Did the government blow a chance to make most of its cuts through retirements?

The department advised that ERI applications were reviewed individually against Treasury Board criteria. However, the concern is that workforce adjustment (WFA) measures were used before ERI was meaningfully considered as a voluntary workforce reduction option.

By the time ERI applications were assessed, the department stated it had already largely achieved its workforce reduction targets through WFA, resulting in limited ERI approvals. Employees who wanted to remain in their positions were affected by workforce reductions, while employees willing to retire voluntarily through ERI were denied.

The department has advised that final decisions have been made and that no further ERI applications will be approved.

Did the government blow a chance to make the bulk of its cuts in a more compassionate way by not getting the budget bill passed before it started to implement WFA? Or was that by design? 

Thank you,

A disheartened public servant

During the Harper government’s spending review — the Deficit Reduction Action Plan (DRAP) — at CBSA during 2012-14, we achieved this objective (of maximizing voluntary departures) by allowing employees nearing retirement and interested in leaving the public service, affected by WFA or not, to put their hand up. For those employees not affected by WFA who wanted to leave, the agency managed alternation processes with WFA-affected employees who wanted to stay.

While I don’t have all the details on how current WFA policy and the ERI were designed and implemented under the current spending review, there appear to be some differences between how we made reductions at CBSA under DRAP.

Under current WFA policy, the voluntary departure component only applies to affected employees. In addition, my understanding is that initially, the salary of approved ERI applicants had to be included in the reductions in associated budgets (most recent reports suggest ERI salary reductions count at 50 per cent). And under the current approach, it was up to affected employees, surplused employees, and non-affected employees to engineer their own alternation opportunities that departments could accept or refuse.

Taken as a whole, these differences likely made it more difficult inside departments to create and manage internal offsets between employees subject to WFA who want to stay and employees eligible for ERI who want to leave.

This challenge of coordinating WFA and ERI to maximize voluntary departures was likely further exacerbated by the delay in the approval of the ERI legislation, which would have put the implementation timeline on a different track than originally planned. This, however, was unlikely by design. It’s more likely that the government initiated WFA to get out in front of WFA requirements and then, not by design, the ERI legislation was delayed.

The net result, as you have suggested, may very well be that departments have missed some opportunities to minimize involuntary departures, such as the scenario you describe in your question.

That said, the evidence suggests the ERI has clearly helped facilitate voluntary departures, with more than 6,300 applications approved, and only 23 applications denied (based on recent data).

Is that an overall success or lower than expectations? It’s hard to say.

In the broader context, 6,300 ERI approvals only represents about 20% of the total reductions in play in the spending review (the target is about 30,000 jobs). I don’t have numbers on the other 23,700, but a significant portion of the remaining target has likely been realized through the elimination of vacant positions, the termination of term contracts, and voluntary departures through WFA options.

What I can say is that major downsizing initiatives are extremely difficult and complicated exercises, with many moving parts, across multiple departments and regions. In all likelihood, the government started the exercise as signalled in Budget 2025 with the intent of maximizing attrition and voluntary departures and had to make adjustments along the way to respond to a variety of implementation challenges.

Could the system have done better?

Maybe, but it’s easy to criticize from the sidelines. I know from personal experience that managing downsizing exercises is extremely hard on both the staff impacted by cuts, as well as the executives and managers who have to do the cutting while continuing to deliver on key files. Morale, productivity, stress levels, psychological and physical health, and the work environment all take a hit.

I can also certainly empathize with you and any employee who has lost their job involuntarily (or has witnessed a friend or colleague lose their job involuntarily), when voluntary departure opportunities remain untapped.

— Scott Taymun, Public Service Confidential