Federal Bureaucracy Grows While Service Quality Declines

New CFIB Report Shows Small Businesses Face Slow, Inconsistent Service from Federal Departments

A new report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) reveals that despite significant growth in the federal public service, small businesses continue to experience slow, inconsistent, and often unsatisfactory service from major government departments.

“Over the past decade the public service has ballooned by 36%, far outpacing both population and private sector job growth, yet on average only 16% of SMEs rate the service as good,” said Michelle Auger, CFIB’s director of trade and marketplace competitiveness and lead author of the report. “We’re seeing government get bigger but there’s been no clear payoff.”

The CFIB examined how small businesses interact with five key federal departments: the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Statistics Canada, Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC), and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC).

Among respondents, only 18% said CRA offered “good” quality service, and just 15% rated its response times positively. IRCC ranked lowest for satisfaction, followed by CBSA, while feedback for ESDC and Statistics Canada was more balanced.

Business owners cited inaccessible information, rigid procedures, delays, and technical difficulties as major barriers when dealing with these departments.

As Ottawa prepares the fall budget and reassesses spending, CFIB has outlined several key recommendations, including:

• Establishing transparent and ambitious service standards across all departments.
• Implementing hiring caps tied to population or GDP growth.
• Accelerating regulatory reforms through a “two-for-one” rule for new regulations.
• Enhancing customer service using digital tools.
• Exercising fiscal discipline to limit bureaucratic expansion.

“Small business owners are not measuring government’s success by how many people they’re hiring. It’s about how quickly they’re picking up the phone, how consistently they’re resolving issues and how clearly they’re sharing information,” said Jasmin Guenette, CFIB’s vice-president of national affairs. “Small businesses deserve better, and they expect the public sector to do better.”

Photo Credit: cfib-fcei.ca