Budget 2025 was tabled this week, and it confirms much of what we warned about in our “Five Red Flags” analysis.
Simply put: behind the language of “discipline” and “modernization” lurks the most significant downsizing of Canada’s public service since the 1990s – with 40, 000 positions being eliminated by 2028.
While it is not yet clear what exactly will get cut, it is clear that cuts will result in losses of key public goods, particularly in environmental monitoring, data collection, and applied research.
This is not what we wanted, and not what Canadians wanted.
Where we wanted to see efficiency, we are seeing erosion of services. Where we wanted to see strategic investment, we are seeing slashing of capacity.
The public service is being sacrificed as a quick fix, and it will cost Canadians.
Canadians want their government to spend wisely, and public service professionals agree. But when you eliminate the people who inspect food, deliver benefits, protect data, and track wildfires, you’re not cutting waste. You’re increasing risk.
Here’s how the budget’s promises are playing out in practice, and what it means for Public Service Commission members and Canadians.
“Efficiency” language hides the cost of real cuts
What’s branded as “modernization” is, in reality, cuts, reduced capacity and service loss. Phrases like “reduced overlap,” “streamlining,” and “program consolidation” sound prudent, but are euphemisms for program cuts that risk creating gaps where no one is accountable.
Cuts like the ones proposed in Budget 2025 disrupt workflows, break mentorship chains, and scatter institutional memory – and lead to slower services and more inefficiency.
Without a plan to transfer expertise or train replacements, institutional knowledge simply disappears. Attrition is often framed as painless, but with one in ten jobs being eliminated, we know many of us are going to feel the impacts.
The language of efficiency masks the disappearance of capacity: fewer food safety inspections, slower emergency responses, weaker disease monitoring. Canadians will pay the price.
While the budget didn’t outline where every job, service or program will be cut, it did outline where we can expect some: Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada will close its Agricultural Climate Solutions Living Labs. The Canadian Space Agency faces $41 million in unexplained cuts. Public Services and Procurement Canada will see reduced funding for Laboratories Canada pilot projects. And while the Canada Border Services Agency plans to hire 1,000 new officers, it will simultaneously cut training budgets — undermining the effectiveness of those very hires.
These are not efficiency measures. They are dismantling the infrastructure of public service piece by piece, and creating conditions for chaos not a fast, effective federal public service.
Artificial Intelligence as a “quick fix” with long-term consequences
Artificial Intelligence plays a prominent but uneven role in Budget 2025. While the government touts cuts to “management and consulting services,” most AI and digital work still falls under professional-services contracts that depend heavily on private IT vendors.
While we welcome the “Made in Canada” tech solutions in this budget, it does not necessarily mean “made by Canadian public servants.” We need to ensure public ownership in any new AI infrastructure to safeguard Canadian data and ensure public control and accountability.
The budget also provides little clarity on how these new initiatives will affect public-sector jobs or internal capacity. Labour must be part of AI governance to ensure protection, transparency and accountability. Unions need to be consulted at every step of the way, which is why we continue to call for a seat on the government’s AI advisory committee that currently only includes science and business voices.
Finally, making investments in AI while cutting tens of thousands of public sector jobs is more than just a contradiction, it sets the country up to fail. We cannot build sovereign technology if we dismantle the workforce meant to run it. Algorithms and AI bots cannot replace professional judgment of human experts.
We know that rushed automation leads to errors, delays, and costly failures. We are still living with the impacts of the CRA’s audit automation problems and the Phoenix pay system debacle.
Unless AI initiatives are paired with investment in in-house training and hiring, they will expand outsourcing rather than reduce it.
AI should be a tool to strengthen the public service, not a shortcut that weakens it.
An increase in costly outsourcing
Budget 2025 claims it will “cut back” on private consultants, but the government’s own numbers tell a different story. Outsourcing has doubled since pre-pandemic levels, and by the government’s own estimates, spending on professional services is projected to hit $26.1 billion this year – a 37% increase from last year and a record high.
