Bruce Dowbiggin
The Explosive Cost of Canada’s Civil Service Hiring Binge
Most living in Canada would agree that a crumbling infrastructure and healthcare shortages could justify adding bodies to the public rolls. But a deep dive into those jobs extolled by the PM shows an explosion of new positions, not in public works or the military, but in the vanity areas of DEI, gender equality and climate change.
In the tsunami of miserable economic and political news generated by the Trudeau government the past decade, party flacks have always tried to point to job growth in the economy as a sign that they’re doing something right.
But if you look carefully at the numbers of full-time jobs “created”, it soon becomes apparent that most of the highly touted “new” jobs are public-service positions. At all three levels of government the number of workers in Canada’s public sector has soared in recent years, far outpacing the hiring in the private sector.
For example, the federal public service has grown by 38 per cent since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau came to power in 2015, according to MEI, a Montreal-based think tank. During the Covid years, nine out of every ten jobs created was in the public service.
Here was Trudeau in 2022 cheering on his aggressive hiring processes, which have also included a similar growth in the use of consultants. “Thanks to your hard work and the hard work of Canadians across the country, Canada’s unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been since the start of the pandemic. In fact, more than 154,000 jobs were created last month — and … in the COVID-19 Era, more than one million jobs have been recovered.”
Most living in Canada would agree that a crumbling infrastructure and healthcare shortages could justify adding bodies to the public rolls. But a deep dive into those jobs extolled by the PM shows an explosion of new positions, not in public works or the military, but in the vanity areas of DEI, gender equality and climate change.
With their generous pensions and benefits these new employees are an expensive drag on the public purse. In addition, except for the very top of the pay scale, government salaries are typically higher than those in the public sector. Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland give Canadians the impression that their massive hiring binge— paid for by increasing debt— means a healthy growing economy. But the money that is moved from the private economy to public economies chokes productivity and creates inflation.
As a result, Canada’s GDP is lowest in the leading Western nations while its borrowing now sits at an unsustainable $713 billion. Carrying the debt is expected to cost the federal treasury $60.7 billion in 2028-29, according to the government’s own economic statement.
No wonder economists warn that this growth of government jobs is not sustainable in the long run. “If you look at how the private sector’s trending, it’s sharply decelerating,” Beata Caranci, chief economist at Toronto-Dominion Bank,
As just one example of runaway government hiring, listen to Kareem Allam, former Vancouver city budget chief, who went on Vancouver’s CKNW recently to describe how runaway hiring has affected his city. “We had 1,200 city employees in 2008. We have about 9,000 now. There are 700 people in the city of Vancouver staff that work full-time on climate change. And (yet) our GHG emissions keep going up.”
While Americans are experiencing the same bloating of the civil service, Allam points out that they are more efficient than Canadians. “Dawn Pinnock is the head of the Civil Service in the city of New York. She’s their city manager. And not only is she responsible for being the city manager, she’s also got the same responsibility as (Vancouver’s) Translink, but in New York.
And it’s a city that has thirteen times the population of Greater Vancouver. Dawn makes US$ 240,000 a year. Our CEO of Translink, our CEO of Metro Vancouver, and our city manager combined make $1.4 million. The executive from New York doing the job of essentially three executives here in the lower mainland, and yet making a fraction of what they make here.”
Naturally these salaries have to come from somewhere. That somewhere is tax. “It is unbelievable the amount of money that is pouring into city hall and the lack of accountability we’re seeing around how that money was being spent,” says Allam. “When Gregor Robertson first got elected as mayor in 2003 the city budget was $894 million. It’s going to be well over $2.4 billion this year.
“That’s almost a tripling of our taxes. Is anyone in Vancouver thinking that we’ve gotten a triple in the benefit of services? Are potholes getting better?”
There are some exceptions to the bloating of the public service and its budgets. In Calgary, the multi-billion Green Line transit system has been chewing through hundreds of millions without any progress. The original estimate of track was shrinking with the southeast part of the plan mothballed. Now the unpopular Green Line has been stopped by the provincial UCP government of Danielle Smith.
Assessing the project as a “boondoggle” Transportation minister Devin Dreeshen said, “This is unacceptable and our government is unable to support or provide funding for this revised Green Line Stage 1 scope as presented in the city’s most recent business case… throwing good money after bad is simply not an option for our government.” Calgary’s progressive city council is seeking to find alternatives (they could always build a direct link to the airport) before they’re tossed out of office in the next municipal elections.
Would that Ontario and Toronto governments had paused before creating their Metrolinx Crosstown subway line, the 25-stop, 19-kilometre project. Work began in 2011 and Metrolinx previously announced completion dates of 2020 and 2021. Its budget has now soared to $13 billion with stories emerging of 260 cases of quality control issues still pending at the start if the summer.
One of Pierre Poilievre’s favourite attack lines against the federal Liberals has been getting control of spending, making government live within its means as taxpayers do. No one expects him to slay the dragon as Javier Milie has done in Argentina. But Canadians will be looking to him to at least change the Trudeau Spend, Spend, Spend philosophy before it ruins the nation.
