Business needs more freedom
Canada is one of the most over-governed, top-heavy democracies in the world, and that’s unlikely to change any time soon.
The latest data from the Public Service Commission of Canada revealed that our federal bureaucracy continues to grow year over year and has swelled to a record-high number of civil servants working for Ottawa.
The total number of federal public servants governed by the Public Service Employment Act now stands at about 275,000. When you add in employees from across the entire federal public service, the total number of bureaucrats is closer to 360,000 employees.
If you then toss into the mix all of those who are working for the public sector across Canada, local and provincial governments included, the total number of public sector employees in Canada is closer to 4,000,000. It’s simply not sustainable.
Here’s the issue: more bureaucrats mean higher government spending — and higher government spending means bigger deficits and more taxes. According to a report by the Parliamentary Budget Officer published in April of last year, personnel spending related to the civil service shot up by more than 30 per cent from 2019-20 to 2021-22. In dollar terms, the federal government spent an eye-popping $60.7 billion on salaries, pensions, overtime and bonuses for civil servants in 2021-22. You can’t blame Canadians for taking government jobs that offer good salaries, pensions and job security. But at some point, we have to start asking if the government really needs to be involved in virtually all aspects of our lives — from the minute details of how businesses are run to what can be built on our own private property.
More bureaucrats don’t only mean higher spending. They also mean more regulations, permits, licenses, forms and compliance requests. And all of this red tape is stalling economic growth and progress.
Business in Canada today — especially small business — is impeded by unnecessary government intervention at nearly every turn, and as a result, the country has been saddled with stunted economic growth.
When I was CEO of Magna International Inc., I could always tell if one of our factories was struggling financially by the number of white-collar workers in the offices above the factory floor. If there’s too much overhead up top, it doesn’t matter how hard the employees on the factory floor work, because the business simply won’t be profitable. The same principle holds true for countries.
Consider this: depending on the definition used, there are approximately one million small businesses in Canada. If we slashed the slew of regulations and red tape holding them back, these businesses would be free to expand and grow.
And if every small business in Canada hired just one single additional employee, one million new jobs would be created overnight. We would ignite economic growth on a scale this country hasn’t seen in many decades.
When small businesses are thriving, so too does the country.
I’ve been in business for nearly 70 years now, and I can say with certainty that the government approach to small business in Canada during the 1950s and 1960s was much more conducive to creating jobs and growth. Today, the opposite is true — it seems that governments are more focused on impeding, blocking and hindering business every step of the way.
WHEN SMALL BUSINESSES ARE THRIVING, SO TOO DOES THE COUNTRY.
Meaningful reform for government spending won’t work until a consensus is formed on the economic principles needed to guide the country. I believe we could achieve that through the adoption of an economic charter of rights and responsibilities that holds government responsible for reducing overhead and unnecessary regulations. It’s a principle that millions of Canadians would support — especially our country’s beleaguered small business owners and entrepreneurs.
Canada can’t continue adding more and more government workers year after year — especially with record-high deficits, and especially when businesses are being crushed by a regulatory burden that grows by the day. Canadians are working harder and longer and paying more taxes to support an out-of-control bureaucracy that increasingly does not improve quality life but, on the contrary, makes life more costly and makes running a small business more difficult.
The truth is, we’ve been constantly growing the size of our government for many decades now, and it hasn’t raised our standard of living or helped make our businesses more successful.
Maybe it’s time we tried a little less government for a change.