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The federal government has approved 9,346 early retirement applications for its employees as of Sept. 1 and turned down just 69, according to the Treasury Board.
As part of the 2025 budget, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government announced the workforce had grown at a faster rate than Canada’s population, pledging to cut it down to about 330,000 workers by March 2029.
There were about 370,000 public servants in March 2024, which had dropped to 345,000 as of this past March.
According to the government, its 330,000-area target reflects typical turnover rates, retirements and voluntary departures from the public service.
One of the ways to reach it was to offer early retirement to about 68,000 public servants who were notified of their eligibility to retire based on age and years of service, without incurring a permanent reduction of pension payouts that’s typical of early retirement.
That program is “a good way to make a big dent” in the target, said Michael Wernick, the Jarislowsky Chair in public sector management at University of Ottawa and former clerk of the Privy Council, which acts as the head of the federal public service.
“If you’re going to reduce the workforce, somebody has to leave…. The people that just come in have fresh skills and energy, they have more digital skills. I think you want to prune the older ends and keep some of the green shoots.”
Not just numbers
A total of 10,006 applications were received by the end of the application program in late July and just 69 applications have been denied. That means 591 were still unprocessed as of last week’s update.
The government has approved about 93 per cent of total applications and 99 per cent of applications they’ve processed.
Wernick said the government’s “top line targets” are important, but he’ll be waiting to see a breakdown of how these retirements are spread, both by department and geographically.
“Which organizations are growing? Which ones are shrinking? How does that affect programs and services?” Wernick said.
“This isn’t just about reducing the number of bodies … presumably this is about getting to a smaller, leaner, flatter public service that better reflects the government’s priorities. At least, that’s what they say.”
He predicted this is “just one step in what is going to be years of change and disruption,” under Prime Minister Mark Carney.
The federal government predicted in the budget the early retirement program will cost $1.5 billion over five years, with about half of that expense coming in 2026. It’s expected to save taxpayers about $82 million annually, largely from pension contributions.
For those who applied for the early retirement program and were accepted, the latest possible retirement date is January 20, 2027.