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.
Adin Hill. Jordan Binnington. Logan Thompson. Sam Montembeault. Four goalies considered for Canada’s Olympic mens hockey roster.
One of these players is not like the others. In fact, one of them is unlike anyone else on Canada’s team announced last week. Sam Montembault— who was on the Four Nations roster last February— would have been the only French Canadian player on the roster. The absence of Quebec players marks the first time no Quebeckers made a Canadian Olympic team. (They’ve averaged four players per Olympics post 1998.)
It’s no better at the junior level as only Caleb Desnoyers made Canada’s roster for the 2026 World Junior championships in Minnesota. Who knows if a couple of French players might have saved them from a third-straight ignominious exit at the WJC.
How is it that the province that has produced so many stars is now reduced to no Quebec players representing the country? Montreal author Brendan Kelly called the shutout an “indictment of Hockey Quebec… Why is it that the province is not producing NHL stars any more? Quebec is not producing the goalies like it used to?”
What is surprising is how little competition there is in Quebec for that Olympic berth these days. Hockey is blood and bone (sang et os) in Quebec. Always has been going back to the days of Aurel Joliat. It was built on the legacies of Rocket Richard, Jean Beliveau, Mario Lemieux and Vincent Lecavalier.
On defence there was Denis Potvin, Serge Savard, Jacques Laperriere and Guy Lapointe. There have been great goalies such as Jacques Plante, Bernie Parent and Patrick Roy. Now?
It’s probably safe to say the best French Canadians in the NHL at the moment are Jonathan Marchessault and Pierre-Luc Dubois. But they were hardly favourites to play in Turin. Ditto Calgary’s Jonathan Huberdeau, who once scored 115 points in 2022-23. Last February’s Four Nations Canadian roster had the single Quebec product— and that was goalie Montembeault.
It’s not like the QMJHL doesn’t produce players. Three star Maritimers on the Olympic squad— Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon and Brad Marchand— are products of the Quebec League. Since the NHL began allowing teams to send players to Olympic rosters, Canada has averaged four Quebec-born players per squad and each year featured at least one goalie from the province.
And it’s not like there are no Quebec players in the league. Last year, 6.1 percent of the NHL was Quebec-born players. That was the second-most of any region behind only Ontario (17.6 percent), and it’s up from the 5.3 percent from last season. And yet, you wouldn’t know it if you looked at the overall stats.
To find the root of the drought you can look at the draft where only one French Canadian player— Alex Lafreniere— has been taken No. 1 overall since Marc-Andre Fleury was taken in 2003. (No one seriously considered Lafreniere for Team Canada.) In 2025 three QMJHL players went first round. In 2024 none. In 2023 none. In 2022, two. In 2021 four (one non Quebecker). You get the idea.
Now look back a decade or longer. Only one French Canadian other that Dubois went in the first round in 2016. Just one French Canadian went in the 2017 first round, two in 2015, none in 2014, Drouin and three others in 2013, none in 2012, Huberdeau in 2011 and none in 2010.
As Boston star Michel Bergeron showed, you don’t have to be a first rounder to become a star. It’s also true that prospects are emerging from everywhere in the world, and so French Canadians— who used to have better odds— are having to compete in a far bigger talent pool. But that hasn’t kept the OHL from turning out a motherlode of young stars.
The culture of hockey in Quebec is in turmoil. Former Montreal goalie Jocelyn Thibault resigned as head of Hockey Quebec, citing a “resistance to change” among the regional associations.
There are many other factors in play. Access to elite training, cost, warmer winters eliminating outdoor rinks, cultural preferences for other sports— all play some part. But as we said in 2019, “the days when Canadiens GM Sam Pollock getting the top two French Canadians as protected draftees was considered a steal are long gone.”
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.” C.S. Lewis
One of the aims of logical positivism has been Boomers’ quest to kill Western religion and the pursuit of faith in order to make room for the state. Symbols are banned. Churches are burned. Infidels are rewarded. Esoteric faith systems applauded. Yet, as 2026 dawns, it appears that, not only is traditional religion not dead, it might just be making a comeback with younger generations who’ve grown skeptical of their parents’ faux religion of self.
How? In an age of victim status, traditional religion is suddenly a cuddly TikTok puppy. Hard to imagine that the force that spread imperialism and war across the globe for centuries being a victim. But yes. Only Christians and Jews are singled out for censure In Carney’s Canada The zeal to repeal God has backfired. Faith is off the canvas and punching back. (And we are NOT talking about the Woke pope.)
The purveyors of “old-time religion” will still find themselves facing a determined opponent well on the way to moral inversion. And a compliant population. As blogger Melanie in Saskatchewan points out, “Canadians were sold a calm, competent adult in the room. What they got was an unelected system engineer quietly converting moral claims into financial constraints. This is not leadership. It is non-consensual governance.
The freedoms that make dissent possible are being used to hollow out dissent. The protections meant to guard against abuse are being used to avoid scrutiny. And the law—stripped of its moral imagination—is asked to do what it cannot: resolve psychic conflict through paperwork.”
