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The federal government\u2019s spring economic outlook includes plan to cut back on the use of management consultants by 20 per cent over the next three years. <\/p>\n
The move would save $450 million in 2027-2028 and $900 million in 2028-2029, according to the outlook released Tuesday by Finance Minister Fran\u00e7ois-Philippe Champagne. He says the reduction will allow existing talent within the public service to be relied on more heavily. <\/p>\n
Last year, about $5.1 billion was spent on external consulting services to cover costs for training, information technology services and scientific advice.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The government says the change is challenging but necessary <\/p>\n
\u201cCanadians are seeing in this update [that] by spending less we can invest more in the things that really matter to the government,\u201d Champagne said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In its last budget, the federal government announced plans to reduce the size of the civil service by 40,000 jobs compared to the 2023-2024 peak. Federal departments continue to meet savings targets ahead of a June deadline.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, thousands of public sector workers are considering early retirement packages as part of federal workforce adjustment efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
New agency slated for NRC<\/p>\n
Alex Silas, national executive vice-president for the Public Service Alliance of Canada, says the 20 per cent reduction \u201cdoesn\u2019t go far enough\u201d to stomp out private sector talent replacing public workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll these things are very concerning, especially at a time where there’s a strong feeling that Canada needs to be strong with all the uncertainty around the world,” Silas said. <\/p>\n
“We need a strong public service to keep Canada strong and to support Canadians through these uncertain times.”<\/p>\n
The spring financial update also shows the government is planning to launch a Financial Crimes Agency. It will have a mandate to investigate complex financial crimes and will be headquartered in the National Capital Region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 2 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":635708,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194295],"tags":[49,48,20739],"class_list":["post-635707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ottawa","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ottawa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635707","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635707\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/635708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}