Unrestrained

This chart shows the change, and mostly growth, in the size of the provincial public sector — that is, the sum of employment in the civil service, schools, post-secondary education system, public health care, and provincial crown corporations.

It covers the past ten years, on a rolling twelve-month average, distinguishing by colour the various ministers who have held the finance portfolio since 2003.

The trend since 2006 is plainly seen. And eagle-eyed observers will notice something interesting about the trendline in 2011-2012, even as the Dunderdale government started preaching, though not practicing, austerity.

Raw data is from StatsCan CANSIM Table 183-0002. As part of the federal government program review, StatsCan discontinued this dataset at the end of March, 2012.