'Taxpayers are right to question why individual bureaucrats are taking tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars, in wait-by-the-phone pay'
Government employees in Canada earned nearly $150 million in standby pay on top of their regular salaries last year, with some taking home six-figure sums on top of their regular salaries, according to a report.
Standby workers are “employees who are called in by their employer to work during a specific period,” reported the Toronto Sun, citing a definition from the federal government.
“The employer expects these employees to report to work if called upon to do so.”
The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) alone has paid more than $1.9 million in standby pay this year, with 145 employees earning at least $5,000 each, according to the Toronto Sun report, citing newly-released documents.
The highest payout for a single CRA employee reached $20,000 in 2024, a figure significantly lower than the agency’s record $65,000 for a single worker in 2016.
Export Development Canada (EDC) has also made headlines with one employee receiving a staggering $105,094 in standby pay in 2023, the highest reported amount across federal agencies. The agency’s total standby payouts have decreased in recent years, from a high of $434,000 in 2021 to $230,000 this year.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), however, leads in overall standby pay expenditures. So far this year, the force has paid $72.2 million, with annual payouts to individual employees regularly exceeding $100,000. In past years, single RCMP members have claimed as much as $193,000 in on-call pay. The RCMP’s 9,500 uniformed personnel routinely receive more than $5,000 each for standby duties, particularly in rural detachments where coverage is critical.
The number of Canadians who are struggling financially today is bigger than the comparable data recorded when the COVID-19 pandemic was still ongoing, according to a report from Statistics Canada (StatCan).
Several other government departments and agencies have reported substantial standby pay costs, according to the Toronto Sun:
CBC/Radio-Canada has reported $685,000 in standby pay for 2024, with the highest individual payment being $14,300. The Canadian Museum of Human Rights reported nearly $30,000 but declined to disclose individual payouts, citing privacy concerns.
Some agencies, including the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), have refused to release standby pay details altogether, also citing security and privacy.
Meanwhile, financial stress is a growing problem in Canada, according to a recent report. Currently, over two in five (41%) of Canadians belong to the financially stressed cluster, reported the National Payroll Institute previously. That number is up from 37% in 2023.
The significant sums allocated to standby pay have sparked criticism from fiscal watchdogs and taxpayers.
“Taxpayers are right to question why individual bureaucrats are taking tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in wait-by-the-phone pay in a single year,” said Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), in the Toronto Sun report.
“Are we paying CRA bureaucrats to stand by the phone and wait for taxpayers’ calls to go to voicemail?”
This comes as the number of federal government workers in Canada has grown by a big percentage, and many Canadians are saying it’s time to see that number drop, according to a report.
And nearly half of Canadians (47%) believe that the number of public sector workers should be reduced, reported the CTD.
