -with- the carrot.
This is news to me, I make a hell of a lot less than $114,000 and my pay was determined by act of parliament for the last two contracts. We received less than the inflation rate both times by the way.
I think the key fact is in this quote. “About 72 per cent of the compensation is in salary and wages, while benefits, including pension plan contributions from Ottawa, make up the rest.” For the past 40+ years the government has been spending the pension deductions from federal workers paycheques and also not putting in the matching contributions. Now that many of those civil servants hired on during the Trudeau era expansion of government are retiring their pension money has to be paid out of the current budget.
The Phantom is right, it is not just salary per employee of the regime, total expenditure is the real story.
Conservative Party of Canada first formed government in 2006: total expenditures $220 billion in 2006, current expenditures over $270 billion. Do the math, $114,000 to $130,000 in next 3 years is par for the course for Conservative Party of Canada. Question is: will they break the $300 billion mark in expenditures before or after the 2015 election (2015 budget will likely be just under $300 billion and after election revised over).
That party needs some serious Reform: to get out of a hole, first stop digging.
Al is correct.
Most of the increase is a function of several things – many of them pension related:
Low market returns on funds invested
Delinquent deposits into the pension funds by the govt now have to not just contribute principle but also make up for forgone investment gains
An aging employee population nearing retirement means more contributions to fill the pensions soon to begin
Fewer employees overall means more dollars per employee going into the pensions
On average older employees claim more in healthcare costs meaning that benefit streams cost are far outrunning inflation.
And since most of these employees have been there for many years they likely are at the top of their positions payscales
Thus compared to private organizations with similar demographic trends I suspect that this group of employees isn’t that much different.
Is the bottom line, not the bottom line?
They’ve approved the expenditures since 2006; Harper owns it.
http://www.fedupusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/STOP-DIGGING-HD.jpg
I couldn’t find that great Reform poster.
Fire them, the poor babies might have to sell one of their vacation properties.
Robert, you might want to ALSO note the number of Federal bureaucrats the CPC punted this year. There’s hundreds gone.
OMG. HUNDREDS. That’s like, only an order of magnitude less than the thousands that the CPC government hired in its post-2006 binge.
Pretty soon, if Garneau or Findlay gets elected, the Liberals will be Canada’s real (fiscal) conservative party. Sadly, it was ever thus that they were the only ones or there was no one.
Somebody should read this the CPC. Manning was right! Liberal, Tory same old story.
http://digitalcollections.ucalgary.ca/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/reform&CISOPTR=4853&REC=1
Page 3 reads clear: chronic over-spending by the federal government … by both Liberal and Conservative administrations, has dug Canada into a national debt hole
Tweedledum or Tweedledee,
Twas always thus,
Twill always be.
Cept in Canada, eh?
We also have Tweedledumber,
Lucky we.
Don’t worry, they just have to go along to get along until they get a majority, then we’ll see some real change. Right?
‘Hidden Agenda’ was too well hidden. It is now lost.
… now where did we put that …
kudo, Ray K. and Mike nail it. The Conservative Party has been taken over by the progressive side.
Harper’s day is done We can lo longer afford a Conservative leader who tries to placate the klepto-statist reflexes of the left. Harper has made a lot of half measures and symbolic gestures in rolling bacl 38 years of Liberal fiscal irresponsibility and ciil degeneration. He runs a welfare state maintenabce government. I’m hoping a younger more charismatic personable more conserative leader come forward to challence Harper. It;s the only thing that would get me to buy a party membership again.
Sorry folks, but I can’t give Harper & co. a pass on this one. Wasn’t the old equation about public sector employees something akin to this:
You will essentially have a cushy job for life so in exchange for that, you will make less than people in the private sector.
But something has happened such that the first half the equation has stayed the same but now many of these people make more – wayyyyy more – than people in the private sector. This is incredibly wrong and a very destructive omen for Canada.
