
The federal public service needs downsizing, and Poilievre’s the man to do it
The federal workforce has added around 111,000 staff members since Trudeau took office
Like an untended lawn that’s become encased in unpleasant brush, the Canadian public service is overgrown. It needs a lot more than a couple of passes with a lawnmower — it needs a chainsaw, and only Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has the guts to wield it.
On Wednesday, the Tories set out clear benchmarks for the public service cleanup. The plan is to not replace employees when they leave, the party’s deputy leader, Melissa Lantsman, told the National Post. Given that around 17,000 staff members end their service each year, that will reduce the size of the federal workforce by upwards of 68,000 positions over a four-year mandate.
It’s a good start to the great landscaping project that Poilievre will have if he wins the next election. Since the ascension of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the federal public service has grown by about 111,000 staff members — from about 257,000 during Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s last year in government, to roughly 368,000 in the 2023-24 fiscal year. That’s an increase of about 43 per cent. In the same period, the general population grew 15 per cent.
The painfully inflated bureaucracy is a huge cost to taxpayers. But it also threatens to block much-needed reforms. Nearly a third of the federal workforce was hired under Trudeau-government values, and have worked under the Trudeau government’s expectations. We can likely expect some reluctance to implement a new government’s desired changes, as appears to be the case in the United States.
After President Donald Trump signed an executive order to end all diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) measures within the U.S. government, some bureaucrats have been accused of trying to conceal DEI programs by couching them in different language. States that have banned DEI in universities face a similar challenges, with schools rebranding these initiatives instead of axing them.