Federal Employees See Significant Pay Increases in 2025

The federal government's decision to rubberstamp raises for its employees has been met with criticism from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

According to records obtained by the federation, 78% of federal employees, or 336,188 bureaucrats, received pay hikes last year.

The same records showed that departments barely met half of their own performance targets, and only 0.14%, or 596 employees, took a pay reduction.

“Taxpayers have every reason to question why the vast majority of bureaucrats are taking bigger paycheques when departments can barely pass their own test,” said Franco Terrazzano, Federal Director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

The federation claims that the government has continually refused to disclose how much these pay hikes cost taxpayers.

“Taxpayers are on the hook for another wage hike, but the government won’t tell Canadians the price tag,” said Devin Drover, General Counsel of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

The federation says this isn’t the first time the feds have refused to disclose pay raise amounts, and that government employees are now taking larger salaries than their counterparts working outside of government.

“Canada’s government-sector workers (from federal, provincial, and local governments) enjoyed a 4.8% wage premium, on average, over their private-sector counterparts,” according to the Fraser Institute, which controlled for factors like age, gender, education and industry.

The government union, Public Service Alliance of Canada, has called the federal government’s wage offers “insulting” and “unacceptable.”

“What’s really insulting and unacceptable is how much the bureaucracy costs taxpayers and how little it delivers,” said Terrazzano.

The cost of the bureaucracy is expected to reach $79.4 billion in 2026, more than during former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s last year in office in 2024-25, even after inflation.

The cost of the federal bureaucracy increased 80% between 2015 and 2024, according to the Public Accounts.