Nearly half of Canadians want to see cuts to the number of federal government employees, poll suggests

A Leger poll released by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) shows that many Canadians want to see smaller government.

Since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015, Ottawa has added 108,793 new federal government employees – an increase of 42 percent, the CTF said in its statement.

The poll found that 47 percent of respondents want to see fewer federal employees, while 29 percent said that the number should be maintained. Seven percent said they wanted an increase, while 17 percent responded that they didn’t know.

Among those who were decided on the issue, 56 percent of Canadians want to reduce the size of the federal government.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Conservative voters were the most likely to call for a reduction in the number of federal employees, with 71 percent saying they’d like to see the number reduced.

51 percent of Bloc voters agreed with this sentiment, along with 42 percent of Green voters, 36 percent of Liberal voters, and just 26 percent of NDP voters.

Franco Terrazzano of the CTF said that he believes the results show Canadians “know they’re paying for too many federal paper pushers and want Ottawa to shrink the bureaucracy.”

“Taxpayers paid for tens of thousands of extra bureaucrats, more than one million pay raises and hundreds of millions in bonuses in recent years and the government still can’t deliver good services,” Terrazzano said. “Canadians can’t afford to pay higher taxes and the government is up to its eyeballs in debt, so it’s time for Ottawa to take air out of its ballooning bureaucracy.”

The online survey was completed between July 26 and July 28, 2024. The survey was made up of 1,601 Canadian residents over the age of 18.