Juno News - Trudeau can’t stop hiring federal employees

00:00:00.000 I wanted to bring in Chris Sims, our regular Monday Maven.

00:00:13.240 She is the Alberta Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and joins us now.

00:00:17.800 Chris, good to talk to you.

00:00:18.700 Thanks for coming on.

00:00:20.020 Thanks for having us.

00:00:21.360 You have not seen in any businesses around you, I suspect, except for maybe a company

00:00:26.420 that started up in 2015, 2016, a rise of 42% in its staffing with no discernible reason

00:00:35.060 why.

00:00:35.520 The federal government has not scaled up its services.

00:00:38.400 The federal government has not added a new service.

00:00:40.780 The federal government has, if anything, just tried to maintain.

00:00:44.760 But this increase, massively so.

00:00:47.740 Yes, big time.

00:00:48.940 For folks who are already mad about this, sorry to add to it, but just picture yourself using

00:00:54.360 the federal government's service, whatever it happens to be.

00:00:57.560 A passport office, for example.

00:01:00.200 Think back to 2014 and then think to now.

00:01:03.660 Is your service 42% better?

00:01:06.940 Are you 42% faster and more efficient and friendly and on the ball and more accurate?

00:01:11.820 Did your passport come 42% more quickly?

00:01:14.700 Exactly.

00:01:15.220 And so this is where things really get frustrating.

00:01:18.980 And the folks at the CTF team there in Ottawa are the ones who dug up these numbers.

00:01:23.480 So like you said, that is an addition of more than 108,000 full-time positions.

00:01:29.640 To give you an idea, that's the entire population of Red Deer has been added to the government

00:01:36.640 employee list.

00:01:38.020 It is just an astonishing number of people.

00:01:40.980 And you're right, a 42% increase.

00:01:43.140 People could say, okay, well, they've got more demand.

00:01:46.040 More people are coming into Canada.

00:01:47.580 You know, our population is increasing.

00:01:49.020 Dude, that's only a 14% increase in population.

00:01:54.620 So the Trudeau government should be answering these questions as to why are you bloating

00:02:00.440 the ranks of government employee rosters?

00:02:04.020 And keep in mind, it isn't just the numbers here.

00:02:06.480 The numbers are a big factor.

00:02:08.180 But it's also the fact that a lot of these federal government employees, especially in

00:02:12.500 the Ottawa Gatineau area in the capital, as Franco likes to call it from Hunger Games, they're

00:02:17.820 complaining about having to go into work, like to put on pants and go into the office

00:02:24.040 and work instead of working from home.

00:02:27.400 Now, lots of people do work from home and that's totally fine, right?

00:02:31.400 But the thing is, is that this all started during the lockdowns.

00:02:34.780 This all started during, you know, the measures that were taken by the federal government and

00:02:39.380 they're still hanging on to not having to go into the office and just kind of working

00:02:44.680 from their phones.

00:02:45.640 And so folks really need to pick up the phone and call their members of parliament on this.

00:02:51.320 Well, yeah.

00:02:51.940 And so there's the raw numbers of this, which are concerning enough.

00:02:55.640 And there's also, and I don't know how granular the details are right now, the question of what

00:03:00.360 these jobs are and what people are getting paid.

00:03:02.700 We know, generally speaking, that pay in the public sector is not proportionate or commensurate

00:03:08.520 to what the private sector pay is.

00:03:10.080 There have been various studies done on this and, you know, it's anywhere from 10 to like

00:03:14.280 30% more for the same job in the private sector on average.

00:03:19.100 And then there's also the pension aspect of this as well.

00:03:21.500 And that, you know, a lot of the bureaucrats have access to pensions that their colleagues

00:03:25.120 in the private sector don't have.

00:03:26.360 So a massive increase like this is incredibly, incredibly harmful to the government's books.

00:03:31.980 Oh, big time.

00:03:33.400 They're there pretty much permanently.

00:03:35.460 The idea of actually getting fired from your job, even for wrongdoing as a federal government

00:03:40.840 employee is almost incomprehensible.

00:03:44.600 So I spent a lot of time working in Ottawa, living in Ottawa.

00:03:48.800 A lot of it was actually at News Talk Radio.

00:03:51.200 I think I booked you there as a guest many times there, their CFRA radio station.

00:03:55.020 And so I got to know some of these federal government employees quite well and those who cater to

00:04:01.700 them, literally some of the caterers who bring in their lunches. 0.91

00:04:05.080 And it became a term called the golden handcuff.

00:04:09.200 So it goes something like this.

