There are now 146,786 federal bureaucrats taking a salary of more than $100,000 a year — approximately a 33 per cent jump in just one year, according to access-to-information records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“Taxpayers can’t afford to keep bankrolling a bloated government full of overpaid paper pushers,” said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director. “The government needs to find savings and it should start by taking air out of its ballooning bureaucracy.”

Federal bureaucrats taking six-figure salaries rose sharply between 2023 and 2024, continuing an ongoing trend of increasingly highly paid bureaucrats since 2015.

A total of 146,786 federal employees received more than $100,000 annually in 2024, which is up from 110,593 the previous year.

For comparison, Statistics Canada data shows the average Canadian full-time worker earned just over $70,000 in 2024.

The federal government employed 374,465 bureaucrats as of Dec. 31, 2024, according to the records. That means that 39 per cent of the federal bureaucracy took a six-figure salary last year.

The six-figure salaries cost taxpayers $18.9 billion in 2024. However, that figure is likely understated because retroactive pay raises for 2024 “have yet to be negotiated or adjusted in the pay files,” according to the records. Further, the records obtained by the CTF only detail base salary and do not include the cost of other benefits paid out to bureaucrats.

In the last decade, the number of federal bureaucrats taking six-figure salaries more than tripled. In 2015, 43,424 employees cleared the $100,000 mark; by 2024, that figure climbed to 146,786 — a 238 per cent spike.

The CTF has called on the federal government to implement an annual “sunshine list” to proactively disclose the number of employees taking a six-figure salary.

Every provincial government, except Prince Edward Island and Quebec, provides its taxpayers with an annual compensation disclosure list.

“A sunshine list is government transparency 101,” Terrazzano said. “The government must be transparent with taxpayers and that means publishing a sunshine list to disclose salaries for highly paid bureaucrats.

“Taxpayers pay the bills so taxpayers deserve to know how many six-figure bureaucrats we’re paying for.”

The total size and cost of the federal bureaucracy has also ballooned over the decade.

The federal government added about 99,000 employees since 2016.

The federal bureaucracy cost taxpayers $40.2 billion in 2016, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. The bureaucracy cost taxpayers $71.2 billion last year. That means the cost of the federal bureaucracy increased 77 per cent since 2016.

The spike in the bureaucracy costs occurred during years of underwhelming performance results across federal departments and agencies.

“I have noticed a marked increase in the number of public servants since 2016 and a proportional increase in spending,” Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux said. “But we haven’t seen similar improvements when it comes to service.”

The PBO also found that “less than 50 per cent of [performance] targets are consistently met within the same year.”

Half of Canadians say federal services have gotten worse since 2016, according to a Leger poll commissioned by the CTF. That’s despite the cost of the federal bureaucracy growing 77 per cent. The poll also found that 54 per cent of Canadians want the government to cut the size and cost of the federal bureaucracy.

“Taxpayers are paying for way more highly paid bureaucrats, but Canadians still aren’t getting better services,” Terrazzano said. “Prime Minister Mark Carney should listen to Canadians and cut the size and cost of government bureaucracy.”