Federal workers costly
OTTAWA — Parliamentary Budget Officer Kevin Page has shed some light on “one of the biggest black boxes of federal spending,” in his words — the cost of the public service.
It is valuable work. Federal personnel expenses are significant, totalling $43.8 billion in 2011/12 for a workforce of 375,500. That amounts to 38.1 per cent of the government’s direct program spending. The average federal public servant receives $114,100 in compensation and that figure could increase to $130,000 by 2015.
Canadians cannot fully appreciate how government money is being spent — or determine whether they are getting value for it — without detailed and timely information. It’s all the more discouraging that Page has had to fight the government for information about $5.2 billion in budget cuts announced last March, even going to court to clarify his role. It is the latest episode in a history of strained relations between the government and one of Parliament’s most valuable officers. His work consistently makes the complexities of how the government spends money clearer, which strengthens accountability and public engagement.
His detailed analysis of the cost of the public service makes a strong case, in fact, for why cuts are necessary now and that federal public sector salaries which once lagged behind private business are now well above. The federal public service has grown steadily under the Conservative government after reaching a low of 288,500 in 1998 at the end of the former Liberal government’s program review when 70,000 jobs were cut. The size of the public service has grown since then to its current 375,500.
That boom under the early years of the Conservative government is about to end. The government is in the process of cutting 19,200 jobs from its payroll which would bring the growth rate of the public service to its lowest level since 1990, although compensation increases would mean “a more expensive public service on the whole,” according to the report.
At $114,100 a year, compensation has not only outpaced private business and provincial and territorial governments, but inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index. Interestingly, Canadian federal employees are paid about the same, on average, as their counterparts in the U.S.
As the federal government attempts to eliminate positions as part of its budget-cutting exercise it is important that transparency and scrutiny prevail.
Page suggests the government provide Parliament with an annual report of personnel expenses and that monthly reporting requirements are expanded to “better track (implementation) of government restraint.”