Now that the federal budget bill has received royal assent, the Treasury Board has started implementing early retirement incentives it is offering to public servants.
The Treasury Board is set to open
where public servants who qualify for the incentive can apply by July 24. The incentives were announced in Budget 2025 as part of the federal government’s attempts to trim the size of the public service.
The government is planning to cut the public service by
around 30,000 jobs over several years
and has said it wants to do so mostly
.
If an eligible public servant is granted the incentive, they will be able to retire early without any penalties on their pensions.
Last December, about
68,000 public servants received letters
notifying them that they were eligible for the incentives. There are two eligible groups of employees.
The first group includes those who joined the public service on or before Dec. 31, 2012, are at least 50 years old and have at least two years of pensionable service and 10 years of employment within the public service.
The second group includes those who joined the public service on or after Jan. 1, 2013, are at least 55 years old and have at least two years of pensionable service and 10 years of employment within the public service.
At a parliamentary committee on March 26, the day the budget bill received royal assent, Treasury Board Secretary Bill Matthews told parliamentarians that the program did not mean “anyone who wants to go gets to go.”
“We do want to make sure we preserve our ability to provide services and advice to the government,” Matthews said.
It’s why the fate of eligible public servants who raise their hands “will be up to each department to decide the extent they’re accepted because we can’t have entire teams walking out the door,” Matthews added.
Matthews pointed to the program as a way to retain diversity in the younger workforce within the federal government. He also said the program would help “minimize the forced departures” as the government reduces its workforce “to be more in line with traditional levels.”
Shafqat Ali, president of the Treasury Board, echoed Matthews in a news release.
“As proposed in Budget 2025, workforce reductions will be managed to the greatest extent possible through attrition and voluntary departures,” Ali said. “The Early Retirement Incentive is proceeding with an emphasis on voluntary, structured options to retire early with clarity and predictability.”
It’s unclear how many public servants will be granted the retirement incentives and whether that will be enough to mitigate thousands of potential layoffs.
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