00:04:11.040 Oh, I've got this office job.

00:04:12.560 I have this cubicle job.

00:04:13.860 It's super boring.

00:04:14.880 I water houseplants for most of the day and play Candy Crush on my phone.

00:04:19.560 But I don't want to leave because, like you just pointed out, I have job security, big

00:04:24.640 pension, all that great stuff.

00:04:26.400 And I'm paid more than the average person.

00:04:28.180 Now, I've got to be clear.

00:04:29.400 There are some people who work within the federal government employee ranks.

00:04:33.540 I have met them who do work hard.

00:04:36.040 They do a very good job.

00:04:37.220 They're efficient.

00:04:37.760 They do keep the things running on time as best as they possibly can.

00:04:42.200 But there's so much extra.

00:04:44.920 I call them office furniture.

00:04:46.920 There's so much bloat.

00:04:48.520 And that was even 10 years ago.

00:04:50.360 I can't imagine what it's like inside the ranks of the public service, as they call it

00:04:54.660 right now.

00:04:55.660 Yeah, it's always great.

00:04:56.520 I end up in Ottawa a lot just for interviews and events and whatnot.

00:04:59.980 And literally, without fail, every time I walk down Spark Street or Alvarez Street or

00:05:04.600 whatever, some federal bureaucrat will come up to me and they'll say in a really low 0.87

00:05:08.580 voice, hey, Andrew, I like your show.

00:05:10.900 I like your show.

00:05:12.000 And I'm like, why are you whispering?

00:05:13.140 And you're like, well, you know.

00:05:14.900 So they are there.

00:05:16.160 And I know there are many of you.

00:05:17.080 And I am not trying to take aim at you as individuals.

00:05:20.100 It's about the institution as a whole.

00:05:22.040 I mean, I wrote many years ago about how I worked at the LCBO.

00:05:25.300 And I said, you know, this is an absolute racket.

00:05:27.240 But you know what?

00:05:28.060 In university, I was happy to profit from that racket because it was an opportunity there.

00:05:32.420 We need to have a government.

00:05:33.540 I would say doing far fewer things than most times, you know, the government wants the

00:05:39.440 government to be doing.

00:05:40.800 But interestingly enough, I would just, to point out the numbers here, 42% increase in

00:05:46.380 the size of the bureaucracy, 14% increase in population.

00:05:51.340 Now, that means that the tax base has not increased with the size of government.

00:05:57.680 Now, GDP has increased, wealth and wages and whatever has increased.

00:06:01.800 But that means that the onus of paying for that workforce falls on a smaller and smaller

00:06:08.960 share of the population proportionally, which means higher taxes.

00:06:12.680 Am I missing something?

00:06:13.900 No, you nailed it.

00:06:15.240 And to further illustrate what exactly you just said, more bodies, right?

00:06:19.920 More people, okay?

00:06:21.200 Usually means more revenue for government because they're paying income taxes in their salaries.

00:06:28.200 They're starting businesses and paying business taxes.

00:06:31.160 Alberta is a perfect example, okay?

00:06:33.260 We've been having the biggest population boom here since the oil patch boom of the late 70s,

00:06:39.480 early 80s, before the first Trudeau wrecked everything.

00:06:42.380 So, that was a huge population in migration, okay, is what they call it.

00:06:47.300 A big population boom.

00:06:48.920 Our government revenues have gone up.

00:06:52.040 So, it's kind of fascinating.

00:06:53.600 This is why we try to argue lower taxes, okay?

00:06:57.020 Lower your taxes, your income taxes, lower your business taxes because it increases your

00:07:03.540 population.

00:07:04.640 More human beings move to your geographical area and start paying taxes.

00:07:09.220 And almost always, that winds up with more money, actually, in government coffers because

00:07:14.800 you're attracting that sort of industrious person.

00:07:18.000 And you're exactly right, Andrew.

00:07:19.960 We're not having that here.

00:07:21.400 We've seen a more than 40% increase in the ranks of government employees, but a 14% increase

00:07:27.840 in our population.

00:07:28.720 So, the burden is much higher for us as the payers.

00:07:32.280 Now, on the other side of this, I will say everything is not completely sunshine and roses

00:07:36.660 for federal bureaucrats.

00:07:38.100 The government has historically had issues paying them.

00:07:41.080 Now, you know, there's a part of, you know, those listening that may say, good, we'll save

00:07:44.400 a few bucks.

00:07:44.900 But at the end of the day, if people are working for the government, they should be able to

00:07:48.120 get paid.

