Good morning. My apologies to the interpreters because I will have to cut my speech short. Please bear with me.
My name is Claude Poirier. I am the President of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, but I am here to talk on behalf of the Professional Serving Canadians Coalition, which comprises six unions representing more than 75,000 professionals employed by the federal government: The Canadian Association of Professional Employees, the Association of Canadian Financial Officers, the Association of Justice Counsel, the Canadian Federal Pilots Association, the Professional Association of Foreign Service Officers, and the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada.
We wish to thank the committee members for agreeing to hear our concerns regarding the passing of many of the measures contained in Bill C-38, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget.
Our union members have been affected to various degrees by the provisions in the budget. Here are a few figures. So far, 3,291 of the approximately 13,000 CAPE members in the EC occupational group have received an affected employee letter, including no fewer than two-thirds of the economists and analysts in the EC group of Statistics Canada. On April 30, 95 federal lawyers working for the Department of Justice received notice letters. At the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, 2,949 members have received letters, including 349 at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, 384 at the Department of National Defence, and 455 at Statistics Canada. Even though the members of the Canadian Federal Pilots Association have not received a significant number of letters, the budget still had a significant impact on those employees. The operating budgets have been significantly reduced, including a $62 million reduction at Transport Canada alone.
All public service workers understand the cold hard reality behind these raw data: these employees, hired at the conclusion of rigorous selection processes in which they had to demonstrate their qualifications, expertise and competencies, will now have to start over again and compete against the very people they have been working side by side with for months or even years. We feel that many of these cutbacks don't make sense economically, but are being made strictly for ideological reasons.
On April 3, CAPE revealed that its analysis of an economic model developed by Statistics Canada predicted that the loss of 19,200 jobs in the public service would put as many as 40,000 Canadians from the private sector out of work across the country. You will see in our written document the number of jobs lost in both the public and the private sectors.
We are not the only ones to be concerned. The parliamentary budget officer has since stated that federal spending cuts, combined with those announced by the provinces, will lead to the loss of 108,000 jobs in Canada in 2015. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives published a report that places the total number of federal public service job losses at 29,600 once the cuts from the 2012 budget have been fully implemented. The plans for the future of some 30,000 Canadian households are going to fall through.
But beyond the figures themselves, we are concerned about the issue of reduced services to Canadians. Here are some examples: the National Council of Welfare is being eliminated; the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy is being abolished; new employment insurance eligibility rules are being brought in; changes are being made in the rules surrounding the slaughter of animals and food inspection; the number of aviation safety inspections will be reduced; the section that monitors the mental health of members of the Canadian Forces and focuses on suicide prevention will be closed; and there are cuts in the Department of Justice described by the AJC as an elimination of essential services.