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The federal government has been looking for ways to tighten its budget and curb the size of the public service, which has swelled in recent years. While the Liberal government has said it would do so through attrition and hiring freezes, cutting the jobs of permanent government employees wasn’t on the table.

But Canada’s biggest public sector union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), says that no longer seems to be the case.

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During a meeting on Thursday between Treasury Board officials and PSAC, the union said it was told the government will be “widening the net” to reduce its spending, looking to cut term and casual employees and “opening the door for departments to slash permanent employees” through layoffs.

The union said the Liberal government has assigned budget reduction targets to federal departments. But it has not released those targets, claiming they were protected under Cabinet privilege and would only be made public in June 2025.

“It’s just really disappointing that, once again, there’s this doublespeak from the federal government,” said PSAC’s national executive vice-president Alex Silas, who noted that the government said the meeting was not a consultation.

Silas said the idea of cutting casual and term positions “is bad enough,” but the idea of cutting permanent positions is “shameful.” He said there was a lack of detail in the government’s presentation about the potential cuts, but that departments and agencies were coming up with their own plans and were “encouraged” to consult with unions.

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In April, the federal government announced it would seek to cut the size of the public service by 5,000 full-time positions primarily through natural attrition over the course of four years, as part of an effort to save $15.8 billion over five years and reallocate it elsewhere.

According to the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, the size of the public service in 2024 is 367,772—up from 300,450 in 2020.

In February, Treasury Board President Anita Anand told the Ottawa Citizen that there should be little impact to public-service jobs as part of the spending review, though some departments may undergo workforce changes because of redeployment to higher-priority activities or attrition.

“That is not the goal of this exercise,” Anand said at the time, adding that decisions would lie with deputy ministers of each ministry and that government was somewhat “circumscribed by what statutes mandate.”

The minister was not available for an interview on Friday.

Myah Tomasi, Anand’s press secretary, said in an email that departmental savings are expected to be drawn from operating budgets and through natural attrition “to the greatest extent possible.”

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“We understand that during this time, many Canadians, including public servants may be struggling financially and the thought of losing their job can cause an immense amount of stress,” Tomasi said. “That is why we have been very clear with all departments that to the best extent possible, they must focus on finding these savings without layoffs.”

Ada Bayli, a Treasury Board spokesperson, said that the “information shared with unions yesterday as a courtesy was completely consistent with details provided in Budget 2024″ and that departments and agencies are “in the process of developing proposals to meet their specific savings targets.”

“We understand that spending review situations can be stressful. We are committed to sharing information with employees as soon as decisions are announced,” Bayli said.

A government source who was not authorized to speak on the matter said there seems to be a different approach within federal departments and agencies on where to find budget reductions.

“There are certain departments that are still in fairly aggressive hiring modes whereas others, it’s really clamping down,” the source said, noting that some organizations had put staffing freezes in place, with others launching governance committees to approve all new staffing requests. “Those that are in more service-delivery operations are continuing to actively recruit because that continues to be a priority for the government.”

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The source said the government’s plans might “work against attrition” as some public servants were already considering holding off on retirement in hopes of getting a package as workforce adjustment is rolled out. The source said they expected to see more formalized reduction plans come out “in the next few months.”

Internal emails, obtained by the Ottawa Citizen, show that some departments and agencies have already decided where they’re making cuts.

An email signed by the CRA’s commissioner Bob Hamilton and deputy commissioner Jean-François Fortin said the agency was implementing several hiring restrictions as of Nov. 7.

Noting that each staffing action needed to be reviewed and approved, the email said that permanent promotions of CRA employees, new student appointments and new term appointments for non-critical workloads would no longer be allowed.

“In addition to these national measures, some branches and regions may have initiated other measures, including: reduction in travel, reduction in training, reduced consultant contracts, decisions on terms, and the early end of acting assignments,” the email said, noting that additional measures could be required as it was an “evolving” situation. “We anticipate that these restrictions will be relaxed over time, as our financial position stabilizes.”

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An internal message from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada said the department would be “stopping the clock” on term rollovers as of Oct. 31, 2024, meaning that term workers will no longer automatically become permanent employees after three years of service.

“Federal government departments were asked to review their spending and develop savings plans to bring the growth of government spending back to pre-pandemic levels,” said the message, which noted that the measure had already been implemented in other departments and that reductions so far had been aimed at reducing travel, contracting and “slowing the growth” of the department’s workforce.

“In this current budgetary constraint context, IRCC must also diligently assess cost associated to its workforce against its available budget and priorities. Suspending term conversion will assist IRCC in decreasing risks associated with the increase of its indeterminate workforce,” the message said.

Silas said PSAC is “strongly opposed to any cuts” in the federal public service.

“If anything, we need to be reinforcing the public service, creating more jobs there so that we can provide the highest quality of service to Canadians as possible,” Silas said, adding that the government should be focused on stopping all subcontracting. “They’ve committed to finding savings in the federal public service but, firmly, we believe and we know that the solution there isn’t cutting jobs.”

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