Cuts will impact women and racialized public servants disproportionately, new analysis says

Likely but excessive growth in public service had to be curbed. Uses a departmental frame rather than an age frame. Annual EE reports will indicate extent of change:

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s coming cuts to the federal public service are expected to disproportionately impact female, Indigenous, racialized and disabled workers, according to a new analysis.

The analysis, published by the left-leaning Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives on Oct. 20, estimated that 59 per cent of the employees whose jobs will be cut will be women, 5.5 per cent will be Indigenous people, 26 per cent will likely be racialized and 8.3 per cent will have a disability.

The analysis found that this outsized impact on these groups would largely be due to the fact that the departments and agencies facing the deepest reductions have some of the most diverse workforces in the federal government. And the organizations expected to see smaller cuts have less diverse employees.

“Depending on how the cuts play out, we can expect wider employment gaps, wider pay gaps and the erosion of access to critical employment benefits,” economists David Macdonald and Katherine Scott wrote in the analysis.

Early in July, Carney’s government announced a spending review asking most departments and agencies to cut 15 per cent of their operational budgets over three years.

The total job losses across the federal government from the spending review could amount to around 57,000 job losses, according to a previous analysis from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

As Carney has promised to boost spending on defence and beefing up with border with the United States, the Department of National Defence (DND), Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and the RCMP will only see a cut of 2 per cent cut to their operational budgets over those three years. The analysis characterized these organizations as  “equity laggards.”x

Forty-three per cent of the civilian arm of DND are women and CBSA is staffed by around 47 per cent women.

In contrast, the workforce of Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) is around 67 per cent women. Macdonald and Scott estimate around 3,915 women could lose their jobs at that department in the coming spending review.

Indigenous Services Canada (ISC), the Department of Justice and Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) are all around 70 per cent women, and could see estimated 918, 604 and 935 women lose their jobs respectively.

In the federal public sector, Scott said women often don’t have to settle for lower paying jobs and are “not questioned if they’re leaving the office at five o’clock to pick up the kids from childcare.”

“You see massive wage gaps in the private sector,” Scott said.

When it comes to Indigenous workers, Scott and Macdonald estimated that around 5.5 per cent of jobs lost will be those of Indigenous workers, outpacing their current share in the public service at 5.3 per cent.

ISC (with a 27 per cent Indigenous workforce), Crown-Indigenous Relations (18 per cent Indigenous) and Correctional Service Canada (11 per cent Indigenous) will lose the most Indigenous jobs, according to Macdonald and Scott. These organizations could see an estimated 359, 84 and 318 Indigenous workers losing their jobs respectively.

Racialized workers make up 31 per cent of ESDC’s workforce and 41 per cent of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, two departments expected to see high job loss as the spending review launches.

Source: Cuts will impact women and racialized public servants disproportionately, new analysis says