00:07:48.680 And this has been, how many years have we been talking about the Phoenix pay-sit?

00:07:53.120 Like, this has been the story.

00:07:55.320 The Phoenix is supposed to rise from the ashes, but I feel this one has just been smoldering

00:07:59.280 for the last, like, decade.

00:08:01.400 That we've learned that the federal payroll system launched in 2016 to save $70 million

00:08:07.900 has actually cost $3.7 billion almost.

00:08:12.260 This is insane.

00:08:13.600 Yeah, it's totally nuts.

00:08:15.000 So, I'm going to tell you a little story.

00:08:16.700 So, I was at Sun News Network from a startup until it shut down.

00:08:20.300 And then after that, I was with the Veterans Affairs Minister for a brief period of time.

00:08:24.600 So, I've seen, you know, both sides of that rope in communications and journalism back

00:08:29.000 and forth several times in my career.

00:08:31.040 After I was with the Veterans Affairs Minister after 2015, I was back at 580 CFRA, helping

00:08:37.360 to host and produce a show.

00:08:39.180 The big story that started percolating around four months after the election changeover there,

00:08:44.860 Andrew, was the Phoenix pay system.

00:08:47.280 Now, for folks who don't know what this is, very quickly, the Phoenix pay system is a software

00:08:52.940 program that manages the payroll for the mass of bureaucracy, okay?

00:08:58.480 So, it doesn't matter if you're out there trying to help save whales with scientists and

00:09:03.480 the Coast Guard, okay, and you're paid by the federal government, or if you're a paper

00:09:09.080 pusher in Ottawa somewhere, you're all paid under the Phoenix pay system.

00:09:13.920 Now, this is how the story goes, okay?

00:09:16.080 I think it was two or three separate times under Prime Minister Stephen Harper before 2015,

00:09:21.900 they tried to implement this new form of software so that every two weeks or every month or

00:09:27.280 wherever they get paid, bing, there's your money, it winds up in your bank account.

00:09:31.380 But three separate times, the story goes, the senior bureaucrats warned the government,

00:09:36.340 whoa, whoa, whoa, there's a lot of bugs in this thing, okay?

00:09:38.960 We can't do this yet, okay?

00:09:41.380 So, they didn't do it.

00:09:42.780 They kept the old system and people kept on getting paid as normal.

00:09:45.660 Chapter change, the Trudeau government comes in, the story goes, they said, whoa, we've

00:09:52.800 been sitting on this for three years, why isn't this thing ready yet?

00:09:55.600 We're going to do it.

00:09:56.500 Let's push the button.

00:09:57.740 I don't know if those same bureaucrats warned the Trudeau government in the same way, I don't

00:10:04.020 have that smoking gun.

00:10:05.340 The rumor is that they did, okay?

00:10:07.640 But they pushed the button anyway.

00:10:09.340 So, in some cases, Andrew, these bureaucrats, these public, these federal employees would

00:10:16.600 go months and months, and in some cases a year, without getting paid.

00:10:21.460 So, some of them had to leave their homes, they had to move back into their parents, some

00:10:25.160 of them were also drastically overpaid.

00:10:27.780 So, they have this crazy amount of money coming into their bank account, and they're having

00:10:31.860 to account for it and save every nickel of it, and they don't know how much they're allowed

00:10:34.940 to spend.

00:10:35.520 Like, it totally messed up their budgeting.

00:10:37.140 Fast forward to now, that was a great piece by Jen Hodgson, by the way, in the Western

00:10:41.840 Standard.

00:10:43.000 Almost $4 billion has been wasted trying to fix this software program.

00:10:50.620 Again, with a B, $4 billion so far on trying to fix and implement the Phoenix Pay system.

00:10:57.920 To give you an idea, we could pay around 2,000 carpenters and 2,000 police officers full salary

00:11:06.000 for 10 years, what we've spent on this.

00:11:11.540 Wow.

00:11:12.420 Yeah.

00:11:13.340 It's brutal.

00:11:13.860 Four CBCs.

00:11:16.120 Don't give them a idea.

00:11:16.960 I don't recommend spending it on that, but it's, or no, three CBCs, I guess.

00:11:20.880 Three and a bit, plus bonus.

00:11:22.280 Yeah, all right.

00:11:23.200 Chris Sims, Alberta Director from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

00:11:25.960 Always a pleasure.

00:11:27.060 We will talk to you next Monday.

00:11:28.600 You betcha.

00:11:29.420 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:11:31.940 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

Juno News - July 28, 2024

Trudeau can’t stop hiring federal employees

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