Canada’s public sector has expanded rapidly over the past decade, outpacing private sector hiring and raising questions about long-term sustainability.
BNN Bloomberg spoke with Jason Childs, professor of economics at the University of Regina, about the drivers behind the growth, regional trends and the potential burden on taxpayers.
Key Takeaways
- Canada added nearly one million public sector jobs from 2015 to 2024, increasing reliance on government employment over private sector growth.
- Public administration roles — excluding health care and education — have grown especially quickly, raising concerns about bureaucracy expansion.
- Atlantic provinces and B.C. saw the largest gaps between public and private sector job growth, while Alberta saw smaller differences.
- Returning to 2015 employment ratios could require a decade-long hiring freeze or significant job cuts in the public sector.
- Governments may face increasing scrutiny over transparency and access to data, particularly as information requests become more restricted.
Read the full transcript below:
ANDREW: Between 2015 and 2024, Canada added just shy of one million public sector jobs, according to a report from the Fraser Institute. This growth in the public sector during the period outpaced job gains in the private sector. Let’s get more from Jason Childs, the author of this report and a professor of economics at the University of Regina. Professor, thanks for joining us. So tell us, is there cause for concern here? I mean, the population was growing.
JASON: The population was growing, but again, we’re seeing increased dependence on the public sector for employment rather than the private sector. And it’s really important to remember the public sector does not fund itself, so we’re leaning on general private sector taxpayers harder than we were in the past.
ANDREW: What areas in particular? I mean, was it provincial or federal? Did you do a breakdown on that level?
JASON: So this work doesn’t include that. There is another piece coming out that does include it. Our focus is primarily on provincial. The growth is across both. We know that the federal civil service grew by almost 200,000. I don’t have that number in front of me right now, but it grew significantly over the same period. Massive growth in there as well, but provincial and municipal governments as well have been growing at the same time.
ANDREW: You saw, in particular, breaking it down a little more by province, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Quebec and B.C. saw the largest gaps between public and private sector job growth — the public sector expanded at an especially fast rate relative to private.
JASON: Yeah. So when you look at particularly the Atlantic provinces, Newfoundland in particular, B.C. saw significant growth as well. Alberta actually managed to sort of hold that back a little bit. And as usual, everybody else falls in between. But what’s particularly concerning for the Atlantic region is we’re seeing growth there on an already high base.
ANDREW: I mean, some of these jobs are in bureaucracy. I guess some of them, though, include people who are out there in the field, inspecting fisheries and doing work like that, or overseeing the building of infrastructure.
JASON: So yeah, when you break down the public sector, adding all those jobs, then you break it down further and you can look at public administration, which excludes health care and education — things that you can maybe think of as investment — that growth is even faster relative to the private sector. We’re seeing significant growth in that sector as well. Across the country, we’ve added roughly twice the population of P.E.I. to public administration. And some of those jobs are going to be necessary. There is going to be some essential overhead, but there’s no reason to believe that all of it is.
ANDREW: What’s the remedy, though? Because bureaucracy has a natural tendency to grow. A senior official thinks, well, I need an assistant, and then other senior officials think, well, I need an assistant as well.
JASON: Yeah, you’re absolutely right. The incentives of the game are to build your empire when you’re a civil servant, when you’re a public administrator, and that’s a real problem. There are different ways we can get back to where we were in 2015, but they’re all going to mean either job cuts or job freezes. If we go with a simple freeze scenario — keep the raw number of public administrators constant — we’re looking at about a decade of zero new hires. If somebody leaves, you replace them, but we’re not adding anybody. So we’re looking at a decade there. And each year that we do this right now, it’s costing us $20 billion. If we go for the whole decade, it’ll cost us about $80 billion to $90 billion — that’s if we just hold the line and don’t have any layoffs.
ANDREW: As you know, the federal budget in 2025 had what some are calling an employment bombshell. The government said it plans to cut thousands of public sector jobs, but that’s by 2029, right?
JASON: Yeah, and the thousands they’re talking about cutting doesn’t come close to the number we need to cut by. If we go by the 2015 ratio of public administration to private sector employment, we’ve got about 180,000 extra over that ratio. So even 20,000 out of the federal civil service is not going to be enough.
ANDREW: One thing I’m interested in is the lack of responsiveness from government as to how money is actually being spent. The Globe and Mail ran that “Secret Canada” series. Have you run into that when you go looking for information from governments? Do they give you the old stonewalling?
JASON: Yeah, governments have become increasingly — and this is not just the federal government, it’s across the board — unwilling to share information through anything other than official publications. So when you go looking for data from, say, Statistics Canada or your provincial government, you’re going to get referred to an official publication that is usually highly aggregated and probably doesn’t contain the information you want. This is why work by various agencies using freedom of information requests is so important, and why I’m so concerned to see some of the responses, both legislatively and procedurally, to shut down or limit their use.
ANDREW: Yeah, it’s interesting. I guess governments have decided, well, freedom of information — there’s no real votes in it. We can get away with it.
JASON: And why would you reveal information that could hurt you at the ballot box? The incentive structure around this is all wrong. What information are people going to be looking for? It’s not going to be information that makes the government look good. They’re going to be looking for information that makes the government look bad. So why would you make that easy to get unless you have a serious commitment to transparency and accountability, which we unfortunately see is under threat.
ANDREW: Yeah, it’s a broad and important topic. Jason, thank you very much. I really appreciate it.
JASON: Thanks for having me on.
ANDREW: Jason Childs, author of the report on the growth of government employment in this country and a professor of economics at the University of Regina.
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This BNN Bloomberg summary and transcript of the April 16, 2026 interview with Jason Childs are published with the assistance of AI. Original research, interview questions and added context was created by BNN Bloomberg journalists. An editor also reviewed this material before it was published to ensure its accuracy and adherence with BNN Bloomberg editorial policies and standards.