We’ve heard this pledge before: past governments vowed to curb contracting costs and never came close. Even if this government’s promised 20% reduction bucks the trend and materializes, outsourcing spending would still be approximately double what it was 10 years ago.
This isn’t fiscal discipline. It is dependence on private firms that charge up to 26% more than equivalent public service staff. Every taxpayer dollar spent on private consultants is a dollar not spent on building internal public expertise.
The result is a hollowed-out public service forced to rent back the very skills it once had in-house. That’s not efficient. That's a waste.
It doesn’t need to be this way. When the government needed to act fast during the pandemic, public servants built CERB in just six weeks. This was inarguably faster and cheaper than any private firm could have done. That’s what real efficiency looks like. When public service professionals are trusted to lead, we deliver.
If this government truly wants to make cuts for cost savings, it should start by going after the $26 billion outsourcing bill, not the wildfire analyst, public health scientist, or engineer who keep Canadians safe.
Neglecting science and evidence
Starving public science undermines both safety and sovereignty. Budget 2025 is eerily silent on direct funding for federal science and research laboratories. There are no line items showing investment in departmental research facilities, technical programs, or the scientific workforce — even though we have been clear for years that this funding is desperately needed. There is also no mention of scientific integrity or evidence-based policy — a troubling retreat from earlier commitments.
Instead Budget 2025 threatens to cut more from Canada’s federal science and research capacity. While the specifics of the cuts are yet to be delivered, Budget 2025 included some departmental programs that will be affected: Environment and Climate Change Canada, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, among others. Meanwhile, private-sector R&D continues to receive support while public science is left to attrition.
Public science takes decades to build and seconds to cut – and consequences will be felt far beyond laboratories. They will show up in slower wildfire response, fewer food inspections, and weaker disease monitoring.
PIPSC’s latest report, A Science Roadmap for Canada’s Future, paints a stark picture: only 6.5 percent of scientists say their department has adequate research funding; confidence in evidence-based policymaking has dropped to 44 percent; and 36 percent of federal labs are in poor or critical condition. Reports of political interference in research are rising.
Public science is already starving for resources and needs investment to stay resilient. More cuts could deliver a devastating blow — not just to scientists, but to every Canadian who relies on their work.
Forgetting the bigger picture
You can’t build a strong Canada by weakening what holds it together. What’s being cut in this budget isn’t red tape; it’s the connective tissue that keeps programs coordinated and accountable. PIPSC members are the quiet force behind Canada’s strength: scientists, engineers, auditors, computer specialists, and policy experts who make government work.
Promises of “doing things faster, simpler, better” cannot be achieved with reduced capacity, capped training, and shrinking professional development. If we truly want a government that works faster, simpler, and better, we have to start by keeping — and supporting — the people who know how it works.
Public servants already know where inefficiencies lie: poor planning, outdated systems, and costly outsourcing. They are ready to fix them. But instead of being empowered to modernize, they are being sidelined by short-term savings targets.
Without a plan, cuts will create a revolving door of quick fixes and lost knowledge. Once that expertise is gone, rebuilding it will take years. Canadians will feel the effects through slower services, weaker oversight, and less preparedness when crises hit.
The path forward
Canadians want their government to spend wisely, and public servants share that goal. But efficiency without capacity is fragility.
The smarter path forward is clear:
- Strengthen the public service without deep cuts.
- Rein in wasteful outsourcing and rebuild internal expertise.
- Adopt AI responsibly and with transparency.
- Reinvest in evidence-based decision-making and scientific integrity.
- Focus on long-term problem-solving, not short-term optics.
We are calling on Members of Parliament to look closely at what’s being cut and who will pay the price. MPs must not simply rubber-stamp this budget. They must ask hard questions about how these decisions will affect their communities and Canada’s ability to respond to future crises.
So-called “efficiency” cannot come at the expense of the safety, stability, and public services that hold this country together.