Ottawa's pandemic hiring boom adds billions to federal payroll

A pandemic-fuelled hiring spree has grown the federal civil service by more than 35,000 people since April 2020, according to a CBC News analysis, helping add billions to Ottawa's payroll costs.

Figures supplied by the Treasury Board and other ministries and departments show the federal government added 19,151 jobs in the fiscal year ending March 31, 2021, and another 16,356 positions in fiscal 2022. All told, the feds now employ 335,957 people across the country: a 12 per cent increase from pre-COVID times, and the greatest number of public servants in Canadian history.

An additional 28,176 bureaucrats were on long-term leave in 2022, not receiving their full salaries, but many of whom remain eligible for taxpayer-funded top-ups, benefits, insurance and pension contributions.

In fiscal 2021 Ottawa spent $59.623 billion on personnel costs, including salaries, pensions, benefits and overtime, an increase of $4.438 billion from the prior financial year. Payroll costs for 2022 likely increased by a similar amount, although the final figure won't be available until the Public Accounts are published in December.

The super-charged rate of growth during the pandemic surprises even the former Parliamentary Budget Officer.

"That's a substantive increase," said Kevin Page, an economist who now heads the Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy at the University of Ottawa. "It's growing well in excess of five per cent a year, which is much, much faster than the private sector and faster than the rate of growth in the real economy."

The bulk of the pandemic-era hiring occurred across just four government departments:

In emailed statements, PHAC and ESDC both said that more than half of their new hires were non-permanent positions, while the CRA noted that its workforce rises and falls with the tax season. 

Overall, 82.2 per cent of federal employees were in permanent positions, while 12.4 per cent filled temporary jobs, and 5.4 per cent were termed "casual workers," per a 2021 government-produced "snapshot" of the public service.

The CBC News analysis shows the size of the public service has been growing steadily since 2015, when the Liberal Party took power. Over eight fiscal years, Ottawa has hired an additional 79,000 employees, expanding the federal workforce by almost 31 percent. And head counts have increased in 79 of the 84 government departments and agencies that have been in continuous operation over that period.

The public service data doesn't include members of the Canadian military, or civilian or uniformed employees of the RCMP. According to the latest available figures, the Department of National Defence had 93,252 employees in fiscal 2019, while the RCMP employed 31,119.

Nor does it reflect workers at Crown corporations such as Canada Post, VIA Rail, or CBC/Radio-Canada.

The workings of government have made the rapid expansion of the federal bureaucracy difficult to track, says Page.

"The overall picture of what is happening to the public service — how many employees? What's the wage bill? — It's pretty much buried," said Page. "No one is really monitoring this."