Feds Looking to Reduce Number of Contracted Consultants As Strike Negotiations Continue: Fortier

President of the Treasury Board Mona Fortier speaks in the foyer of the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Dec. 15, 2022. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

As negotiations continue with the union representing over 150,000 striking public servants, the government says it is looking to reduce the number of third-party consultants it contracts for various tasks, while noting that completely cutting them would harm service deliverability.

Mona Fortier, president of the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, outlined in an open letter on April 24 the government’s stance on the four main demands of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the union representing the employees on strike.

One of the union’s key demands is “a ban on contracting out” federal work, but Fortier said in her letter that a complete elimination of contracted consultants would not be possible without causing large service disruptions.

“On contracting out, we intend to reduce this practice as we outlined in Budget 2023,” she wrote. “That said, we hope everyone can understand that reducing it to zero would severely compromise the Government’s ability to deliver services and work for Canadians.”

Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) Yves Giroux wrote in a March report that overall federal spending on contracted consultants has grown consistently over the past several years.

The PBO acknowledged that consulting costs still account for just 5 percent of “overall spending on professional and special services,” but said that amount has “shown consistent growth year after year.”

Giroux said there has been a 95 percent increase in the amount of federal spending on management consultants since the 2015-2016 fiscal year.

Strikes

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre has criticized the Liberal government for its consultancy spending and its handling of the ongoing public service strikes, which started on April 19.

“It would be one thing to increase the cost of the bureaucracy by 50 percent, or $20 billion a year, and it would be another to have a strike,” Poilievre said during question period in the House of Commons on April 24.

“However, to do both of those things at once takes a special, unique kind of incompetence that only the prime minister could pull off.”

Fortier responded by saying the Treasury Board has presented PSAC with a “competitive deal,” but said the union “continues to insist on demands that are unaffordable and would severely impact our ability to deliver services to Canadians.”

The Treasury Board has proposed to PSAC a wage increase of 9 percent over three years for the striking workers, but the union has demanded a 13.5 percent wage increase.

“Canadians can expect both parties to bargain in good faith and find compromise,” Fortier told the House on April 24. “That is what we are focusing on.”