New data from the Treasury Board Secretariat shows the federal government shed more than 12,000 public servants over the past fiscal year, placing Prime Minister Mark Carney on track to meet his public service reduction targets, experts say.
“Carney said he wanted to make the public service smaller; the public service is getting smaller, no question,” said Lori Turnbull, a professor in the faculty of management at Dalhousie University in Halifax.
Reduction target within reach
The federal government aims to reduce the public service headcount by approximately 30,000 positions by 2028-29, a number that Carney “is in the ballpark” to hit, Turnbull added.
Michael Wernick, a former clerk of the Privy Council, agreed. “We’ve clearly pivoted into downsizing — the years of growth are over,” Wernick said. “To use an old metaphor, the curve is bending, and it will only bend downwards for the next two or three years.”
Population snapshot
Overall, the federal public service, including all core departments and separate agencies, shed 12,683 positions in the past fiscal year. The updated headcount, published online by the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, captured the number of active employees in the federal pay system as of March 31. Alongside full-time public servants, the total included indeterminate, term, and casual workers.
At the end of 2025-2026, the public service population was approximately 345,000 workers, down by more than 20,000 from a peak at the end of 2023-2024.
Regional impact
The National Capital Region was hit hard by the cuts. At the end of the past fiscal year, Ottawa-Gatineau was home to about 146,000 public servants, nearly 10,000 fewer than at the end of 2023-2024, though still higher than the headcount at the end of 2021-2022.
Long-term implications
For experts, questions linger about how the reductions will shake out in the longer term and what type of public servant is leaving the federal government. Turnbull says she’s heard there’s an appetite to leave the public service due to pressures within departments around the Early Retirement Incentive program and ongoing workforce adjustments.
Workforce adjustment is the process through which a public servant can look to alternate with another public servant in the federal bureaucracy or take an exit package. Public servants may also have to compete with one another to keep their jobs.
Turnbull says that some organizations “could be really affected by the fact that a lot of people are close to retirement.” “They put their hands up, they all want to leave, and pretty soon you’ve got a significant gap in knowledge and service, right?” she said.
