Secrecy surrounding the federal government’s plans to cut jobs is fuelling uncertainty and hurting Ottawa’s economy, said Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson.While Ottawa is still doing better than the national average, unemployment has nudged up and public servants nervous about losing their jobs are thinking twice about making big purchases.
“My view is that the uncertainty creates the greatest stress and challenge for the individuals and for the local community,” said Watson in an exclusive interview with iPolitics.
“In many ways, I think it would be more humane to make the decision and say this is what’s happening… I think that is what is causing the angst in the community – both in terms of the personal angst that people are suffering but also the angst of, ‘Am I going to get that new car or get that new dishwasher or go on that vacation if I don’t know if I am going to have a job.’”
While Watson doesn’t question the need for the federal government to eliminate its deficit, he does question whether the current work force adjustment process being used on a large scale for the first time is the best way to go about it.
Under the deficit reduction action plan’s WFA process, everyone in a category where positions are to be cut gets a letter warning them their job is in jeopardy; public servants often have to compete against colleagues for the remaining jobs — a process that can take weeks or even months.
“Surely there must be some more humane way to deal with downsizing, that people are given greater certainty and greater communications than what we have seen,” said Watson, a former provincial cabinet minister.
“This is like pulling the band-aid off very slowly and it’s painful and it hurts a lot of people. Sometimes you’ve got to just make the decision to sort of yank it off and say, alright, here’s what we’re doing and map it out from that perspective.”
Watson said the federal government is the city’s largest employer, accounting for 25 per cent of jobs.
“A lot of these people tend to have very good skills and you would like them to stay in the community. You don’t want to have that brain-drain taking place.”
Watson said city hall wants to work with the government to help minimize the impact of the budget cuts. To date, however, the city has gotten polite acknowledgments of its offers to help but little information.
“I guess the challenge is trying to get a sense of how big the layoffs are going to be but also the ripple effect of other government cuts because I know, for instance, when the Round Table on the Environment and the Economy was cut, I think there were 30 or 40 people that lost their jobs through that agency. I met a gentleman involved with an aboriginal health organization that lost 100 per cent of their funding and he said they have 12 or 13 employees.”
“My understanding, the best I have been able to ascertain, is that that those people aren’t included in the 9,000 or 10,000 so there are probably more people than we realize.”
Matthew Conway, spokesman for Treasury Board Minister Tony Clement, said the cuts are being carried out in accordance with collective agreements and the 11,000 positions cut to date include 4,250 casual and term positions.
However, Watson said the Harper government’s approach appears to be in sharp contrast to the way the federal government handled the last big round of job cuts in the 1990s. Back then, he said, more information was shared about the number of jobs affected. A task force was also set up and the federal government worked with the city and the local chamber of commerce to try to minimize the impact.
This time, Watson said he is left in the frustrating position of having to figure out by reading the newspaper where jobs are being cut in his city.
“There seems to be a fairly large gap of information coming from the feds. I would have thought there would have been a little more communication between the federal government and myself. Just even as a courtesy of information sharing to say, okay, this is what is happening.”
Watson said the federal government’s policy of remaining tight-lipped on where jobs are being cut is hampering the city’s efforts to help public servants find new jobs or launch their own companies.
The city has increased the budget for its economic development agency, Invest Ottawa, by more than $2 million and charged it with a mission to help new companies and to help diversify Ottawa’s economy.
“We’ve certainly said we’ve got an incubation space at Invest Ottawa, we’ve got mentoring,” Watson said. “We’re happy to help with transition initiative programs and so on. Again, our objective is how do we get people who have found themselves without a job back in the workforce.”
Leaving the city out of the loop about where jobs are being eliminated or moved is also making it difficult for the city to plan for municipal services such as transportation, Watson added.
“We didn’t know they were going to move 10,000 employees from DND to Nortel. That has a huge impact on transportation planning and bus routes. There’s not that many bus routes out to an empty Nortel building right now but we’re going to need to adjust that.
“What I have tried to stress with the federal government is the more you communicate with us and not surprise, the better we can operate.”
In the end, said Watson, it comes down to communication and cooperation.
“I understand the need to make change but it would certainly be helpful from our perspective if we had more clear information so that we could help better plan the future of the city and it certainly would be more humane for the individuals to know whether they are going to have a job today or next month.”
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Elizabeth Thompson
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