The sophistry of the superior class demands submission. C.S. Lewis warned of this inversion in God In The Dock. “To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
In Canada that compliant class has embraced Mark Carney as the great stabilizer. “Canadians keep asking the wrong question about Mark Carney,” says blogger Melanie in Saskatchewan. “They keep asking whether he is a good politician. That is like asking whether a locksmith is a good interior decorator.
Carney is not here to govern. He is here to re-engineer the operating system of the country while the Liberal Party provides the helpful stage props and applause track. And judging by how little scrutiny this government receives, the audience seems perfectly content to clap at whatever is placed in front of them, provided it comes with soothing words like “stability,” “resilience,” and “the experts agree”.
Adds Dr. Andrea Wagner, Canadians “hide behind procedure. Behind policy. Behind institutions. Behind NDAs. Behind committees, processes, protocols. Behind phrases like “we’re reviewing this internally” and “that’s beyond my authority.” They hide behind the pretense of empathy while quietly perpetuating injustice. They hide behind performative busy-ness: “I wish I had time,” “I’m swamped,” “I’ve been unwell.” There is enormous power in powerlessness—and Canadians wield it masterfully.”
The problem, says Melanie in Saskatchewan, is not that Mark Carney in full power is incompetent. The problem is that he is extremely competent at something Canadians never actually consented to. Technocrats redesign the machinery so that the outcome becomes inevitable. No messy debate. No inconvenient voters. No public reckoning. Just “the framework,” “the model,” “the standard,” and eventually the quiet conclusion that there is “no alternative.”
And this is precisely the world Mark Carney comes from. ”He did not rise through grassroots politics or party service. He rose through central banks, global finance institutions, and elite climate-finance bodies that speak fluent acronym and consider democracy an optional inconvenience. The man does not campaign. He architects.”
While the Conservative Party of Canada still polls evenly with the Liberals they are playing a different game, one they— with their traditional tactics— are not wired to win in a battle of systems with Carney. This cringeworthy “Keep It Up” endorsement of Carney by former CPC leader Erin O’Toole speaks to why they are further from power than ever.
The manufactured crisis over indigenous Rez school graves illustrates the method. “To call out intimidation or dehumanization is to risk being reframed as the aggressor. The person who names harm becomes the disturbance; the one who weaponizes grievance becomes the protected party. Justice no longer asks what happened, only who claims injury first. This is not accidental. It is the logical endpoint of a culture that has confused victimhood with virtue and pain with authority.
Suffering, once something to be alleviated, has become something to be curated. Identity now precedes evidence; accusation outruns inquiry. The system does not ask whether harm is real or proportional—only whether it can be procedurally contained. And containment, I am learning, is often preferred to truth.”
There are still some who believe there remains a way out of this. Here’s Paul Wells on Substack with a valid conclusion— which most sentient people reached by the end of Trudeau’s first term. “Canada has spent too long thinking of itself as a warehouse for the world instead of designing and building for itself. It’s time for a shared mindset of ambition quality and real investment in physical and human capital so Canadians become Canada’s designers and builders of livable cities rather than bystanders to our own future.”
But it’s hard to square that with the gap Carney’s already has. “The tragedy is that the Liberal Party is perfectly happy to hand (Carney) the country and then scold the public for noticing. If Canadians want a future where choices are still made by voters instead of algorithms and advisory panels, they are going to have to stop applauding this performance and start asking the one question that truly terrifies technocrats and their obedient political enablers.”
This system monolith taking over life is why the abrasive, defiant Donald Trump emerged. Vast segments of America employ him to defy the EU scolds with their censorship regimes. His defiance is categorical— which is why it frightens Canadians. The man from Mitch & Murray delivered a few truths to them and they soiled themselves. Paradise will never be the same!. Bad Trump! But an almost-octogenarian has little runway left himself. Who can continue the resistance to the Carney system engineers?
In the past organized religion was a refuge from the maelstrom of the secular storm. There was comfort in the message. Thus, the Liberals’ current need to destroy faith. So the epidemic of churches burned is ignored. The intrusive demonstrations of militant Islam are tolerated. (Carney says Muslim virtues are Canadian virtues.) History is re-written. Heroes debunked.
If Soviet Russia is any indication, the traditional faiths can survive and act as a bulwark against the technocrats— if they find their Pope John Paul II.. The Catholic and Orthodox faiths furnished a way out from behind the Iron Curtain. As organizations not co-opted by the state in the West religions can provide a moral backbone to expose and defeat the secular globalists.
Whether you are a believer or not they provide a pushback to restore the moral clarity C.S. described. It’s not too late as 2026 dawns. But if nothing is done in the West — if Canada accepts EU censorship and global ID— then writing this column in 2027 could well be defined as a criminal act.
“That which you most need will be found where you least want to look.” Carl Jung
Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his 2025 book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed Hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His new poetry collection In Other Words is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca and on Kindle books at https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1069802700
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