The federal government is the largest employer in Ottawa-Gatineau and one of the largest employers in Canada.
In 2024, 367,772 people worked in the federal public service across Canada, including 282,152 in the core public service. According to the Treasury Board Secretariat, 155,505 federal public service employees are in the national capital region.
CTVNewsOttawa.ca looks at what the main parties are promising for the federal public service if they win the federal election.
Conservative Party
Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre released his election platform Tuesday morning, called “Change. For an affordable life. For safe streets. For Canada first.”
“After a decade of Liberal deficits, Canadians are broke and the government is bloated. The Liberals doubled the national debt, wasted billions on foreign schemes and consultants, and inflated the cost of everything,” the platform says.
“A new Conservative government will bring common sense back to the budget. We’ll end waste, cap spending, and review all government spending to demand real results for every tax dollar.”
The Conservative Party platform says the party will “cut the fat, not frontline services Canadians rely on.” The party is promising:
- Streamlining the federal public service through natural attrition and retirement with only two in three departing employees being replaced. According to the Conservative Party platform, the party expects to save $4.3 billion through natural attrition over four years.
- Cut spending on consultants to save $10.5 billion. The platform shows the party expects to save $23.5 billion over four years.
- Eliminate university degree requirements for “most federal public service roles to hire for skill, not credentials,” the party says.
- Ban “double-dipping” so federal officials “can’t also profit from government contracts,” the Conservatives say.
- “Use plain language laws so legislation is clear, enforceable and accessible.”
- “Put an end to the imposition of the Woke ideology in the federal public service.”
The Conservative Party platform says if elected, it would enact a “one-for-one spending law,” with any new spending “offset by reduced or new revenues.”
In January, the Conservative Party suggested attrition involving “lower priority” positions could be a way to shrink the size of the public service, noting more than 17,000 employees depart the federal government every year.
The Conservative Party platform calls for government to ”reduce funding for Artificial Intelligence initiatives,” with $2 billion in savings over four years.
Liberal Party
Liberal Party leader Mark Carney released the Liberal platform over the weekend, called “Canada Strong.”
“The federal government has been spending too much,” the Liberal Party said in a section called “transforming the government of Canada.”
“There are federal programs and processes that aren’t working as well as they should, and projects that need to be reviewed as we adjust to the priorities of this challenging moment. We need to be efficient and effective in all that we spend, while empowering a world-class, tech-enabled public service.”
The Liberals say, if elected, they would launch a “comprehensive review of government spending in order to increase the federal government’s productivity.” The party says a portion of savings would be “redeployed to invest in technology and people in order to improve the quality of what the federal government does.”
There are no estimated savings through the review of government spending mentioned in the Liberal Party platform, but the 2024-25 budget called on the government to save $4.2 billion over four years and $1.3 million moving forward.
The Liberal Party platform promises the following:
- “Better leveraging technology to improve the automation of routine tasks and inquiries from the public and reducing the need for additional hiring,” the party says.
- “Significantly reducing reliance on external consultants.”
- The Liberal Party also promises to amalgamate service delivery so there is “one point of access for Canadians in how they interact with government programs.”
- The Liberals say they will consider where Artificial Intelligence can be used to enhance productivity in government. “We will look at every new dollar being spent through the lens of how AI and technology can improve service and reduce costs,” the party says.
“Following the initial results of this review, we will institute a permanent process to link spending and outcomes across departments and continuous improvement in spending control,” the Liberal Party said.
The Liberal Party says it is committed to “capping, not cutting public service employment.”
“As part of our review of spending we will ensure that the size of the federal public service meets the needs of Canadians,” the party says.
The federal Liberals’ 2024-25 budget called on the government to eliminate 5,000 public service jobs over four years.
New Democrats
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh unveiled the NDP campaign commitments last weekend, calling it “The NDP Plan, Made for People. Built for Canada.”
“We’re not going to cut public services to balance the books on the backs of working people,” Singh said in a statement. “We’re going to make multi-millionaires, and big corporations finally pay their share.”
The NDP’s commitment page proposes increased investments in “infrastructure and people.”
“New Democrats are rejecting calls for cuts to the public sector and to social programs – cuts which would be made to reach a budgetary balance in the short-term, despite the costs and the consequences for people.”
Under the NDP section for ‘Revenue Measures,” the NDP said, “We will also realize cost savings by reversing the Liberal government’s trend of increasingly using expensive external contractors to do work that could be done by the professional civil service.”
CTV News Ottawa asked the NDP about its plans for the public service.
“New Democrats will fight to protect the federal public service—because these workers deliver the services Canadians count on,” NDP spokesperson Anne McGrath told CTV News Ottawa in a statement.
“We’ll push to move away from costly contractors and invest in the expertise of professional civil servants. And we’ll stand with federal workers and their unions on key issues like remote work.”
Green Party
The Green Party’s platform says, “government services don’t work like they should.”
The platform makes the following promises for the federal public service, under the headline “Restoring Excellence in the Federal Public Service”:
- “End contracts with expensive consulting firms,” the party says.
- Reinvest in Canada’s federal public service, “rebuilding capacity, morale, and expertise to deliver high-quality, efficient services that Canadians expect and deserve,” the Green Party says
- Reduce wasteful spending at the political level, including “significantly cutting” the budget of the Prime Minister’s Office from $10 million to $1 million.
