REGINA – The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is raising alarm bells about the percentage of Saskatchewan residents who work for some level of government.
They are pointing to Statistics Canada data that shows over than 28 per cent of Saskatchewan people work for some level of government – the highest percentage in western Canada. CTF notes only two provinces in all of Canada have a higher proportion than Saskatchewan and those are PEI and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Of other provinces, CTF notes that in NDP British Columbia, 21 per cent of people work for the government. In NDP Manitoba it is 26 per cent, and in Alberta it is 18.4 per cent.
Gage Haubrich, CTF Prairie Director, points to a number of reasons for concern.
“For all levels of government the biggest thing is paying their employees,” said Haubrich.
He said the number of people working for the government is often the government’s largest expense, and that the government needs to find savings at all levels.
“The (Saskatchewan) government spent $8.5 billion dollars paying its employees last year, 40 percent of its spending,” Haubrich said. “And we've seen over the last number of years the government continue to spend money it doesn't have, more than doubling the debt… and that number has huge consequences for taxpayers.”
Haubrich also pointed out that people who work for the government on average are paid “about five per cent more than people who don't, despite doing similar work and if the government were to simply reduce bureaucracy cost by about that five per cent to get it to that level, it would save taxpayers over $400 million dollars a year.”
In their news release Monday, CTF called for the federal, provincial and municipal governments to “cut the cost of their respective bureaucracies” in Saskatchewan, saying that taxpayers could not afford to keep on paying for all of the bureaucrats.
As for where Saskatchewan ought to look first to find savings, Haubrich said the “first thing they want to do is they want to ask their neighbours.”
“We're seeing other similar provinces with vast geographies are getting along just fine with smaller bureaucracies.”
For municipal governments in the province, Haubrich suggests they do some semblance of a spending review and look at where they have too many people, andwhere they can cut costs, “because of course there's other cities, other federal government institutions across the country that don't have nearly as many employees.”
He pointed to the city of Saskatoon and city of Regina having “both hike(d) property taxes by record or near record amounts and hire new staff. So, of course, that's the first place to look if you're having to hike taxes by these high amounts.”
As for the federal government, Haubrich said they have “seen the cost of federal bureaucracy jump up by 80 per cent in the last 10 years. So if you look at the federal government, they really should have no problems finding places to cut when we're seeing an almost doubling of the cost of the average federal bureaucrat as well.”
Saskatchewan has had a reputation for being a “big government” province ever since the NDP government days, with government being a major employer overall.
But Haubrich notes that the percentage of employment has crept up under the Sask Party.
“So it's actually gone up over the last 10 years,” Haubrich said. He noted that in 2016, the “government percentage of employment was about 24 per cent and now we've seen it got up to 28 per cent in 2026. So it's even been over the course of the current provincial government that it switched to more government jobs, less private sector jobs.”
He points out there about 60,000 jobs created in the last 10 years in the province and 68 per cent of those were for government employment, not in the private sector.
Haubrich also notes that lagging private sector job growth is part of the issue in the province.
“That creates a long-term problem for taxpayers because when the government sector grows faster than the private sector that shifts away things that actually grow the economy like people starting businesses and moves people into bureaucracy. And that as well leads to that ever important problem of increased government debt. So you have less taxpayers who are actually growing the economy, paying into an ever-growing government sector — that means more debt on the backs of taxpayers. More money has to be spent on paying these employees instead of going back to productive people to actually grow the economy and invest in businesses" So it's a double-edged sword there when the government and for the bureaucracy as well.”
