Government executives took hundreds of millions in taxpayer-funded bonuses even though departments barely meet half of their own performance targets each year, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“Bonuses are for when you go above and beyond, so why are most government executives taking bonuses every year when their departments can barely pass their own test?” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “Prime Minister Mark Carney needs to end Ottawa’s entitlement culture because federal executives shouldn’t automatically get a bonus.”

Bonuses for federal executives cost taxpayers $201.5 million in 2025, according to the access-to-information records.

About 88 per cent of government executives took a bonus last year, Public Services and Procurement Canada confirmed to the CTF. Most government executives take bonuses every year.

The government hands out multiple bonuses to executives each year, including a “bilingual bonus,” a “performance award,” “at risk pay” and “performance pay,” among others, according to the records.

Meanwhile, federal departments routinely miss their own performance targets.

The government’s own data shows that federal departments met just 54 per cent of their performance targets in 2024-25, the last year data is available.

“We end up in a situation where it is public servants responsible for delivering programs that set their own targets and they usually set the bar not too high so it doesn’t look too easy, but neither too low so it’s fairly easy to achieve most of the time,” former parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux said. “Yet by their own assessment they fail to deliver on many of these.”

In total, federal bonuses have cost taxpayers about $2 billion since 2015.

“You shouldn’t get a bonus when you write the questions for your own test and still get a D-,” Terrazzano said. “Taxpayers can’t afford to pay for a battalion of bureaucrats rubberstamping bonuses for each other.”

Executives at federal Crown corporations are also rewarding themselves for failure.

Canada Post lost nearly $1.6 billion in 2025 and took a $1-billion bailout from taxpayers. Despite these losses, Canada Post rubberstamped $30.8 million in bonuses in 2025.

The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation is the federal housing agency that has repeatedly claimed its goal is “housing affordability for all.”

Despite its CEO admitting housing supply and affordability “remained one of Canada’s greatest challenges,” the CMHC handed out $31.7 million in bonuses last year.

VIA Rail also dished out $10.3 million in bonuses last year. Every executive took a bonus. The average bonus for a VIA Rail executive was $115,293.

The bonuses keep flowing at VIA Rail even though the train company is losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year.

Alto is the federal Crown corporation tasked with overseeing the government’s high-speed rail project.

It handed out $2.8 million in bonuses last year. Every Alto staffer took a bonus even though construction for the train is years away and the Crown corporation doesn’t even know the exact route for its high-speed rail project.

Carney has repeatedly told Canadians his government would “spend less.”

Despite that promise, the PBO projects the bureaucracy costing taxpayers more this year than it did during former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s last year in office in 2024-25, even after accounting for inflation.   

“The government is more than $1 trillion in debt and Carney promised to find savings so these taxpayer-funded bonuses should be the first thing on the chopping block,” Terrazzano said. “The government needs to stop rewarding failure with taxpayers’ money.”