On a personal note, for some time now I have grown apathetic/dismayed with my political choices here in British Columbia. I can either vote for the corrupt & swarmy Christy Clark of the Liberals or the Communist Dweeb of the NDP. There is no viable 3rd choice. It’s starting to look very similar federally. I can’t believe I’m in the minority with this opinion.
Robert, I know the feeling.
Yeah well, blaming Harper is like blaming the new husband because the X spent the retirement funds and the kid’s college fund.
The Libranos raided CPP, etc to pay for their excesses while they were “balancing the budget”…paying for a gun registry, cancelled Helo purchases and so on and so on…
Then there is the fact that reforming the swivellel service is like getting Hamas to negotiate in good faith. Hell….they can’t get Enviro-Can to stop playing the COAGW game or Justice to give up the registry.
Shakespeare never had to deal with swivellel servants….otherwise he would have had a better impression of lawyers.(“…..first we hang all the lawyers….”
Ah yes the petty jealousy crowd has spoken. How dare the public service be paid more than they. What’s more I think Hugo Cháve… er …. PM Harper should jump right on that and make certain that everyone is paid the same. Collective bargaining, legally binding contracts be damned! Those rich bureaucrats are being paid more than me! Why I believe that if PM Harper does not start acting a lot more like Hugo Chávez in this matter I won’t vote for him anymore.
Yes folks the wages of way too many people are way too high for what they contribute to society as a whole. The only question is how do you go about fixing it. I suppose you could do a Special Ed Stelmach and simply tear up the contracts but is that really the precedent we want to set? A market economy doesn’t work very well when one party or the other can change the terms of a contract arbitrarily.
Hey I know how about if you reduce the size of the workforce and bring new hires in at a lower pay scale; kinda like what PM Harper is doing.
Using Trudeau to excuse Harper’s failings is like Obama continuing to blame Bush. Harper owns it.
Harper has a nice provision in the party constitution that their is no leadership vote at party conventions so long as he forms government. Likewise the brass put in the no riding challenge to sitting MP provision which takes away a means of keeping pressure on the right.
The only direct pressure on the incumbants is at the election from the Liberals, NDP, Greens, BQ so they will tend to trend left as that is the easy road. Reform pulled the Liberals right. Only pull on CPC is presently on the left.
Clearly some good CPC MPs but a lot look like PCs.
The Libranos raided CPP
Lies. The Liberals balanced the budget with spending cuts we will never see under Harper. Never ever.
Yeah well, blaming Harper is like blaming the new husband because the X spent the retirement funds and the kid’s college fund.
I guess you’re willing to give 1st term Obama a pass too right?
It’s too bad you’re only just opening your eyes to what libertarians (being smarter) have known for a long time. Could’ve prevented a lot of damage.
Long-term cost of F-35 jet fighter almost $45 billion, new report confirms
OTTAWA — The Defence Department has pegged the full cost of Canada buying, owning, replacing and disposing of 65 F-35 stealth fighters at $44.8 billion over 42 years, according to a report tabled in the House of Commons Tuesday. It’s the first time Canadians have been presented the full price Canada can expect to bear all the way from the aircraft’s development through to disposal, and it far surpasses any previous figure made public.
The report comes after years of criticism over what has been seen as the Harper government’s refusal to fully disclose how much the F-35s will cost.
The costs have also been made public as the government has been trying to prove to Canadians that it has truly pushed the “reset” button on its plans to purchase F-35s.
Yet even the numbers included in the report aren’t the full story, as the Department of National Defence warned that “these estimates will change as more information becomes available.”
Among the unknowns are inflation, exchange rate changes and a variety of other unknown costs and variables that could affect the cost estimates by billions of dollars.
There are also a number of built-in assumptions that, if proven false, would also raise the price tag.
http://o.canada.com/2012/12/12/long-term-cost-of-f-35-jet-fighter-almost-45-billion/
Apparently the ratio of the federal bureaucracy to the size of the Canadian population is lower that it was during the past decades.
