Federal government job cuts: the story so far

The Conservative government has promised to balance the federal budget by 2014 and has asked 68 departments to offer up scenarios for five and 10 per cent reductions to their bottom lines over a three-year period.

Here's how the process was described in an internal message at one department, obtained by CBC News:

"The Strategic and Operating Review provides a focus for us to reflect on how we currently meet our mandate and to explore how we can modernize the way we do business to improve the services that we deliver to Canadians. We would like to call on all of you to look at this as an opportunity to focus, transform and renew our activities so that they are effective, relevant and affordable. We encourage you to speak to your manager should you have any ideas or suggestions."

Cabinet will decide what gets cut prior to the 2012-13 budget next spring. These kind of budget-cutting efforts could eventually result in job losses across the federal civil service. But this review has only just begun, and the job reductions that could result won't be confirmed for months.

So why are we already hearing about job losses in the federal public service?

These reductions are from the last round of program review, a process that began under former Treasury Board president Stockwell Day — budget cuts suggested before Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Treasury Board President Tony Clement started their latest mission to balance the budget three years from now.

So far, the government says most of the staff displaced by this earlier round of reviews will be reallocated within their departments, and many of the cuts represent vacant positions.

We've collected some of the announced reductions to date. Send us an email if you know of others at yournews@cbc.ca.

Bank of Canada

33 workers (June 6, 2011)

Environment Canada

28 scientists (June 2, 2011)
46 workers over two years (June 22, 2011)
700 positions over three years (Aug. 4, 2011)

Fisheries and Oceans

275 positions

National Gallery of Canada

Five curators at the National Gallery (June 2, 2011)

National Defence

2,100 civilian positions to be cut over three years

Public Works and Government Services Canada

700 staff to be cut over three years, which includes:

• 7 or 8 translators (Aug. 5, 2011)
• as-yet undetermined redundancies from the creation of a new IT agency to streamline government computer operations (August 4, 2011)

National Research Council

52 positions (June 23, 2011)

Industry Canada

26 positions (June 26, 2011)

Origin
Source: CBC news