Unions warn federal government ‘gutting’ public service with plans to cut 28,000 jobs

PSAC National President Sharon DeSousa joins CTV’s Stefan Keyes to discuss the thousands of federal job cuts laid out in the 2025 budget.

Federal unions are expressing outrage at the federal government’s move to cut another 28,000 public sector jobs over the next four years, as part of a plan Prime Minister Mark Carney says will make the government “much more productive.”

The Canada Strong Budget 2025 outlines a plan to reduce the size of the federal public service by 40,000 jobs through job cuts, attrition, and early retirements, from a peak of 367,772 employees in March 2024, to 330,000 by 2028-29.

The job cuts are part of the federal government’s Comprehensive Program Review, which calls for $60 billion in savings in government spending over the next five years.

• READ: Federal government to cut another 28,000 public service jobs by 2029

“We’re changing how government works, spending less on government so Canadians can invest more in our future. We’re making government much more productive by right-sizing, cutting red tape and wasteful spending and adopting AI at scale,” Carney told reporters Wednesday morning while speaking at the O-Train Line 2 maintenance facility.

“All of this so Canadians can count on their government to be more efficient in delivering the services that matter to you.”

Public service unions warn “the deep public service cuts” in the budget will make life “harder for everyday people.”

“This budget really reads like austerity and Canada’s unions refuse to let workers pay the price,” Larry Rousseau, executive vice-president of the Canadian Labour Congress, told reporters Wednesday morning.

“The government wants to cut tens of thousands of public service jobs. This will mean longer EI waits, slower passports, fewer safety inspections and food inspections, delays for seniors and families. You do not modernize services by gutting them. I cannot believe that I heard this morning from the prime minister that same old, same old about doing more with less.”

The president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) said the federal budget “makes it clear, Carney’s government is choosing cuts over care. Profit over people.”

“The services and programs people rely on are going to be slashed,” said Sharon DeSousa.

“It means longer wait times for your passport, Employment Insurance, childcare benefits and pensions, more unanswered calls at Canada Revenue Agency and weaker public health and food safety programs. We know how to fight back. Prime Minister Carney talks a lot about sacrifices, but who is actually making those sacrifices. It’s not the mega-corporations and CEO. No, once again it’s ordinary, working people who bear the brunt.”

There were 357,965 federal employees as of March 31, 2025, after the size of the public service dropped by 10,000 employees from 2024.

Budget 2025 shows the federal government plans to cut 16,000 full-time equivalent positions, including 650 executive positions, through the Comprehensive Expenditure Review over the next three years. Another 12,000 positions, including 350 executive positions, will be cut through attrition and the offer of early retirement packages.

The budget does not say where the jobs will be cut, but it does outline plans to find $60 billion in savings over five years through the Comprehensive Expenditure Review. Several departments will have their budgets reduced as part of the review.

DeSousa warns job cuts “will slow down the government.”

“You can’t build Canada strong while cutting the workers who power this country.”

DeSousa told CTV News Ottawa she was “quite irate” to learn that the government plans to cut another 28,000 jobs from the public service.

“Every single one of those jobs reflects public services that are being delivered. We just saw 10,000 jobs cut last year and certain departments and agencies had to rehire people,” DeSousa said Tuesday.

“As far as I’m concerned, these cuts will impact people who rely on these services more than ever.”

• READ: Budget 2025 goes big on capital spending, deficit projected at $78.3B
• READ: What’s missing from the Carney government’s first federal budget
• READ: What Carney’s first federal budget includes for everyday Canadians

DeSousa says she is wondering where the cuts will happen and “what is the plan moving forward” for the government.

“What I’m worried about right is they’re looking at this from a very corporate, cookie-cutter approach, instead of looking at it as what do people need right now. And you know what? It’s jobs,” DeSousa said.

“When you cut that many jobs from the federal public service, you’re impacting local economies.”

“Public servants are an easy scapegoat”

The president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) says the “budget is pretty big on word count, pretty short on details.”

“We don’t know exactly where these cuts are going to happen. It seems this government is afraid to tell Canadians how they’re going to cut, what specific programs are on their way out or about to get worse,” Nathan Prier told Newstalk 580 CFRA’s Ottawa Now with Kristy Cameron.

