Liberal democracies are cutting public-service jobs. How does Canada stack up?

Article content

During the pandemic, Lofgren said New Zealand’s public service swelled to support a bureaucracy to administer vaccines.

Article content

According to the current government, the commitment to cutting jobs is part of an effort to bring the size of the public service back down to one per cent of the country’s population, which was roughly where it sat pre-pandemic.

Article content

Rather than framing the cuts around what the government should do, the choice to attach a specific number to the job losses is interesting, Lofgren said.

Article content

Ahead of a November election, and with cracks forming in the governing coalition, he said highlighting the number was an act of political signaling.

Article content

“It’s about showing to the core electorate of the three coalition parties that we want to cut back on the state,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about.”

Article content

An embattled Starmer and the rise of Reform

Article content

In the U.K., promises to drastically reform Whitehall, London’s central government district, are longstanding.

Article content

“There’s been a sense in the U.K. for a long time that the state isn’t working,” said Hannah Keenan, associate director at the Institute for Government, a think tank that studies the British civil service.

Article content

Article content

Once in power, administrations of all political stripes are known to vent their frustrations over dysfunction in Whitehall.

Article content

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has described his relationship with the civil service as one where he pulls a lever and nothing happens.

Article content

In December 2024, Starmer tasked new cabinet secretary Chris Wormald with “nothing less than the complete rewiring of the British state.”

Article content

That rewiring, Keenan said, hasn’t yet come to pass.

Article content

“Lots of different administrations have said that they are going to change the way that Whitehall and the civil service works,” she said. “Few have turned around the kind of long-term workforce trends — and Labour hasn’t.”

Article content

The current Labour government has brought in some “sensible” and “positive” changes, Keenan said, such as a shift in how funding is allocated and a rollout of useful pilot projects on artificial intelligence.

Article content

But none of those changes have scaled.

Article content

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer leaves Downing Street on June 03. Photo by Dan Kitwood /GETTY IMAGES

Article content

Unlike in Canada, Starmer’s government hasn’t put a hard number on how many jobs it plans to cut amid efforts to transform government.

Article content

Keenan praised that approach.

Article content

Article content

Article content

Instead, the government is squeezing departmental administration budgets, which primarily go toward paying staff. Its current commitment is to trim those budgets by 16 per cent over a decade.

Article content

The result, according to an analysis by the institute, could be a reduction of between 29,000 and 40,000 jobs over that time, a range that would top out at about 7.5 per cent of the workforce.

Article content

“It’s a reasonably big reduction,” Keenan said. “It’s not the biggest reduction we’ve had historically.”

Article content

Even in recent memory, British politicians have called for deeper cuts.

Article content

In 2022, former prime minister Boris Johnson set a target of 91,000 job cuts, a goal Rishi Sunak dropped later that year when he took over the job.

Article content

Currently, both major right-wing opposition parties, Reform UK and the Conservative Party, have set targets for how many civil servants they would cut if they were voted into power.

Article content

The populist Reform, which is leading in the polls, has pledged to chop 13 per cent of full-time civil service jobs for projected annual savings of around £5 billion ($9.3 billion Cdn).