REPORT: Canadian Taxpayers Federation finds 66% increase in federal employees making over $100K

A total of 114,433 federal government employees received more than $100,000 in salary in 2021, a 66% increase from the prior year.

The number of federal government employees receiving more than $100,000 increased by 45,426 during the pandemic, according to access to information documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (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," said Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director of the CTF.

“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.”

According to a Wednesday morning CTF press release:

"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.

Terrazzano suggests a so-called "sunshine list" for employees, where the names and salaries of public sector bureaucrats over 100,000 annually are published for the public to see. All provinces publish a provincial version of a sunshine disclosure list except Prince Edward Island and Quebec.