The federal public service is growing at a rapid pace and reached a record-level size in the last fiscal year, according to a report tabled in Parliament.
The Public Service Commission (PSC), which oversees the staffing system, published its
annual report in mid-December 2023.
It says the federal public service grew by 6.5 percent during the fiscal year 2022–23, to reach a total of 274,219 employees.
This growth was made possible by the hiring of 71,200 new personnel, including those hired in indeterminate (permanent), term, and casual positions as well as students.
By comparison, the PSC
reported a growth of 4.6 percent for fiscal year 2021
–22. Prior to that, hiring was greatly affected by COVID-19 restrictions in 2020
–21,
dropping 15.5 percent compared to the previous year, but the public service still grew 5.7 percent that fiscal year.
The growth of the federal public service has increased exponentially since the Liberal government took power in 2015, when there were
195,252 federal employees, based on March 2015 figures. In eight years, the federal workforce grew by over 40 percent.
The last years of Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government saw a reduction in the size of the public service, as the Tories
pursued budget deficit reduction.
The public service had grown each year between 1.9 and 4.5 percent from 2006 and 2010, but growth all but stopped in 2011 with a 0.3 percent increase. During the three subsequent years, from 2012 to 2014, the federal government shrank 2.4, 5.4, and 2.6 percent.
Outsourcing
The growth of government has been accompanied by an increase in contracts awarded to professional services firms.The issue came to the forefront in early 2023 with concerns from opposition parties that consulting firm
McKinsey & Company had received an increase in federal dollars since 2015 due to close ties to the Liberal government.
Then-McKinsey head Dominic Barton had chaired the government’s Advisory Council on Economic Growth and was later appointed as ambassador to China.
Through increased scrutiny of outsourcing practices, it was found that many firms have benefitted in recent years, with McKinsey only obtaining a fraction of the contracts compared to other companies.
The
Parliamentary Budget Officer said in February 2023 that since the 2017
–18 fiscal year, spending on professional services increased by over a third.
Then-Treasury Board President Mona Fortier
declared in the same month that her government’s “very ambitious agenda” justified the amount of outsourcing.
Ms. Fortier was replaced by Anita Anand in July 2023, who has since
asked departments to come up with $15 billion in “refocused spending.” Some of that
involves reducing expenses on professional services.
Staffing Trends
The PSC, which is responsible for the health and integrity of human resources management, also mentioned some staffing trends in its
latest annual report.
It says 58.1 percent of external hiring activities and promotions for indeterminate and term hires in fiscal year 2022–23 were identified as non-advertised—meaning they were filled without open competition—increasing from 37.8 percent four years earlier, in fiscal year 2018–19. The report does not elaborate on this trend.
The report also points to a marked increase in investigations conducted by the PSC into staffing irregularities and allegations of improper political activities by employees.
The PSC says that it received 695 requests for investigation in the latest fiscal year and 275 of those were determined to fall under its mandate. Among those were requests related to
fraud (71)—dishonest action such as falsified documents and misrepresentation of qualifications—as well as improper political activities (24) and improper conduct during internal (22) and external (158) appointment processes.
There were 14 founded investigation cases of fraud cases in 2022–23 compared to 10 the previous year, and 29 founded cases of improper political activities compared to 16 the year prior.
The largest rise in founded investigation cases was for errors, omission, or improper conduct in external appointment processes, going from 8 in 2021–22 to 66 in 2022–23.
The PSC says it completed 173 investigation files in the last fiscal year, an increase of 188 percent over the previous year.
