BURST
Statistics Canada has begun the process of slashing its workforce by about 850 positions and 12 per cent of its executive team.
The federal statistics agency entered its workforce adjustment period Monday and will be informing affected and surplus employees of their status in the next two weeks, Statistics Canada spokesperson Carter Mann said in an email.
“Statistics Canada remains focused on serving Canadians and adapting to future needs as we move through this period of change,” Mann said.
To reach those cuts, the agency has issued thousands of workforce adjustment notices, according to the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC).
In an email, PIPSC president Sean O’Reilly said the notices have been issued to 3,274 workers at Statistics Canada, including 940 of the union’s members.
“These aren’t just abstract cuts from the government balance sheet — these are real jobs, real expertise and real services at risk,” O’Reilly said in an interview.
“It really is a dark time for Canadians.”
Scary situation, union says
O’Reilly called Statistics Canada the “cornerstone” of the public service.
“These sorts of services are the ones you don’t see day-to-day as a Canadian, but it’s the things that underpin the important decision-making that needs to be done,” O’Reilly said.
Data generated by Statistics Canada helps underpin evidence-based decision-making across government, business and communities, he added.
Meanwhile, Canada’s largest public sector union, the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), said in an email that 350 of its members at Statistics Canada received letters yesterday informing them their job would be affected by government cuts.
PSAC president Sharon DeSousa called the situation “scary.”
“Cutting hundreds of skilled workers puts the quality, timelines and reliability of that data at risk,” she said in an interview.
In a written statement, Canadian Association of Professional Employees president Nathan Prier said the job losses resemble a “warmed-over rehash of Stephen Harper’s anti-data playbook.”
The public service population at Statistics Canada sits at 7,274 as of 2025, according to Treasury Board data. In 2020, the agency had a population of 5,452.
Workforce adjustment
Although the Treasury Board has not provided a breakdown of exactly where cuts will come, workforce adjustment notices have started to trickle out. Hundreds of public servants across Natural Resources Canada, the Public Service Commission of Canada, Crown Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and the Department of Finance have already received notices.
Workforce adjustment is a process that ensures alternative employment opportunities will be made, where possible, for permanent workers who lose their position.
Through the process, public servants who receive workforce adjustment notices could have an opportunity to trade places with an employee who wants to leave (in what’s called alternation) to compete for a position.
More cuts coming
The Liberal government has been scaling back the size of the public service over the last two years, and cuts are ramping up.
In Carney’s first budget, the government projected a decline of nearly 40,000 workers from a peak of 368,000 in 2023-2024, amounting to a reduction of around 10 per cent in the overall public service headcount.
The cuts under the government’s “comprehensive expenditure review” are expected to equate to 16,000 full-time equivalents, a term that describes the workload of a full-time employee.
The government has said it intends to rely on attrition “to the greatest extent possible” by lowering age eligibility rules for retirement and offering what amounts to $1.5 billion in incentives.
But DeSousa said details on the early retirement incentive are lacking, and she urged workers to familiarize themselves with their rights under the collective agreement before making any decisions.
O’Reilly said fallout from the government’s spending review will become clearer over the next two to three weeks.
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