Canada’s federal bureaucracy has grown massively in recent years. Federal public service employment, which includes those working for departments like the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) and Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) has increased by 43% since 2015.
Meanwhile, across the border, America is massively cutting theirs. The newly announced Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE—headed by Elon Musk—has been tasked with removing regulations, reducing spending, and cutting federal employees, thereby increasing government’s “efficiency”. It comes at the right time, as most Americans think that “government is almost always wasteful and inefficient”.
But how about north of the border? Does Canada need a DOGE of its own?
One way of putting this question into perspective is to compare the size of Canada’s federal bureaucracy to that of other countries.
Doing so is a tricky exercise. National governments around the world vary in terms of their scope and responsibilities. And some countries have larger and more powerful sub-national governments than others, with Canada at or near the top of the list.
That said, compared to other OECD countries (for which data is available), Canada has one of the largest federal bureaucracies out there. Today, there are about 9 federal employees for every 1,000 residents. That’s the highest number since at least the late 1980s and about 50% more than in the late 1990s. In 1999, for example, Canada had about 6.1 federal employees per 1,000 residents.
Today, Canada has 55% more federal employees per resident than the United States. It also has more than Germany, Australia, and the United Kingdom. It does have fewer federal employees than New Zealand and Ireland, but it’s important to note that those countries are “unitary” states where the federal government has responsibility for things like health and education, which are provincial responsibilities in Canada.
Similarly, Canada’s federal bureaucracy is proportionately larger than even the UK’s, despite Canada’s federal government having fewer responsibilities. And Germany—whose federal government does share similar responsibilities to Canada’s—manages to get the job done with only two-thirds the number of federal employees. While that might not seem like a lot on paper, it means that Germany would have to hire an additional 250,000 federal employees to be in line with Canada.
It’s not immediately clear why Canada’s federal bureaucracy is so large or why it has grown so much in recent years (and that growth doesn’t even take into account the explosion in spending on external consultants). But it’s not because it provides higher quality services. The countries with relatively fewer federal employees are still fully capable of delivering vital services like taxation and defense, with many also having (more) generous and effective healthcare, welfare, and pension schemes.
There are clearly efficiency gains to be made in the Canadian federal government, but do we need our own DOGE to address it?
Certainly, Canada would do well to avoid the United States’ early experience with DOGE which has been hectic, haphazard and severe, operating with a spirit of “fire first, ask questions later.” And creating a brand-new department tasked with cutting other ones may be counterproductive. That said, it’s hard to argue that the explosive growth in the federal public service has been either necessary or resulted in better outcomes for Canadians. Some thoughtful right-sizing is clearly overdue.
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