From concerns around job cuts and the work-in-office mandate to the implementation of artificial intelligence, Canada’s largest public service unions are keeping close watch on Thursday’s federal budget.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to unveil his second budget today, one that comes amid a trade war with the U.S. and broader global uncertainty, but also his government’s ongoing efforts to reduce the size of Canada’s public service.
In his inaugural budget in 2025, Carney pledged to slash roughly 16,000 positions over three fiscal years in the hopes of bringing Canada’s bureaucracy back to a “more sustainable level.”
“I do not hope this budget is a continuation,” said Sean O’Reilly, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC).
“My concern has been, since day one, that the cuts today are going to be the crises tomorrow.”
PIPSC, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and the Canadian Association of Public Employees (CAPE) have all made submissions to the federal government for what they want to see in Tuesday’s spending plan.
Sean O’Reilly is the president of PIPSC, which represents roughly 85,000 scientists and professionals who primarily work within the federal public service. (Simon Lasalle/Radio-Canada)
‘Not just the bottom line’
In its pre-budget submission, PIPSC makes seven recommendations including pausing workforce reductions until the risks are better understood, halting “blanket” return-to-office mandates and strengthening safeguards around the use of AI in the federal government.
The 2025 budget pledged to put nearly $1 billion over five years toward building up Canada’s artificial intelligence ecosystem, while also embedding the technology more deeply in federal government operations.
Then in June, Carney unveiled a national strategy that vowed to create 250,000 new jobs through the adoption of AI by 2031.
“A Canadian does not want to deal with a machine. They want to deal with a human being,” said O’Reilly. “And my fear with AI is we’re going to be depending more and more on them, when it should be a tool to augment the employee.”
Those three concerns were also among the eight recommendations put forward by PSAC, with the union calling for the job cuts to be be halted, full stop.
Employees are anxious about both their own futures and the future of the civil service, said PSAC national executive vice-president Alex Silas.
“It’s not just the bottom line that matters. What matters is the public, the Canadian people,” Silas told Radio-Canada in French.
“When you work in the federal public service, you are part of an essential network, a social safety net that supports the population. And now, that net is being cut into.”
PSAC is also calling for more support to address racism and discrimination in the workplace, and to help the tens of thousands of employees still affected by the decade-long Phoenix pay system debacle — including the awarding of additional damages.
PIPSC also flags another potential “Phoenix failure,” recommending among other things that the existing case backlog be cleared before its replacement goes live.
Members of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) stand on a picket line outside the Place du Portage government complex in Gatineau, Que., in 2023. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
As for CAPE, its pre-budget submission urges the government to allow remote work “whenever possible” and carry out any job cuts “transparently” to ensure diversity targets aren’t ignored.
“Cutting staff and programs means losing expertise, delaying work, and asking fewer people to do more,” CAPE wrote in a statement to Radio-Canada. “If the government continues its multi-year cuts, new investment headlines will not change that reality.”
On artificial intelligence, the union calls for workers to be “equal partners in the design of implementation of artificial intelligence” and for the government to “proactively” disclose all AI use.
Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne is expected to table the budget in the House of Commons at 4 p.m. ET.
Leave a Reply