I had that discussion with a boss once. He said "I don't like telecommuting, because I don't know what you're doing." I answered "Boss, you don't come into my office from one end of the week to the other. For all you know, I could be sleeping, playing games, or practicing my best war dance.
Yep, true enough.
You judge what I'm doing telecommuting the same way you judge what I'm doing when I'm in the office. . . by my output."
Bingo! (No racial profiling parody intended)
That’s the crux of the civil service working from home issue. The Trudeau government has increased the size of the federal public service by 37.9%, or almost 100,000 additional employees, since coming to power in 2015, according to a new study by the Montreal Economic Institute.
The report by the fiscally conservative think-tank says the federal government now has nine employees for every 1,000 Canadians — 25.3% higher than in 2015 and a figure which factors in population growth.
Labour costs for the federal public service increased by 53.2% since the Trudeau government took office, the study says, citing figures by Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux.
“Given such a large increase in the size of government, one might expect Canadians to see a significant difference in the quantity and quality of federal services, but this has not materialized,” Giguere said.
“Go Scoreboard Baby!!”
Trudeau said he’s focused on supporting Canadians in tough economic times and growing the economy, which won’t be achieved by “austerity and cuts” advocated by business groups and the Conservatives??
Employment gains in the public sector more than offset losses among Canadian businesses last month, highlighting a labour market that has been propped up by government hiring.
In February, public-sector roles rose by 18,800 positions, while the private sector lost 16,400 jobs, Statistics Canada data showed. Over the past year, employment in the public sector has grown 4.7 per cent, versus 1.2 per cent in private industry.
Employment gains in the public sector more than offset losses among Canadian businesses last month, highlighting a labor market that has been propped up by government hiring.
www.bloomberg.com
From 2015 to 2022, the federal bureaucracy grew by 27 percentage points.
www.fraserinstitute.org
Average public sector wages were more than nine per cent higher than those of their private sector counterparts at the outset of the pandemic. On top of wages and comprehensive benefits, 88 per cent of government workers were covered by a pension plan, compared to fewer than 23 per cent of private-sector workers and a higher percentage of those public sector pension plans are richer, recession-proof, defined-benefit plans.
Exacerbating the inequality, the public sector is more immune to layoffs because of weak-kneed governments fearful of having strikes on their watch. The irony is that lower-paid private sector workers are paying for the higher wages and benefits of their public-sector counterparts.
No one benefits other than (generally) overpaid civil servants and the governments looking for votes.
Howard Levitt: The Canadian government is using the private sector’s tax dollars to choke off its growth — right under its nose. Read on.
financialpost.com
“Was there a bureaucrat shortage in Ottawa before Trudeau took over?” said Franco Terrazzano of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
Last month, the National Post
reported federal executives received $1.3 billion in bonuses between 2015 and 2022.
As well, 89 per cent of federal executives
earned bonuses between the 2019-20 and 2021-22 fiscal years.
More federal workers are also receiving bonuses compared to previous years, with a Canadian Taxpayers Federation investigation earlier this year
revealing around $200 million in bonuses were handed out to public servants last year, despite performance goals having been met less than 60 per cent of the time.
You judge what I'm doing telecommuting the same way you judge what I'm doing when I'm in the office. . . by my output."
That represents an increase from the $171 million in bonuses handed out in 2020, despite only meeting established performance metrics less than half of the time…
& what was happening in 2020 with civil servants regarding office attendance?
The federal government's ranks swelled by over 21,000 workers since 2022, government data shows.
nationalpost.com
Ten years ago, the Montreal-based Institute for Research on Public Policy published an article in its Policy Options magazine titled,
Fixing the Bureaucracy, which quoted a retired deputy minister who claimed that Canada’s civil service was “seriously overstaffed.” If we were seriously overstaffed with bureaucrats in 2013, what would the former deputy minister say today?
According to the
2013 survey results, Canadian CEOs said that “inefficient government bureaucracy” was the number 1 problem they faced — one of the highest levels of complaint of any country in the world.
More bureaucracy means more taxes that Canadian taxpayers and businesses have to shell out to pay for the costs associated with maintaining our mammoth bureaucracy. That alone is a strong argument for why we need to get a grip on the out-of-control growth of Canadian government.
Simply put, bureaucracy poses one of the greatest dangers to our society. Bureaucracy is like a cancer. If left unchecked, it will grow and spread, eventually eroding the economic health of the nation.
Bureaucracy poses one of the greatest dangers to our society
nationalpost.com