“Despite recent growth trends, the number of federal public servants per 100 Canadians is lower now than it was prior to the program review in the 1990s, according to the notes. In 2010, the public service comprised 0.83 per cent of the Canadian population, which remains below the figure from the 1980s and early 1990s of close to one per cent.”National Post
“Since the Conservatives took office in 2006, some of the federal departments and agencies with the largest absolute growth include the Department of National Defence (nearly 5,000 more employees), Correctional Services Canada (more than 3,000 new workers) and the Canada Border Services Agency (close to 2,600 more employees).
The fastest-growing departments in percentage increase since 2006 include the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (62 per cent), Treasury Board Secretariat (61 per cent) and Canada School of Public Service (57 per cent).” NP November 29, 2011.
As for wages, benefits and pensions that’s heavily in the control of the public service unions, and despite my loathing of unions, there is no easy way to get rid of them.
I am Public Servant and despite all the crap from the public and less than professional senior management and a sadly bungling , if well meaning political leadership. I am proud of that fact. I started in the ships, which meant we were one of the lowest paid sailors on the coast. As a Rescue specialist and diver in the CCG, I made a whopping $38,000 including my $700 a year dive pay for zero vis diving while pulling bodies out of cars and sunken boat.
Now I review projects that range from the million to the billions and I sit across from consultants that generally make double of what I do. Currently my after take home pay is almost $50,000. Actually I am happy with that and don’t expect a pay raise anytime soon.
Now you want to beat on the Public Servants because the government didn’t fund it’s portions of the pension, despite painfully obvious greying of the public service and population in general. Also perhaps someone should have a word with Paul Martin about all that money they took from the fund to make themselves look good.
If you want to save money, empower lower managers, give them control over their budget and let them find ways to save money. Get rid of standing offers, they milk the system, in the 90’s we went to the used office store and replaced about 8 chairs for $800. Under the standing offer system we have to buy from a selection of chairs and they range from $500-800 each. Coat hangers were $110 for 10 last time I looked. (gave my assistant $5 from my pocket and sent them to the dollar store instead)
I have about 6 bosses and about 5 advisors above me, do you think we can get a decision about something anytime soon? Don’t be holding your breath. Despite the problems and the hate, there are a lot of Public Servants that work hard to serve you and protect your interests and your money. The government spends about a $1.00 to ensure 10 cents is spent as per Treasury board polices. Once you are inside the beast you will tear your hair out at the system as it exist.
The compensation disparity is only part of the story.
20 percent of Canadians are employed by government. And at any one time, 11 % of the remaining 80 percent (the private sector)is engaged in a government contract.
Do the (simple)math: for very 71 people working in the private sector there are 29 people who derive their income through taxpayers.
And I haven’t even factored in pensioners, the unemployed, the disabled, and welfare recipients.
But don’t worry, it can’t last much longer. You can only kick the ‘future generation responsibilty’ can down the road so far.
Matter of fact, go ahead, double their salaries, the sooner we hit the wall, the better.
Unless I’ve pooched the math, the US federal deficit this year will be 1.4 trillion.
With a rough population amount of 300 million, that’s $4666.00 per citizen.
Canada’s federal deficit this year will be approx. 21 Billion.
With roughly 35 million population, that’s 600.00 per citizen.
And you want to pillory Harper?
They (Government0 are creating a new class of Canadians. Ones untoucchable by Inflation or job loss. Something ordinary Canucks will never see. A class of untouchables economicaly that are beholden to know one but Government with laws to protect them even from them.
Until public sector unions are illegal nothing’s gonna change.
Well, I’m going to pull a The Phantom and say, “Paint me skeptical”.
The story didn’t seem quite right to me, especially considering that some around here are of the delusional belief that you need to vote Liberal for a true right-wing alternative. (Bwahahahahaha *pause for breath* Bwahahahaha, etc.). I was especially concerned with the criticism coming from the CTF, who basically put Dalton McGuinty into office with their charade about him signing the Mike Harris declaration about not running deficits and not raising taxes (Bwahahahaha, etc.), although Greg Thomas is certainly better than some of the other characters that have preceded him.
