Why Canada's civil service needs more 'plumbers' and fewer 'poets'

Donald Savoie, a Canadian public administration expert, critiques the disproportionate growth of policy-focused civil servants (“poets”) in Ottawa compared to service-delivering workers (“plumbers”). With federal employment rising from 340,000 in 2014 to 445,000 in 2025, he argues for a rebalancing towards local service delivery, highlighting that no western nation matches Canada’s concentration of public employees in its capital.

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