OTTAWA, ON: The federal government spent more than $1.6 billion on overtime pay from 2019 to 2021 while it met less than half its performance objectives and while it hired more than 15,000 new employees each year, according to records obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

“When you spend extra money on overtime and hiring more employees you expect top results,” said Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director of the CTF. “The federal government is spending buckets of cash on overtime pay and more bureaucrats and it still can’t meet half its performance targets.”

The federal government spent $1.6 billion on overtime pay between 2019 and 2021. This includes more than $1.1 billion during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. About 56 per cent of public administration bureaucrats were employed from home during the pandemic, according to Statistics Canada. 

Notable overtime expenditures include Elections Canada spending $1.4 million in 2020, which was a non-election year. Employees at the House of Commons and the Senate received more than $13 million in overtime pay during the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, despite both houses of Parliament sitting in a virtual hybrid format. The Governor General’s office received $1.2 million in overtime between 2019 and 2021.

Employees at Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada received a combined $76.4 million in overtime pay in 2020 and 2021, or less than seven per cent of the total overtime pay during the pandemic. Fisheries and Oceans Canada accounted for $97.8 million in overtime pay during the pandemic, or more than $20 million more than the two health departments combined. A breakdown of overtime pay for each department can be found here. 

Federal bureaucrats only met 49 per cent of their performance targets in 2019-20, according to government databases. Only 46 per cent of performance targets were met in 2020-21, which is the most recent year with available data.

The federal bureaucracy increased by more than 15,000 employees per year on average between 2019 and 2021. There were 312,825 federal employees that received at least one pay raise in 2020 or 2021. The federal government has no records of its employees ever receiving a pay cut.

“If the government is spending so much money on overtime and hiring more bureaucrats, then why can’t it meet half of its own performance targets?” asked Terrazzano. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau needs to take air out of the ballooning bureaucracy.”

Overtime pay per year