“The most important thing for me is to help the members now in a time of need,” said Gary Corbett, the president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, which represents 57,000 workers across Canada.
“Whatever we need to do to work with the employer to make sure people are gainfully employed, we’ll do that,” he said.
Some 12,000 public servants will be laid off and the remaining 7,000 will be handled by attrition. In total, 19,200 jobs will be eliminated, or 4.8 per cent of the wider public service, which has a population of almost 400,000. Some 600 of the more the than 6,500 executive positions will be cut.
John Gordon, president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which has more than 170,000 members, said that his union would be delving into departmental numbers in an effort to find out where exactly those jobs will come from.
“We don’t know the extent of what the hurt is going to be, because we haven’t got too much detail from the government,” said Mr. Gordon.
Mr. Corbett said that departments “have their letters all ready to go” for staff who will be laid off.
“They have identified programs already and they’re just waiting to pull the trigger,” he said, adding that he expects most people will find out whether they will keep their jobs in the next four or six months.
At PSAC headquarters on Gilmour Street in downtown Ottawa last Thursday afternoon, a group of about a dozen public servants and union activists gathered to watch the budget release.
There was a small gasp in the room shortly after 4 p.m. when the CBC reported that 19,200 public servants would be cut as a result of the government’s search for savings.
“It’s not a number, that’s 19,000 people,” said Mike Sargent, president of the Natural Resources Union.
Mr. Sargent recalled the fallout from job cuts to Natural Resources due to the strategic review last year: “I was, I would have to say, personally emotionally overwhelmed at the stress level in the room. You could cut it with a knife, and with it came the full realization that those numbers are people, and families.”
The Cabinet Subcommittee on the Strategic and Operating Review, helmed by Treasury Board President Tony Clement (Parry Sound-Muskoka, Ont.) found $5.2-billion of savings, or 6.9 per cent of $75.3-billion in direct program savings, announced in the budget. The government was looking for between $4-billion and $8-billion in savings over three years. Departments were asked to submit scenarios for either five or 10 per cent cuts to their budgets.
The savings are in addition to a freeze on departmental operating budgets that started in 2010, as well as the government’s prior rounds of savings via strategic reviews.
The budget deficit will decline to $1.3-billion in 2014-2015, and the government will return to surplus the next fiscal year.
Under program review in the mid-1990s, 45,000 public servants lost their jobs. While the loss of 19,200 jobs is the biggest drop in public service employment since then, it is only a fraction of the predictions of some studies that indicated the public service could lose in the range of 60,000 jobs.
PSAC organizer Andrée Côte said that the fact that cuts are lower than expected doesn’t mean she isn’t “very angry” about them.
“This government is a little bit like an abuser: they scare you and they threaten you, and when they do a little bit less harm than they said they would, you’re supposed to be relieved,” she said.
She added that she expects the job losses will affect women workers disproportionately.
“Eighty-four per cent of the administrative support workers are women, so there’s a big chance that a lot of the cuts will be at that level, and that women will be hurt,” she said.
The government indicated in the budget that a “large proportion” of the jobs to be cut are in the National Capital Region.
Mr. Corbett said he has heard unconfirmed reports that as many as one-third of job cuts could be to the Ottawa-Gatineau area. On budget day, he said one department had already called him for a meeting to discuss workforce adjustment on Monday, and that other union leaders have received dozens of similar calls.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty (Whitby-Oshawa, Ont.) has said that most of the cuts will take place in departments’ back offices and not to services to Canadians.
“Everyone knows, if you cut in the back office, it affects directly the services that are put out into the communities across this country,” said Mr. Gordon.
Almost 70 per cent of the savings will come from operating efficiencies, according to the budget. The goal was to “ensure value for money, as well as to re-think business processes and service delivery platforms” as the government stated in the budget.
The budget, while not going into any detail on which departments or programs will face job cuts or eliminated, highlighted a number of modernization plans.
At National Defence, contracting and internal services will be streamlined. Grant and contribution programs at Agriculture Canada will be consolidated, applications will be simplified and redundancies reduced, allowing for “efficient services with fewer people.”
HRSDC will “streamline and modernize” grants and contributions delivery, by moving online, reducing red tape and redundancies.
The Public Appointments Commission Secretariat—an administrative office for a commission that never got up and running—is also being scrapped, as is the Advance Leadership Program at the Canada School of Public Service. While the government acknowledged that the leadership program was a good one, it is no longer cost-effective, according to the budget.
Liberal Government Operations critic John McCallum (Markham-Unionville, Ont.) said he thinks it is “total nonsense” that the government expects to achieve their savings through the back office, without affecting public services.
“Neither Canadians nor public servants have any idea what is going to be cut and who is going to loose their jobs and what services Canadians no longer have,” he said.
Also in the back office, a number of departments and agencies with similar policy focuses, like Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada, and Agriculture Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, as well as all of the regional development agencies will merge their administrative components.
Mr. Corbett said that in a time of change in the public service, the mergers would cause further issues.
“It’s like trying to mesh two gears that work totally differently. There’s going to be lots of rock and roll,” he said.
Speaking about the newest job losses, NDP deputy finance critic Robert Chisholm (Dartmouth-Cole Harbour, N.S.) noted the effects of prior modernization and cuts in Human Resources.
“It’s a big deal. We’ve already heard whether it be through people applying for EI, trying to access Services Canada, people are queuing up,” he said.
The federal public service, while the largest single employer in Canada, has only 0.1 per cent of jobs in Canada, according to the budget.
Chantal Fortin, 41, answers the general enquiries line for the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. She said that she has been in that job for three years, and in the public service for 10. She would like to become one of the office’s investigators, and is worried that the cuts will usher in an era of stagnation for people like herself, who would like to advance.
Jacques Marengere, 53, works at Canada Revenue Agency and has been a public servant for 33 years. He said he planned to retire in the next five years, but was waiting to hear how the budget would affect his department, and what sort of early retirement packages the government would offer, before making any decisions.
“I have a lot of questions about the budget, it’s not really clear,” he said.
The government expects that the cost of transitioning employees out of the workforce will cost $900-million in 2011-2012.
The government will also continue to take severance payments for voluntary departures off the table in negotiations with public service unions. To date, the benefit has been eliminated in the contracts of 230,000 workers.
Public sector pensions are also being changed. For anyone new to the public service after 2013, they will have to wait until they are 65 to retire, instead of 60, as it is currently. The government is also moving pension plan contributions to a 50-50 employer-employee basis, from 60-40. The government has indicated that it will consult on these changes in the near future.
Mr. Marengere said that public servants are always worried about their jobs, especially under a majority Conservative government.
“It’s natural,” he said, adding that most public servants don’t have any say in the matter.
“We don’t have any choice, we go with the flow.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: JESSICA BRUNO
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