This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Lorne Gunter: PM Carney set to worsen Trudeau's fiscal failures Photo by Justin Tang / THE CANADIAN PRESS Article content Ever wonder how glamorous the life of a daily newspaper columnist is? Well, here’s how I spent my Friday morning.

First, I did a deep dive into government workforce statistics from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat (via the Canadian Taxpayers Federation). Then I swam around in the luxurious pools of the federal government’s Main Spending Estimates. And finally, I bathed in an RBC Economics analysis of first-quarter GDP numbers.

Advertisement 2 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Exclusive articles by David Staples, Keith Gerein and others, Oilers news from Cult of Hockey, Ask EJ Anything features, the Noon News Roundup and Under the Dome newsletters.

Unlimited online access to Edmonton Journal and 15 news sites with one account. Edmonton Journal ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on. Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.

Support local journalism. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Exclusive articles by David Staples, Keith Gerein and others, Oilers news from Cult of Hockey, Ask EJ Anything features, the Noon News Roundup and Under the Dome newsletters.

Unlimited online access to Edmonton Journal and 15 news sites with one account. Edmonton Journal ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition to view on any device, share and comment on. Daily puzzles, including the New York Times Crossword.

Support local journalism. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account.

Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors.

THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Sign In or Create an Account Email Address Continue or View more offers Article content I loved every minute of it.

Read More Lorne Gunter: Donald Trump's talk of '51st state' rears its ugly head once again Lorne Gunter: Throne speech holds no promises for Alberta Here’s what I learned: Justin Trudeau left Mark Carney an enormous economic and fiscal hole that Carney is determined to dig even deeper. Article content The first conclusion is no surprise. Trudeau’s policies led to a decade of decline in the economy, industrial productivity, investment, per capita GDP, affordability and government finances.

But Carney!? The man the Liberals touted as a financial genius who would correct all the failures of the Trudeau decade seems determined to repeat them. Or even magnify them.

Thanks to the investigative work of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), we now know how obscenely the Liberals inflated the federal civil service. Call it 98,000 additional bureaucrats in just 10 years — a 38 per cent increase. Headline News Get the latest headlines, breaking news and columns.

There was an error, please provide a valid email address. Sign Up By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Thanks for signing up!

A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Headline News will soon be in your inbox.

We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again Article content Advertisement 3 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content During that time, Canada’s population grew just over 16 per cent, meaning the federal government grew almost 2.5 times faster than the population.

When Justin Trudeau became prime minister in 2015, Ottawa employed not quite 260,000 civil servants, which was probably already too many. Now that number has risen to 358,000, which is undoubtedly way too many. Infrastructure Canada had the greatest percentage increase, adding 375 per cent more workers, while Employment and Social Development Canada added the greatest number of new employees — 16,842 additional employees.

To do what, exactly? The CTF calculates, “Taxpayers would save about $7 billion annually had the federal bureaucracy grown in line with population growth over the last 10 years.” At least 10 per cent of the federal payroll is unnecessary. If all those additional government employees were frontline workers, maybe Canadians would notice an improvement in service.

But as the Parliamentary Budget Officer pointed out last year, the average federal department or agency now has seven layers of management. What Canadians are witnessing is paralysis through oversupervision. Advertisement 4 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below.

Article content But don’t expect any relief from the Carney government. Prime Minister Carney has already promised he won’t lay off any civil servants. He’ll merely cap growth in the civil service at two per cent a year.

Spending is going the same way. Under the Trudeau Liberals, federal spending grew by 92 per cent. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, Ottawa’s workforce is now a third larger than it was when the Liberals replaced the Harper Conservatives.

Surely some (much) of that added spending is superfluous. Yet Carney is promising to keep increasing spending. On Tuesday, the feds released their first Main Estimates since the election.

The Carney government, who were supposed to be smarter, more frugal managers than the Trudeau government, forecast they will spend 7.75 per cent more this year than the Trudeau-ites did in 2024. Advertisement 5 Story continues below This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Article content The Liberals expect to spend about $35 billion on defence, but a not dissimilar amount ($26 billion) on consultants.

The latter leads me to ask, what are all those extra civil servants doing if $26-billion worth of consultants have to be hired to do research and devise policy? And in case anyone thinks economic growth is going to cover for Carney’s continued over-hiring and overspending given Friday’s headlines that Canada’s economy grew an unexpectedly strong 2.2% in the first quarter, keep in mind that the Royal Bank’s economics unit says that once one-time, pre-tariff purchases are excluded, the economy actually shrank 0.2% in February and grew just 0.1% in March. Similar sluggish growth is expected for most of the rest of 2025.

So far, the Carney Liberals have shown themselves to be just as fiscally and economically inept as their predecessors. (That’s because they’re mostly the same people, anyway.) Article content Share this article in your social network Read Next Latest National Stories