Canada: Avi Lewis Wins NDP Leadership Race In Historic Victory + Carney/Liberals to use AI to slash 40,000+ federal jobs

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related:

Naomi Klein on the importance of Avi Lewis becoming NDP leader

Departmental plans fuel concern over federal job, program cuts

Initiatives aimed at addressing climate change on the chopping block, advocates warn

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/union-budget-carney-public-service-department-plans-9.7133612

Federal programs aimed at addressing climate change are facing significant cuts as the government shifts to artificial intelligence (AI) and slashes thousands of jobs, according to recently released departmental plans. In its latest budget, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government said it would partly rely on AI to eliminate 40,000 public service jobs, bringing the federal workforce's growth in line with that of the general population.

Canada's two largest public service unions warn Canadians could see a decline in the quality of federal government services as a result. The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) say they're alarmed by the staff reductions set out in departmental plans tabled late Friday.



"When you cut jobs, the workload doesn't go down. How are you going to continue maintaining a quality service to Canadians?" asked Alex Silas, PSAC's national executive vice-president. "That's the big piece that's missing out of this, and the big piece that the Carney government's not taking into consideration."

Silas also raised concerns about a "lack of transparency" by the government, saying the departmental plans are short on detail about how services will be delivered in the wake of significant job cuts. For example, Employment and Social Development Canada will have 15,629 fewer public servants in 2029 than it had last year. The department says it will be "leveraging artificial intelligence to automate internal processes and streamline operations," and plans to merge program delivery "to lower administrative costs."

Environmental programs winding down.......................

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related:


Carney’s Job Cuts Undermine Canada’s Position Against Trump

Austerity undermines the foundation for a fairer economy that is less dependent on the United States.

https://www.readthemaple.com/carneys-job-cuts-undermine-canadas-position-against-trump/

Prime Minister Mark Carney recently made international waves at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, following his frank diagnosis of our current economic “rupture.” The weaponization of trade by “great powers,” (i.e., the United States) calls for rethinking our economic relationships, according to Carney. Back at home, however, his government is engaged in a brutal program of public service job cuts, issuing thousands of “workforce adjustment” notices to workers in the span of a year as part of their plan to ultimately axe more than 40,000 positions.

The number of workforce adjustment letters issued to federal public servants since early last year alone has been dizzying, leaving unions and their members with little sense of the full scale and implications of the planned cuts. The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the largest union in the federal public service, has launched a “workforce adjustment tracker” just to keep track of all the impacted workers. As of January 30, more than 11,800 PSAC members had received notice that their positions could be terminated. Moreover, these cuts are in addition to the 5,500 term employees who were not renewed last year.

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), the second largest union of federal public servants, has characterized the planned job cuts as a “generational rollback of public services” that are producing “Hunger Games-style anxiety” among its members. Instead of building an economy of resilience to meet the challenges of the economic “rupture,” the Carney Liberals are supercharging austerity and slashing the capacity of the federal public service.

Since it became clear in the 2025 budget that the government planned this devastating and scattershot series of cuts to the federal workforce, unions have been sounding the alarm about the negative impacts likely to be experienced by their members, but also the threat these cuts posed to services across the country. Behind the language of “efficiency” and “modernization,” they warned, were drastic reductions in service capacity and quality. Not just jobs, but whole programs were under threat. Each week it seems a new group of workers receives workforce adjustment notifications, indicating that reductions are planned for their department and their job may be terminated. The government’s plan for mass downsizing has therefore appeared as death by a thousand cuts.

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