Federal departments and agencies are looking to cut more than 12,000 full-time equivalent jobs over the next three years as part of the Carney government’s spending review.
That figure comes from plans released by federal departments and agencies for 2026-27 outlining how they’ll shed billions of dollars to meet the government’s cost-cutting targets.
Multiple part-time positions can make up one full-time equivalent position.
Rola Salem, spokesperson for the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, said departments were asked to include in their reports details about the savings for each fiscal year until 2028-29.
That included a description of how the savings would be achieved, the number of reductions in full-time equivalent positions and any measures that weren’t included in the last budget.
Among the expected job losses are 1,793 positions at Public Services and Procurement Canada, 900 jobs at Statistics Canada and 942 at Health Canada.
While the plans were supposed to offer clarity on how programs will be affected by the spending review, some departments offered only vague commitments to “streamline” services or “modernize” operations. Others said they were still figuring out where to find savings.
Several departments and agencies offered more concrete details of their plans.
They include the Canadian Space Agency, which said it plans to terminate work on the LEAP Lunar Rover Mission.
The Canada Revenue Agency said it plans to wind down business units that are no longer connected to government priorities, like the units that processed the Digital Services Tax and consumer carbon pricing.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said it’s reducing “non-core research activities” and consolidating laboratory services to focus on essential testing and avoid the need for costly upgrades.
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It says it’s also decommissioning some vehicle washing stations and winding down functions that are no longer required to address health risks linked to the trade in pets.
Environment and Climate Change Canada says it’s reducing the Low Carbon Economy Fund and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada says it’s winding down some programs outside of its core mandate, like the Agricultural Climate Solution Living Labs program.
The plan for the Department of National Defence and the Canadian Armed Forces says the military will retire selected fleets that are nearing the end of their service lives, face rising sustainment costs or are no longer align with operational requirements. It says it will also sell off or lease “underutilized, obsolete or surplus” properties.
Library and Archives Canada says it’s gradually reducing Access to Information and Privacy functions and the proactive review of historical records functions over a three-year period. It’s also discontinuing funding for the Documentary Heritage Communities Program.
Public Services and Procurement Canada says it’s winding down the activities of the Canada General Standards Board and reducing funding for Laboratories Canada.
Several departments — including Shared Services Canada, the Department of Justice, Public Services and Procurement Canada and Public Safety Canada — outlined plans to use artificial intelligence to increase efficiency or improve service delivery.
David McLaughlin, former president and CEO of the Institute on Governance, said the plans offer “broad strokes” of the impacts of the spending review. He said while the documents offer “some transparency” about the review, more details are needed.
He said those details will come either from a separate document from the Department of Finance or Treasury Board or from questioning by opposition parties.
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“You can’t tell … at this moment, at this stage, what will be the actual impact of that in terms of a service on the ground to certain people, certain demographics or in certain regions,” said McLaughlin. “It’s going to have to come through the detailed committee hearings.”
Appearing before the House committee on government operations this month, Secretary of the Treasury Board Bill Matthews said departments and agencies were told to target programs and activities that were underperforming, overlapped with other programs or were not aligned with government priorities.
Michael Wernick, former clerk of the Privy Council, said the departmental plans “set the table” for parliamentary review.
He said members of Parliament will be trying to “squeeze out more detail” during committee meetings.
“The game to be played this year is the opposition will be trying to suss out details on what’s being cut, or in some cases augmented, looking for nuggets that they can go after and criticize,” Wernick said.
Conservative MP and Treasury Board critic Stephanie Kusie said the documents offer “no clear road map for the departments.”
“They’ve updated the (full-time equivalent) numbers, but it’s not clear as to line by line how they’re going to achieve this within each department,” she said. “Even though there is a decrease in the full-time equivalents, we’re still seeing an increase in spending.”
Kusie said it’s “concerning” that some departmental reports lack details about which programs and services will be affected by cuts. She said she expected more detailed information and a clearer path, given that departments have had months since the release of the budget.
“It makes me wonder, do they know what they’re doing or are they’re not quite certain as of yet?” she said. “I’m worried about it for transparency.”
“I definitely think after reviewing these plans that it merits more specific questions to departments.”
Federal unions are sounding the alarm over the planned job cuts. Public Service Alliance of Canada national president Sharon DeSousa said the cuts aren’t about efficiency but are an “attack on the public service itself.”
“By eliminating thousands of jobs, the government is weakening the very programs people in Canada rely on,” she said.
Plus money gobbling Senators!
Instead of looking at the lower pay grades, perhaps we should be looking at the higher ones and the cost of associated benefits — not least, across the board of the political affiliations, the pay scales of our elected democratic representatives — especially the benefits that they have awarded themselves over the latter decades. Pensions, for example?
Yawns
About time that the federal government cut, cut, cut financing to a lot of their BLOATED services and, with fewer immigrants now coming to Canada that would be a very good department to cut, cut, cut financing as well. Personally, I am now fed up with politicians forcing their want of all canadians to pay to financially support people who are NOT members of our families. Can hardly afford to financially support my own family and now politicians want us all to financially support a huge number of groups like athletes who are the only ones who benefit from what they do while we all ARE FORCED to buy medals for them and financially support them for 4 years using WELFARE funds to do it.
Imagine the whining, lawsuits and severance packages that will be paid out. In normal countries and cases job losses are terrible. In our case here in Chinada they could get rid of a few hundred thousand DEI hires and no one would notice a change in our pathetic non existent government services.
Hopefully every single one of them voted fot Carnry.
Amazing you’ve eliminated 0.68% of the this overblown hog we call government
Another 99.32% to go!!
I’d like to leave a comment about what Canadians can do to make money while these changes are taking place.
Learn about ai. It’s not going to bite you. It’s going to help you get your own psychology to acclimate. What I mean by this is, when the mind is ok, the nervous system will relax.
I use Grok.
I Grok it because I have what I need in there to find answers.
This is from my experience only and it works for me.
To learn about the politics in all the lands, perhaps invest a little time on the X app. People are saying what’s happening in real-time there.
Thanks for reading.
More smoke & mirrors fixes. They will lay off the part time people who do the actual work, then hire “friends of Liberals” at inflated prices as consultants or ‘gig’ workers to replace them at a higher cost… 🤣🤣🤣
I understand the need to consult other nations right now, but perhaps there are alternatives to Mr. Carney travelling all around the world. This is costly, wages of himself and others in his cabinet, etc. need to be held back until everyone catches up to this cost of living. People being put out of work isn’t necessarily the answer to all issues,, is it?
Could easily increase this to 50,000 eliminated with no noticeable change in public service performance (or lack thereof)!
Told to “ target programs and activities that were underperforming”.
Isn’t that really the entire civil service?
At Aydon- I hope so. Starting with the social sciences I hope.
Yes, we all need to see some concrete data not just a bunch of fancy words clad promises. Federal government bloated by 40+ percent during Trudeau’s reign, and that bloat needs to go.
Of course PSAC and other bureaucratic unions will cry bloody murder about the cuts. Just like they all whine about back to the office order. Btw, that order alone would save 4.3 million dollars in “home office” expenses.
Guarantee you, there will be a discriminatory and noticable pattern in who gets let go.