QuoteThe report points out that the 13-year period of growth comes after an earlier decade, between 1990-91 and 1998-99, when both personnel expenses and number of employees declined as a result of budget cutbacks introduced by then Liberal finance minister Paul Martin.



Since then, however, the public service has more than made up for lost time and has reached new heights in terms of number of workers and compensation.



http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/12/11/average-public-servant-costs-taxpayers-114k-a-year-pbo-reveals/">//http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/12/11/average-public-servant-costs-taxpayers-114k-a-year-pbo-reveals/

Quote from: "Shen Li"Even Romero acknowledges the Tories have been too leftist with overpaid, under worked federal snivel serpents. One the bright side though Romero, you will be pleased to know the feds plan on getting rid of 25,000 of those parasites over the next three years. I realize it is only a drop in the bucket, but you would have to agree it is a step in the right direction.

QuoteKevin Page, Ottawa's scrupulously independent Parliamentary Budget Officer, said in a report released Tuesday that the federal government lavishes nearly $44 billion in pay and perks on its 375,000 civil servants. That works out to a staggering $114,000 each per year.

 

The average in the private sector is under $70,000.

 

The prickly Page often rubs the government the wrong way with his investigations into federal spending. For instance, Page was first to sound the alarm on cost overruns in the F-35 fighter purchase — more than two years ago, even before the auditor general had chimed in.

 

Now Page is warning that spending on civil servants is so out of control that there is no way the government of Stephen Harper will reach its goal of balancing Ottawa's massive budget in the next three or four years unless it can remain true to its announced plan to cut about 25,000 federal workers over the next three years.

 

But, in a sense, Page is only echoing findings that have been issued elsewhere over the last five years.

 

The budget officer, for instance, has determined that compensation in the federal civil service has outpaced inflation for the past dozen years. Ottawa's minions have also seen their pay grow faster than that of their counterparts in other levels of government and much, much faster than salaries in the private sector.



That is nothing new, though. James Lahey, a former deputy secretary to the federal cabinet — one of Canada's most senior civil servants — concluded more than a year ago that federal pay had increased 22% against inflation in the past two decades, while pay in the private sector had come ahead less than 10%.

As far back as 2008 — before the recession began — the Canadian Federation of Independent Business estimated that there was a 42% pay gap between federal workers and private-sector employees with comparable jobs when salaries, hours of work, vacations, perks and pensions were totalled. Since private-sector compensation has suffered during the recession and public-sector compensation has not, this gap has almost certainly widened.

 

The federal civil service has made back any cuts it suffered in the austerity measures of the mid-1990s, and then some.

 

This time last year, Toronto's C.D. Howe Institute revealed that Ottawa also underestimates the cost of the rich, rich pensions it offers to nearly 90% of its workers. (Under a quarter of private-sector workers have employer pension plans.) Instead of being on the hook for $147 billion in unfunded pension benefits, taxpayers owe closer to

 

$227 billion for current and past civil servants.

 

In short, because Ottawa permits civil service pensions to accrue benefits at twice the rate allowed in the private sector, the 80% of Canadians who do not work for a government will have to pay and pay and pay through their taxes (or is that through their noses?) to keep civil servants living large after they retire.

 

Federal workers take 17 "non-vacation" days off each year — essentially sick days and stress days — compared to fewer than nine per year for private-sector workers.

 

They work an average of 30% less per week and are more likely to take all their vacation days. And the average age at which federal civil servants qualify for a full pension is 58, compared to 62 or higher in the private sector (assuming the private-sector workers even have pensions).

 

It used to be that government workers took less pay because they worked less, had greater job stability and good pensions. Now they get much better pay, too.

 

Page's findings add to the growing evidence that civil servants in Canada are becoming a new privileged class.

http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2012/12/20121212-072113.html">http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/st ... 72113.html">http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/straighttalk/archives/2012/12/20121212-072113.html

Quote from: "Leopardsocks"What is intriguing is that we have a similar problem here. As does most other western nations.



Why is that, I wonder? Why do the same maladies affect similar countries almost identically?



What common social and economic forces combine to create a cloned State that makes the same mistake as its duplicates? We are, after all, sovereign nations.



Any guesses?

Quote from: "Leopardsocks"The malady of bloated bureacracy, with wages much higher than necessary.



For example, 30 years ago, people would work in the private sector for higher wages, while others worked in the public sector for lower wages, but higher security. The salary gap was around 30% in some cases.



Now, public service salaries are on average HIGHER than that of their private counterparts, but with the same tenure and benefits.



The biggest employer in our State is the Government. More people are paid to sit ata desk and produce nothing than those in the manufacturing sector. Now, if we produce nothing, how can we afford to pay people who DO nothing?