The federal government spent almost $19.2 billion on external professional and special services in 2025-26, barely below the previous year’s total despite a Liberal promise to reduce reliance on outside consultants.

Audited financial statements released Friday show spending in that category fell from $19.5 billion a year earlier, according to reporting by The Canadian Press’s Catherine Morrison, published by CBC News.

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s election platform promised to significantly reduce the government’s reliance on consultants while improving the public service’s ability to hire in-house expertise.

In its budget released last week, the government said it had already taken steps to reduce spending on external management and other consulting services by 20 per cent, with the aim of achieving $900 million in annual savings by 2028-29. That commitment concerns consulting services, while the financial statements’ $19.2-billion figure covers the broader category of external professional and special services.

Sean O’Reilly, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, criticized the government for cutting public service positions without substantially reducing outsourcing costs.

“The government is cutting its own public service experts, then paying a premium to rent that expertise back,” he said. “That’s not efficiency. That’s waste.”

The Liberals’ 2025 budget set out a plan to reduce the public service by 10 per cent by the end of 2028-29. A Parliamentary Budget Officer tool released in September estimated there were 344,970 federal employees in the second quarter of this year, down 6.5 per cent from two years earlier.

A separate, broader measure of contracted services — including contracts with other government departments — totalled $22.8 billion in 2025-26. Government estimates project that figure will reach $26.6 billion in 2026-27.

Outsourcing is also an issue in renewed contract negotiations with the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which has identified job security and ending contracting it considers wasteful among its priorities.

Sources