One-Third of 360,000 Federal Employees Earned Six-Figure Salaries in 2023

An view of Parliament Hill in Ottawa in a file photo. More than 110,000 federal employees took home six-figure salaries in 2023, according to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. Philip Yu/Unsplash.com

More than 110,000 federal employees—approximately one-third of the total workforce—took home six-figure salaries in 2023, according to an advocacy group focused on taxpayers’ interests.

The number of federal workers reached 357,247 in 2023, marking a roughly 37 percent increase compared to the 262,817 workers reported in 2013, according to government data.

The payroll information obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) through an access-to-information request indicates more than one-third of the total bureaucracy is earning six figures.

The CTF also noted a 7.6 percent growth in bureaucrats earning six-figure salaries, reaching 110,593 in 2023, up from 102,761 in 2022. This segment of the federal workforce has more than doubled since 2015 when 43,424 earned six figures.

With the increasing number of bureaucrats receiving at least $100,000 in base salary, the total federal payroll has surged, rising from $5.5 billion in 2015 to $13.9 billion in 2023, representing more than 150 percent growth.

“Taxpayers are tapped out and can’t afford more bureaucrats taking six-figure salaries,” CTF federal director Franco Terrazzano said in a press release. “Enough is enough, it’s time for the feds to take some air out of the ballooning bureaucracy.”

The total cost of federal payroll reached a record high of $67.4 billion in 2023, the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) revealed in a recent report.

The PBO also noted a 6.6 percent growth in personnel spending during the first eight months of fiscal year 2023-24 compared to the same period last year, reaching $44.4 billion in November 2023.

“My office and I have observed a significant increase in the number of public servants over the past few years,” PBO Yves Giroux said when testifying before the House of Commons Government Operations Committee last October. “Since about 2016, the number of public servants has gone up dramatically, and payroll spending has gone up proportionally in part because there are more employees and in part because compensation is higher.”

“What we haven’t seen is significant service improvements. We have observed some recent improvements, but departmental performance indicators are not all rosy.”

The records obtained by the CTF focused solely on details of base salary and do not include the cost of additional benefits paid out to bureaucrats. An Inquiry of Ministry, filed by Conservative MP Eric Melillo last November, showed federal employees received more than $210 million in performance pay and bonuses in the 2022-23 fiscal year.

Canada’s largest federal public sector labor union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, last April led 155,000 workers in one of the sector’s largest strikes since 1991. The deal the union later reached with the government includes a 12.6 percent compounded wage increase over the next four years.

The CTF has urged the federal government to implement an annual “sunshine list” to proactively disclose the number of federal workers receiving a six-figure salary. It noted that most provincial governments, with the exception of Prince Edward Island and Quebec, regularly release an annual compensation disclosure list.

“The government must be transparent with taxpayers and that means publishing a sunshine list to disclose salaries for high-paid bureaucrats,” Mr. Terrazzano said.

“We pay the bills and we deserve to know how many six-figure bureaucrats we’re paying for.”

Jennifer Cowan and Matthew Horwood contributed to this report.