Recently the Manitoba Government Employees Union (MGEU) launched a campaign suggesting the elephant in Manitoba's proverbial living room is the lack of provincial government spending.

Yes, even though provincial spending has increased by more than double the rate of inflation over the past 14 years, the union thinks it’s still not enough.

Why would they want more spending? Well, because if people grow tired of rising taxes, even more eyes and public scrutiny will be on our province's bloated government and the need to cut the fat. Thus, the union bosses could lose some members and the union dues that pay their salaries.

If you look at Statistics Canada data you can see why the union is so concerned - the numbers don't support their claim about needing more money. As of April 2013, 21% of Canadians work in government, yet in Manitoba, the number is a whopping 26.2%.

Think of it this way - if you selected five random Canadians, one would work for the government. But in Manitoba, you only need to select four random people to find someone working for the government.

In the past the Frontier Centre for Public Policy has drilled down into Statistics Canada numbers and calculated that over $1.2 billion could be saved by Manitoba taxpayers each year if we could merely bring our large civil service down to the national average. That calculation looks at municipal and provincial employees (while stripping out crowns like Manitoba Hydro) so the pure savings from the provincial government would be less than the full $1.2 billion. However, it's safe to say there is plenty of fat to cut in government rather simply raising the PST to bring more bucks.

Fortunately, we can get down to the national average without too much pain in terms of layoffs. The provincial government's own numbers show 39.5% of its workforce is set to retire within the next decade. Thus, as people retire, don't refill the unnecessary positions.

Make no mistake, reducing the civil service isn't the only contributing factor to high spending in this province. Every day the government seems to be out making announcements for capital projects and grants to various groups that we simply can't afford either. But given the huge savings opportunity that could come from a leaner civil service, we'd be foolish not to trim some of the fat.

Union bosses, who draw their salaries from union dues, may not like such a common sense idea…but perhaps that’s the real elephant in the room.

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