The federal government gave pay raises to more than 330,000 bureaucrats last year, according to recently published information obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) under an access-to-information request.
The numbers show that 78 per cent of federal workers received a pay raise in 2025, and that fewer than one seventh of one per cent saw their wages drop, a figure the CTF says amounts to the government having “rubber stamped” those increases.
Meanwhile, the government’s own figures show that almost a third of its departments did not meet their performance targets in 2025, while almost 10 per cent did not have data available on whether or not they did.
“Taxpayers have every reason to question why the vast majority of bureaucrats are taking bigger paycheques when departments can barely pass their own test,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF’s federal director. “Federal bureaucrats shouldn’t feel entitled to more money every year just because they’re on the taxpayer payroll.”
According to the data received by the CTF, the federal government employed 432,566 people during the 2025 calendar year. Of those, 18,041 were classified as executives and 414,525 as non-executives.
Of those people, 320,347 non-executives received a pay raise, or just over 77 per cent of the group. Raises included pay revisions, progression within their classification and retroactive pay from new collective agreements. It did not include pay increases from promotions or billable overtime payments.
Of the executive group, 15,831 people received pay raises, amounting to more than 87 per cent of that group.
Of the smaller group of public servants who received pay cuts, 580 were non-executives and just 16 were executives. Pay cuts were the result of demotion and did not include employees who left their jobs entirely. The figures for pay cuts amounted to less than one per cent for both groups: 0.14 per cent for the non-executives, and just 0.089 for the executives.
The figures delivered to the CTF also show that 142,269 of non-executive public servants (34 per cent) received a bonus or other form of performance incentives, as did 15,898 (88 per cent) of the executive group.
However, on the delivery side of the equation, a government summary shows that fewer goals were being met by the public service, compared to pay increases.
An infographic page run by the federal government tracks departmental results and program outcomes across the public service for each fiscal year.
The numbers for 2024-25 tracked 1,249 indicators for departmental results, and 1,335 for program outcomes. Eliminating those for which the target was after the end of the fiscal year or with no fixed date, it found that between 60 and 63 per cent of results and outcomes had been met, while between nine and 10 per cent had no available data.
That left 30.3 per cent of departmental results and 26.4 per cent of program outcomes unmet for the most recent year.
“What’s really insulting and unacceptable is how much the bureaucracy costs taxpayers and how little it delivers,” Terrazzano said. “Prime Minister Mark Carney needs to shrink the federal bureaucracy to stop borrowing money and provide Canadians with the tax relief they need.”
He pointed to another study by the Fraser Institute that found that government employees are now taking larger salaries than their counterparts working outside of government.
That study found that, after controlling for factors including gender, age, marital status, education and size of firm, Canadian workers at the three levels of government saw a 4.8 per cent wage premium, on average, compared to their private-sector counterparts in 2024. Even taking into account the wage difference between unionized and non-unionized workers, the premium was three per cent.
“This reality isn’t stopping government unions from demanding more money from taxpayers,” the CTF said in a release. “The Public Service Alliance of Canada is negotiating new contracts for its members and has already called the federal government’s wage offers ‘insulting’ and ‘unacceptable.’”
The CTF recently launched a court challenge against the Bank of Canada, demanding that it release records disclosing the compensation it pays to its senior officials.
“Taxpayers are on the hook for another wage hike, but the government won’t tell Canadians the price tag,” said Devin Drover, CTF’s general counsel. “That’s another failure of Canada’s broken access-to-information system. Taxpayers pay these wages and they have a right to know the bill.”
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