So, after looking around, I found this:
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-621-m/11-621-m2007053-eng.htm#n2
which includes this little tater:
“In March 2006, just over 380,700 individuals were working for the federal government, down slightly from nearly 382,000 in March 1995. The number of federal employees fell to a low of about 326,500 in March 1999, and since the turn of the millennium has been on the rebound. In terms of rates, there were 11.7 federal employees for every 1,000 Canadians in 2006, down from 13.0 in 1995.
Between 1999 and 2006, federal employment increased by just over 54,000, an average annual pace of growth of 2.2%.
It is relevant to examine the occupational, gender and age structure of federal employees during a period in which the labour market saw a rise in women’s participation, a rise in the average age of workers and an economy that was increasingly knowledge-based. This study uses the Core (federal) Public Administration for making comparisons with Canadian workers in general.”
If you read the whole thing, which you should, actually, you’ll discover that the number of Dominion government employees has fallen from 380,700 at the time that Stephen Harper took office to about 375,000 today (according to Robert’s post), including the increase in Her Majesty’s forces.
So, just for fun, why don’t we extrapolate forward and say that, er, “Canada’s population” has increased at the same rate (roughly 400,000 per year) since 2006? So, if we did, we’d find, on the same basis, that the number of Dominion government employees has fallen to 10.75 per 1000 Canadians, from 11.7 (a 0.9% decrease; How are those Liberals working for ya’ so far, exactly? Bwahahahahah, pausing for breath, etc.).
When you factor in the change of occupational qualification requirements from there, as indicated above, you might want to consider changing your evidence, actually.
Now do I really need to get on to the F-35? Well, okay. So let’s say it’s $30 billion over 30 years and then it’s $44.8 over 42 years. And that Stephen Harper’s problem? (Bwahahahahaha, *pause for the oxygen tank* Bwahahahahahahah!).
LAS, I think you’re okay — but you can’t really fool me. Legalize, regulate and tax?
(Bwahahahahah, *oxygen please*, Bwahahahaha, etc.)
the CTF, who basically put Dalton McGuinty into office
Lies.
Your other assertions are questionable.
the population of the federal public service (core public servants) soared 34 per cent over the past decade, to 282,955 last year from 211,925 a decade earlier. The increase is nearly 40 per cent if you compare it to the number of employees in the late 1990s.
http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/11/29/huge-growth-in-public-servants-under-tories/
The Liberals remain the only possibility of center-right governance. A slim possibility at that. Laugh all you want you’re still the clown.
The federal government needs a lot more pruning, but just for a little perspective:
Tories went off 2011 script, quietly cut spending by $8-billion
LAS, have you forgotten the Chretien years? No savings or honesty there.
LAS, 9:49p.m.–
POST STARTS HERE:
I’m certainly glad that you can write in one-word sentences, because otherwise your grammar is unforgivably bad, considering that you are such an erudite, uncorrupted and all-knowing Liberal.
As Jean Chretien said to John Nunziata, who opposed the GST, “I wish him all the best in future”, or words to that effect.
POST ENDS HERE — JUST IN CASE YOU DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH YOU NEED TO READ.
P.S. We can get you a version with pictures, if you need one.
Any of you Harper bashes ever sit back and extrapolate as to what Canada might look like under the sedition coalition had they been able to steal power?
Hint: look south
‘Yeah well, blaming Harper is like blaming the new husband because the X spent the retirement funds and the kid’s college fund.’
So true sasquatch at December 12, 2012 2:35 PM.
Ward, like Americans, Canadians here have never considered the consequences of electing that troika that was coming down the pipes like a blood red tide. That coalition would have had the crazed Ducippe driving the Canada ship of state!! Agenda 21 was well on the way to being our way of life …we escaped in 2008 by a hair…but that Agenda 21 is still in the works; we live day to day and pray.
LAS I suggest that you read the rest of the National Post article, from which I also quoted, and you’ll see that your quote doesn’t accurately reflect reality.
