If you missed about half of your performance targets, would you expect to receive a bonus?
The answer for folks in most jobs is an unequivocable “no.”
Not so if you work for the federal government.
According to documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, federal government executives pocketed over $200 million in bonuses last year despite the fact that federal departments met just 54 per cent of their performance goals.
And we’re not just talking about some employees walking away with a bonus. Roughly 88 per cent of government executives received a bonus last year, according to records obtained by the CTF.
“Bonuses are for when you go above and beyond, so why are most government executives taking bonuses every year when their departments can barely pass their own test,” said CTF Federal Director Franco Terrazzano. “Prime Minister Mark Carney needs to end Ottawa’s entitlement culture because federal executives shouldn’t automatically get a bonus.”
Terrazzano is right: there’s an entitlement culture in Ottawa. Most Canadians expect to get a bonus if they perform exceptionally well. In this case, taxpayers are the ones footing the bill when government executives get bonuses, and yet virtually every executive in Ottawa seems to be getting one, results be damned.
The results at Crown corporations are just as damning, if not more so.
Canada Post, for example, lost over $1.5 billion in 2025 and received a bailout to the tune of $1 billion from taxpayers. Yet the Crown corporation still decided to hand out $30.8 million in bonuses.
Then there’s the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, which is the federal agency responsible for housing, with its stated goal being to promote housing affordability for Canadians.
Despite the fact that housing remains out of reach for millions of Canadians, the CMHC handed out nearly $32 million in bonuses last year.
How about VIA Rail? The Crown corporation handed out over $10 million in bonuses in 2025, with every single executive taking one. Meanwhile, the train company is losing hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
Why is Ottawa rewarding mediocrity and footing taxpayers with the bill?
Clearly, there needs to be a culture change in Ottawa. For too long, bureaucrats have been rewarded for poor public policy outcomes. This wouldn’t happen at a private company and it shouldn’t happen in government either.
Performance pay must be tied to actual performance. If it’s not, what’s the incentive for those working in government, or at Crown corporations for that matter, to actually perform?
The answer is there is none.
As the CTF rightly points out, Carney promised to find savings when he first came into office. Getting rid of taxpayer-funded bonuses, particularly when government bureaucrats are so clearly underperforming, needs to be something that is prioritized.
Until there is a culture change within government, with those at the top making it clear that only real performance will be rewarded, public policy outcomes simply won’t change. If we want to see better outcomes from government, we need to demand that those in government only get rewarded when they actually meet their goals. Any other approach will just encourage more failure.
Carney claims to want to bring a more business-oriented, managerial approach to government. If that’s true, he needs to tackle the problem of taxpayer-funded executive bonuses that keep rewarding failure. If he doesn’t, Carney will prove that he’s just another politician, going along to get along.
Jay Goldberg is the Canadian Affairs Manager at the Consumer Choice Center. He previously served as the Ontario Director at the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and a policy fellow at the Munk School of Public Policy and Global Affairs. Jay holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto.
