Lorne Gunter: Carney's need to cut spending should focus on bloated public service
Cutting federal government spending by 15 per cent over the next three years — as Prime Minister Mark Carney has instructed his cabinet ministers to do — is an entirely worthwhile and commendable goal. I hope they can pull it off. Hard-working Canadians need them to pull it off.
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So even after accounting for inflation and population growth, the Trudeau government increased the size of the federal government by well over 40 per cent. That even includes the way they let immigration and rising prices both get way out of control.
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So when federal public-sector unions, like PSAC (the Public Service Alliance of Canada) start threatening that essential services will be cut if the Carney government touches even a dollar of public spending, don't listen.
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Over the past decade, Ottawa has grown by over 40 per cent in real terms, but are you getting 40 per cent more service from federal bureaucrats? Forty per cent better service?
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Chances are as the cost of the federal bureaucracy has skyrocketed, the level of services you have received has plummeted.
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It's the same story with the statistics on civil servants.
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Under the Trudeau government, the federal civil service grew by nearly 100,000 employees, or just about 40 per cent, at a time when the national population grew about 16 per cent.
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What were all those added bureaucrats needed for? What are they doing now that is so essential that most of them couldn't be cut? I would bet most Canadians wouldn't notice if half or more of the extra 100,000 civil servants were let go.
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The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimates that every frontline federal worker has seven layers of management above them. That's managers managing managers who manage managers.
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