Speaking of reality, could you outline how the Liberal policies operate within a ‘centre-right’ ideology?
Further to my post last evening, I’d also point out that the 2012 budget eliminates a further 19,000 civil service positions (and for their efforts, Mr. Flaherty and Mr. Harper reaped the wrath of the public sector unions, the CBC, etc., etc., etc.).
So, if the size of the civil service is actually reduced by that 19,000 over the next two years, that would take the number of employees down to 356,000 or so, which would be about 9.97 employees per 1,000 Canadians — a reduction of about 14.8% since Mr. Harper took office (which could also be looked at as a productivity gain).
Are the salaries paid justified? I am not in a position to evaluate the effectiveness of the long-term enhancement of skill-sets among Dominion civil servants. But I do know that fixating on one statistic in a vacuum is not appropriate in this case, any more than is in with the Hannah Thibideau hysteria over the alleged increase in cost of the F-35 — so if I keep my car for five years, at an annual cost of “x”, it’ll cost 5x, but if I keep it for 7 years, it’ll cost 7x.
Scandal! Rise up, you stupid people! Don’t you understand that Stephen Harper is raiding the federal Treasury to build outhouses in Muskoka!
What, exactly is the the big deal about that? The only way I save money is to give up driving after five years. Oh, wait a minute, I forgot: there are quite a few around that think we ought to get out of the military business altogether — including all those right-wingers in the Liberal Party who supported all them there Trudeau-Chretien defence cuts.
I think there are really good reasons to look at an alternative to the F-35 or at civil service payroll costs, but all we get from the media is half-witted disinformation.
Colin @ 4:45;
I appreciated your post. Most Canadians have no idea what role many federal workers do, especially out west.
In my limited experience I have never seen a bureacrat, public or private, that did not cover their butt in such a way that they had to be accountable. Private enterprise usually go through cycles where various functions within the company can gain dominance. When the pencil pushers gain control look out as jobs usually get cut.
Management within the Federal service know that politicans are transitory. Not only do they not know how the system works but they probably don’t have the skills to learn. Hire a consultant, famous last words. Sometimes that alone can get them thru to the next election. Self assessment is another process than can gobble up money and time.
A real FUBAR situation. It takes real political committment for change and most politicans are more worried about being re-elected.
I have been tearing my hair out for the last few days trying to get people to sign off on consultation issues so we can issue approvals, but everyone is afraid to wear it if things go to court. In part I don’t blame them as your higher ups will throw you to wolves to protect themselves. Frontline managers need the authority to do things and look after their budgets and carry the accountability for the mistakes. If you do things and make decisions you will eventually make a mistake, it’s impossible not to. What we need is a management that accepts that as the cost of doing business and will defend their staff.
Keep in mind also that the government has to hire from the same pool of people as the private companies, if you don’t offer competitive compensation then you are not going to attract decent people. In 2008 we struggled to find anyone who was willing to move to Vancouver for the wages we are paying. When you work for a very large organization you must have a high tolerance for BS, because you have to deal with so much of it. To be frank the CPC ain’t helping. This “Shared Services” is likely to be yet another Cluster-F**k and everyone is scared of their own shadow and the most mundane stuff has to be vetted at the Minister level leading to long lead times and waste of money/staff time. I would have to say risk tolerance in the civil service has gone down under the CPC, despite that not being the CPC intent.
I just don’t get the westerners.
The Pc Party has done nothing but make things worse.
There are some many real issues that are never at the table. Like the corrupt RCMP, how does someone like Chretien take money from a known mafia man in a bathroom stall and then make him a senator and is never charged.At the very least The head of the RCMP should be up on charges, and in jail. The whole fiat monetary system that’s designed to keep you poor, never gets the light of day, with the banksters laughing at you and running amuck. Ripping us off everyday for billions.Why should this surprise you when someone makes a $129,800 when the banks print billions out of thin air every day, so why is this news anyway.