Savoie: The election campaign is a chance to rethink Canada’s public sector

It is, like so many issues. However, unlikely to gain traction given more pressing issues and few short-term political benefits in doing so:

…Canada’s underperforming public service is too big, too costly. It keeps growing in good and bad times at both the federal and provincial levels. Since 2020-21, the size of the federal public service, for example, has grown by 3.7 per cent annually, above the average growth rate of 1 per cent between 2007 and 2020 (the pre-COVID pandemic period). The IMF reports that the public sector in Canada accounts for 42.5 per cent of GDP. In the U.S., the figure is 36.3 per cent – and that was before Mr. Musk was let loose with his chainsaw.

Canadians know that they are not getting value for their money from the public sector, as public opinion surveys show. It’s time to finally deal with activities that have long passed their best-before date and to accept that our public sector managers have lost the ability to manage and, in particular, deal with non-performers. This is costly and saps the morale of many public sector workers who work hard in the public interest. What is often lost in the debate is that public sector managers want to perform at the top level; they don’t want to be handcuffed by overly demanding transparency requirements and the work of public sector unions.

These unions have a lot to answer for. The fact that 77 per cent of public sector workers in Canada belong to a union, compared to 15.5 per cent in the private sector, speaks to the problem. Their purpose is to promote the interest of their members, because that is what they are paid to do. They only need to push against political will, which is at times shaky, while private sector unions must push against unbending markets forces that are certain to become more difficult in the Trump era.

An election campaign provides the opportunity for a debate on the role of government and public sector unions, and to ask if the federal government still requires nearly 300 organizations. Canadians should also ask if the federal government has encroached too far in areas of provincial responsibilities because it has the spending power to do so. Time would be better spent debating these issues rather than reacting to every social media message or change of mind that comes out of the White House.

Source: The election campaign is a chance to rethink Canada’s public sector