• LISTEN: Ottawa Now with Kristy Cameron on Newstalk 580 CFRA

“We’re an economist union and it seems like this government is going to keep the same scam going as the last government, which is blaming public servants for the deficit. Which is actually caused by making these huge program promises to Canadians but refusing to tax the rich enough to pay for them.”

Prier says, “public servants are an easy scapegoat.”

“There’s a lot of good optics of cutting a bunch of jobs and making it seem like you’re doing something about the deficit,” Prier said.

“But when you still need the work to be done to deliver on all those big promises you just made, it just ends up being a way less efficient private sector that picks up the slack at, like, one and a half times the price of what it would have cost to meet a public servant in their desk.”

Prier said if the government wants to “find real efficiencies,” they would let public servants work from home.

“Which would save $2 billion or $3 billion a year on offices we really don’t need.”

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) says the job cuts go “far beyond ‘efficiency’ and will hit critical services Canadians count on.”

“Canadians expect efficiency, not erosion,” Sean O’Reilly, President of PIPSC,” said in a statement.

“Behind every cut is a service delay, a slower emergency response, or a system that’s one failure away from crisis. These cuts don’t make us leaner – they make us more fragile.”

O’Reilly adds “true efficiency means smarter investment, not defunding services.”

Mayor concerned about lack of details

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe said the news of 28,000 additional job cuts in the federal public service creates “uncertainty.”

“So, I think, the sooner the government has more details on exactly how those reductions will be carried out, who will be affected, what departments, which individual employees, and what the plan is to support those people through the transition, how many of them will be through attrition, early retirement, those kinds of things, the better,” Sutcliffe told reporters.

“I’d love to see some more details on that because, in the absence of those details, it creates uncertainty.”

DeSousa “there are some good things” in the federal budget, but she has concerns.

“When we’re talking about the safety of Canadians, that’s great that you’re looking at CBSA and defence, but what about the Canada Food Inspection Agency? How are we going to make our food safe? As far as I’m concerned, what this government fails to see is the way those departments interconnect,” she said.

At the Ottawa Board of Trade, there is an appetite to learn more about how the federal government plans to retrain workers that will be impacted by job cuts.

“What we’ll be looking for is a thoughtful transition both to re-deploy that workforce in our own economy here and also looking for additional support in diversifying the economy which has been suffering over these last few years,” said president and CEO of the Ottawa Board of Trade Sueling Ching.

“We are calling again for support from the federal government. Maybe some investments in infrastructure and defence. Those are opportunities for Ottawa. We’re well-positioned for us to have a national agenda in that way. Those are ways we can be looking at re-deploying those workers.”

“Who can retire in this economy?”

The federal government will offer a voluntary Early Retirement Incentive for federal public servants, offering early retirement for public servants aged 50 or above for Group 1 and age 55 and above for Group 2 who have at least 10 years of employment, with at least two years of pensionable service in the plan.

Budget 2025 sets aside $1.5 billion for the program through the federal service pension plan.

“First of all, who can retire in this economy right now at the age of 50?” DeSousa told CTV’s Your Morning Ottawa on Wednesday.

DeSousa notes the earliest you can take the Canada Pension Plan is 60, while Old Age Security is 65.

“So, what are you going to do between the ages of 50 and 65 when the economy is already taking a hit?” she said.

“At the end of the day, our members do have rights under the collective agreements and we’ll make sure it’s enforced.”

Workers waiting for more news

Federal workers say there’s not much to do but wait until the government offers more clarity about what’s going to happen.

“There’s a lot of confused and upset people and some of them are experiencing this for nothing. We just don’t know,” said Patricia Billings, a public service worker in Ottawa.

“We’re carrying on as if everything were normal and waiting for the hammer to fall down.”

Billings adds the budget is a hot topic inside her workplace, but she and her colleagues are trying to focus on what they can control.

“I’m smiling because we have no choice but to accept what’s coming on and work with it,” she said.

“No, I’m not 100 per cent happy, but I think I’m happy enough and I’m not frowning right now! There’s enough in the budget that appeases me and appeases a lot of my colleagues.”

Other federal workers were reluctant to insert their opinion before the budget is passed in the House of Commons.

“Everyone’s talking about it, but until it passes, there isn’t much we can do,” said David Matthews.

“It’s always been reductions, reductions. Whatever happens, happens.”

With files from CTV News Ottawa’s Ted Raymond and Austin Lee