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Population of the federal public service by first official language

From: Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat

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About the data

When reading the table below, the following information applies:

  • Source of information: Pay System as of of each year.
  • The federal public service consists of 2 population segments: the core public administration and separate agencies.
  • Departments and agencies in the core public administration are named in schedules I and IV of the Financial Administration Act. The Treasury Board is the employer of this segment of the federal public service.
  • Separate agencies are named in Schedule V of the act. Separate agencies conduct their own negotiations or set their own classification levels for their employees.
  • Included in this information are:
    • active employees of all employment tenures (indeterminate, term, casual and student)
    • Governor in Council appointees
    • deputy ministers
    • federal judges
  • Excluded from this information are:
    • inactive employees (i.e., employees on leave without pay)
    • ministers’ exempt staff
    • employees locally engaged outside of Canada
    • RCMP Regular Force members
    • RCMP Civilian members
    • Canadian Forces members
  • Population counts for the following separate agencies are not included because their employee information is not available in the Pay System:
    • Canadian Security Intelligence Service
    • National Capital Commission
    • Canada Investment and Savings
    • Canadian Forces Non-Public Funds
    • Security Intelligence Review Committee (before 2010)
Population of the federal public service by first official language
First official language Year
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
Core public administration
English 150,073 150,106 146,753 138,559 134,842 135,552 137,471 137,046 142,781 151,264 158,611 169,327 176,332 188,921
French 65,495 65,992 64,264 60,562 59,409 59,106 59,115 61,197 63,643 67,607 70,669 74,329 76,289 81,056
Unknown 1,028 1,126 1,011 1,395 1,079 907 768 1,448 1,888 1,444 1,896 2,083 1,688 821
Total 216,596 217,224 212,028 200,516 195,330 195,565 197,354 199,691 208,312 220,315 231,176 245,739 254,309 270,798
Separate agencies
English 48,116 47,296 48,408 45,851 45,923 46,116 46,434 47,543 49,310 51,161 52,129 55,776 61,701 65,046
French 15,586 15,324 15,255 14,423 14,217 14,051 14,302 14,929 15,189 15,398 15,772 16,397 17,820 18,919
Unknown 2,682 2,508 2,401 2,027 1,668 1,302 889 533 760 1,109 1,373 1,689 2,127 2,484
Total 66,384 65,128 66,064 62,301 61,808 61,469 61,625 63,005 65,259 67,668 69,274 73,862 81,648 86,449
Federal public service
English 198,189 197,402 195,161 184,410 180,765 181,668 183,905 184,589 192,091 202,425 210,740 225,103 238,033 253,967
French 81,081 81,316 79,519 74,985 73,626 73,157 73,417 76,126 78,832 83,005 86,441 90,726 94,109 99,975
Unknown 3,710 3,634 3,412 3,422 2,747 2,209 1,657 1,981 2,648 2,553 3,269 3,772 3,815 3,305
Total 282,980 282,352 278,092 262,817 257,138 257,034 258,979 262,696 273,571 287,983 300,450 319,601 335,957 357,247

Open datasets

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Available formats

Data file Description
Population of the federal public service by first official language
(XML version – 18 KB)
(CSV version – 2 KB) 		These data present population counts by first official language for the federal public service (all departments and agencies governed by the Financial Administration Act (FAA) Schedules I, IV and V) from to .

Glossary of key terms

To assist you with your analysis of federal public service human resources data, we have compiled a glossary of key terms that are used in many of the Office of the Chief Human Resources Officer’s (OCHRO) demographic snapshots and reports. This glossary has been developed to help provide a common language across OCHRO’s demographic snapshots and reports.

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