OTTAWA, ON, April 28, 2026 /CNW/ - With a lower-than-expected deficit, the government now has a clear choice: continue cutting expertise and increasing risk, or reinvest in the public service that keeps critical systems running safely.

The truth is that Canada's losing experts at scale. The statement commits $ 11.3 billion in new spending for the current fiscal year, while maintaining their plan to reduce spending by $60 billion across departments announced in budget 2025, and eliminating almost 40 thousand positions in the process.

We're already seeing the impact. At Transport Canada, cuts are drastically shrinking teams that regulate the safe movement of dangerous goods across Canada – roles designed to prevent disasters like Lac Mégantic. At CFIA, nearly one million hours of food safety expertise are being cut annually, even as recalls rise and thousands of facilities remain uninspected due to chronic staffing shortages.

These are not abstract roles or simply numbers on a spreadsheet – they are core to how Canada builds resilience, manages risk, and keeps people safe. Once this capacity is gone, it cannot be quickly or cheaply replaced.

The decision to keep the Longueuil Lab open shows what happens when risks are understood – cuts don't proceed. It reveals a major flaw in the government's approach: broad, across-the-board reductions to critical systems are being made too quickly, without a full understanding of the consequences for Canadians.

The Spring Economic Statement reannounced the government's intention to reduce spending on outside consultants. Unfortunately, spending on outsourcing remains at record highs. $26 billion is going to private consultants this year, while wildfire analysts, safety engineers, and food inspectors are being let go. When in-house expertise is cut, the work doesn't disappear - it is shifted to consultants at higher cost, with less oversight and weaker accountability. That's not efficiency – that's waste.

Taken together, these decisions represent a broader shift away from public service expertise that keeps critical systems functioning safely and Canada strong, at a time of real economic pressure and global uncertainty.

The question now is whether the federal government chooses to reinvest in the expertise that prevents failures - or accepts greater risk down the line.

PIPSC represents over 80,000 public-sector professionals across the country, most of them employed by the federal government. Follow us on Facebook, on Bluesky and on Instagram.

SOURCE Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC)