Privy Council Office spent millions on outside contractors: CTF
· Toronto Sun
OTTAWA — Despite Prime Minister Mark Carney promising to significantly reduce the government’s reliance on outside consultants, newly-unearthed documents suggest the Privy Council Office (PCO) spent millions of dollars outsourcing work even as it boasted a workforce of over 1,200 full-time employees.
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That’s according to data released Tuesday by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), outlining millions spent by the PCO on marketing, communications, A/V consulting, yoga instructors and a self-described “productivity ninja.”
“This is a huge problem for taxpayers because the government is spending more on in-house bureaucrats and more for outside help. Why are we paying so much for so little?” said Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the CTF.
“Carney promised to cut this type of wasteful spending and he needs to work harder to keep that promise because his government’s own numbers show the cost of the bureaucracy and the cost of consultants, contractors and outsourcing keeps going up.”
The Privy Council Office is Canada’s top government office, tasked with support and policy coordination for cabinet and the Prime Minister’s Office.
In data obtained via an access-to-information request, $17,446,103.28 was spent in 2025 on 171 outside contractors and vendors — including audiovisual companies, consulting firms and IT firms, think tanks, media outlets including The Hill Times newspaper, iPolitics and the UK-based Economist newspaper, and data monitoring.
In some cases, money was spent on non-Canadian contractors and vendors, including those based in the United States.
Millions spent on comms, despite hundreds of full-time employees
According to the data, $5.8 million was spent on communications, marketing and research — including $138,750 to government relations and comms firm Earnscliffe Strategy Group, $4.8 million to UK-based brand marketing firm EssenceMediacom, $78,247.93 to New York City-based research firm Haver Analytics, and $142,982.73 to data monitoring firm Factiva Ltd., a subsidiary of New York City-based Dow Jones & Company.
Meanwhile, publicly-available records show PCO employs 79 full-time employees tasked with communications and comms analysis alone, a total payroll cost of $8.4 million per year with annual salaries ranging from $74,180 to $181,365.
Records also show the Privy Council Office employs 243 full-time public servants tasked with policy analysis and research — a $27 million payroll expenditure with salaries ranging from $87,907 to $181,365.
And despite spending nearly a million dollars in payroll for full-time audio-visual staff, PCO billed $641,400 on A/V consulting services.
“The PCO already has hundreds of communications and research staff and then it spends millions getting consultants and contractors to do their homework,” Terrazzano said. “ It doesn’t make sense for taxpayers to pay bureaucrats to do a job and then pay consultants to do the same job.”
Other expenditures by the Privy Council Office include $12,900 to a “Hatha Slow Flow” yoga teacher located two hours outside of Ottawa, $20,4000 to an Ottawa limousine company, $4,665 on artwork rentals to the Canada Council of the Art’s federal art bank , and $1,300 to a self-described “productivity ninja.”
As well, the PCO paid $53,408.40 to the Federal Liberal Agency of Canada — the chief agent of the Liberal Party of Canada.
The Toronto Sun reached out to the Privy Council Office for comment, but did not hear back as of Tuesday afternoon.
Outside consulting spending on the rise
In the 2024-25 fiscal year, the federal government spent $19 billion on external contractors — an almost $2 billion increase from the year previous, according to data from the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat.
Despite this, the Treasury Board Secretariat’s Main Estimates suggest spending on “professional and special services” will top $26.6 billion in FY 2026-27.
Concerns about oversight on government consultant spending peaked with the ArriveCan app , which ended up costing $60 million thanks to poor oversight, despite its initial budgeted cost of just over $2 million.
During the 2025 federal election, Prime Minister Mark Carney promised to “significantly reduce reliance on external consultants,” putting efforts instead on using public servants already on the payroll.
According to the CTF, spending on “professional and outside services” by the Privy Council Office has skyrocketed — from $9.6 million in FY2015-26 to $36 million in FY 2024-25, according to public accounts.
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