45,000 more federal bureaucrats receiving six-figure salary than before the pandemic

OTTAWA, ON: The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the federal government to implement a sunshine list as government documents reveal 114,433 employees received more than $100,000 in 2021.

“We’re not all in this together,” said Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director of the CTF. “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 highly paid bureaucrats.”

A total of 114,433 federal government employees received more than $100,000 in salary in 2021. The number of federal government employees receiving more than $100,000 increased by 45,426 during the pandemic, according to access to information requests filed by the CTF. 

The table below shows the number of employees that should be included in a federal sunshine list that discloses salaries of more than $100,000 annually. 

Prince Edward Island and Quebec are the only provincial governments that do not provide their taxpayers with compensation disclosure lists.

There were 312,825 federal government employees that received a pay raise during the pandemic, according to an access to information request filed by the CTF. The federal government has no records of its employees ever receiving a pay cut, according to research from Secondstreet.org. From March 2020 to March 2021, the federal government added 19,151 extra employees. 

Members of Parliament took three pay raises during the pandemic, ranging from an extra $10,600 for backbench MPs to an extra $21,200 for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau compared to pre-pandemic salaries.

“Taxpayers deserve to know that 45,000 more federal bureaucrats are receiving a six-figure salary than before the pandemic,” said Terrazzano. “Taxpayers can’t afford the ballooning bureaucracy and that means the government should stop hiring so many highly paid bureaucrats.”