The size of governments in Canada increased enormously during the COVID-19 pandemic, but even before that, the size of the federal government and almost all provincial governments had already grown beyond the optimal point to benefit citizens, a new study says. “It’s important to understand just how much governments across Canada have grown in recent years, and what impact that might have on our economic recovery moving forward,” said study co-author Alex Whalen, a policy analyst at the Fraser Institute, in a March 17 release. The study, titled “The Size of Government in Canada in 2019,” finds that with the exception of Alberta, between 2007 and 2019 the rest of the provinces saw their governments grow to a size exceeding the optimal level relative to the size of their economies. In deciding the standard for optimal government size, the authors cited 2013 research by Livio Di Matteo, an economics professor at Lakehead …