The Trudeau-Carney government’s bloated bureaucracy keeps getting fatter — and taxpayers are footing the bill.

According to new access to information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), 146,786 federal bureaucrats made more than $100,000 last year, a staggering 33% jump in just one year.

“Taxpayers can’t afford to keep bankrolling a bloated government full of overpaid paper pushers,” said CTF federal director Franco Terrazzano. “The government needs to find savings and it should start by taking air out of its ballooning bureaucracy.”

The data show 39% of all federal employees are now on the six-figure gravy train, costing Canadians at least $18.9 billion in 2024. That doesn’t even include benefits or retroactive pay hikes that are still being negotiated.

The comparison with working Canadians is stark.

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While the average full-time worker earned just over $70,000 in 2024, the number of Ottawa insiders clearing $100,000 has more than tripled since 2015 — skyrocketing from 43,424 under Stephen Harper’s last year in office to 146,786 today.

At the same time, the cost of the federal bureaucracy exploded from $40.2 billion in 2016 to $71.2 billion in 2024 — a 77% increase.

And what did taxpayers get in return? Not better services.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has repeatedly noted that less than half of federal departments meet their own performance targets. Half of Canadians say services have actually gotten worse since 2016, according to a Leger poll commissioned by the CTF.

The CTF is demanding Ottawa finally publish an annual “sunshine list,” like most provinces already do, disclosing the number of bureaucrats taking six-figure salaries.

“A sunshine list is government transparency 101,” said Terrazzano. “Taxpayers pay the bills, so taxpayers deserve to know how many six-figure bureaucrats we’re paying for.”

With 99,000 new bureaucrats added since 2016 and no sign of improved results, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Ottawa is growing more expensive by the year — and more out of touch with working Canadians.