More federal jobs to be axed: report
OTTAWA — Nearly 29,000 jobs will be wiped off the federal payroll by 2016 and the impact on services for Canadians will be much more dramatic than originally estimated, according to a report from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
The analysis of job cuts reflect the cumulative impact of the Conservative’s clampdown on spending since 2010, which are still making their way through the system, and a larger proportion than expected are front-line jobs.
Many of the reductions started in 2012 and the total number will reach about 28,700 by 2016, according to the CCPA audit that uses figures from yearly reports on plans and priorities tabled in Parliament last week by 180 departments and agencies.
This means the size of the federal workforce will shrink eight per cent by 2016 compared to the 4.8 per cent reduction reported in the 2012 budget, said David Macdonald, the centre’s senior economist, who crunched the numbers.
What’s worse is the disproportionate number of cuts in large departments are coming from program and services provided by front-line workers rather than the promised reductions in “back-office” or operational jobs that were supposed to generate most of the $5.2 billion in spending reductions the Conservatives announced in last year’s budget.
“Even if you think the cutbacks are legitimate, Canadians deserved to know what services were being reduced before the cuts were made,” Macdonald said. “This is not information Canadians had in advance of the cuts and it’s not information parliamentarians had before voting on the budget. …”
The biggest job losses are in Statistics Canada, which is facing a 35-per-cent staff cut, followed by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, one of the largest departments, which is losing about one quarter of its staff — about 5,700 jobs — by 2016.
Veterans Affairs is losing about 24 per cent of its staff with programs that support disability death and financial benefits of veterans.
Departments like Canada Food Inspection Agency and Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development will lose about one in five employees.
Big departments like National Defence and Canada Revenue Agency are losing 3,577 and 2,491 jobs respectively, but those amount to minor cuts in overall staffing.
Many of the cuts have already been made with the biggest reduction in the 2012 budget, which girded departments for job losses of 19,200 over three years. The government has said about 17,000 of those jobs have already been cut, largely by attrition.
The 2012 budget documents said the savings were largely supposed to come from three streams: a refocus on programs the government provides, a reduction of red tape, and modernization and reduction of back-office systems. “Back-office” typically refers to internal services that all departments use.
But the reports show many of the positions eliminated are from program staffing. “Drilling down to the program level, the largest proportional cut is to the Social Development program supporting homelessness initiatives, which suffers a 62 per cent cut,” the CCPA report states.
“It’s only after four austerity budgets that there are finally some answers about what services departments are going to cut,” said Macdonald.
“Unfortunately these answers come too late to decide whether cutting staff for veterans health care, for instance, is worth doing in order to balance the budget a year or two early.”