Government Operations Committee on Nov. 27th, 2025

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton—Chinguacousy Park, ON]

There are rules in place for oversight, and there are guidelines. There are authorities delegated to ministers. If anyone goes beyond that or does not follow those guidelines and policies, I think there is a mechanism to deal with it. They should be held accountable.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Do you know, Minister, if anybody has read the entire contract?

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton—Chinguacousy Park, ON]

Again, that contract was not in my.... I was not a president of the Treasury Board, so—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Mr. Matthews or Mr. Trudel, no? Has anyone read the entire contract?

[Bill Matthews]

There would be people from both the justice department and in ISED who would have reviewed. I will take it back to see if there was anyone within TBS who reviewed the entire contract, but the bulk of the work would have been done by the Department of Justice and the line department ISED.

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Okay. My biggest concern, honestly, is that we rubber-stamp a bad deal because we don't know who's read what. Aren't you supposed to be the ones who say, hold on, does this actually make sense? Isn't that what the Treasury Board is about? Your name is on the bottom of the cheque.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton—Chinguacousy Park, ON]

Thank you. I agree with you that we're accountable to Canadians. We need to be transparent, and we take every precaution—

[Tamara Jansen, Conservative, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

You believe that there is a mechanism so—

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

That is our time. I'm sorry.

Ms. Khalid, go ahead, please.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the minister and to his colleagues for attending today to answer these questions on supplementary estimates (B).

I'll start with talking a bit about the public service, if that's okay. I know that it's been a bit of a roller-coaster ride with public servants between the COVID pandemic to now in terms of working from home and then being asked to come back to work and then between full-time, part-time and half-time.

My question is specifically about the early retirement options that public servants have been asking about and what that might mean for job security across the public service. I'd like you to maybe speak about how the government is approaching this in a way that protects our workforce and reassures employees of the future as well, and ensures that any workforce adjustments minimize involuntary departures as well. We want to protect the public service.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton—Chinguacousy Park, ON]

We're going through a challenging time. This is a new norm of a global economic shift we're dealing with. We have made the commitment to Canadians in this mandate that we will spend less and invest more and balance our operational budget in the next three years, and that's exactly what we're doing.

What we're trying to do is find savings and invest in the priorities that matter most to Canadians, which are housing, infrastructure and the Canadian Armed Forces, which means there are more opportunities in those areas, and Canadian Armed Forces housing. By doing so, we're focusing on a buy Canada approach as well.

To me, this is a very challenging and difficult issue that we're dealing with, the public service livelihood, and, to me, this is not a political issue. This is a real issue that impacts on those public service employees and their families. Therefore, we do it in a way that we find other tools and options that have a minimum impact as an involuntary workforce adjustment. There is an early retirement option. There is an early retirement incentive and there is attrition. That is the mechanism we have and we haven't finalized the details yet. The team is still working on it.

I can ask Bill if he can shed light on this one because this is a really important issue and we do it in a way that we will not hurt people's livelihood.

[Bill Matthews]

The early retirement incentive is designed to allow employees who don't meet the age requirement to retire without having that penalty. It would not award them additional pension benefits; it would just avoid the penalty. The regime itself does require legislative approval. It is in BIA 1, and so we will be working through the details and then moving to implement once the proper approvals have been achieved.

[Iqra Khalid, Liberal, Mississauga—Erin Mills, ON]

Thank you very much for that clarification.

On providing support to people, we talk about budget 2025 and we talk about supports especially for those who are marginalized and seeking equality of opportunity. I want to talk specifically about women. People want to make sure that spending cuts are not hurting women and diverse communities specifically, or the government's GBA+ commitments.

Can you explain how we're making sure the review does not undermine equity and inclusion and that it does indeed support those who need it the most?

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton—Chinguacousy Park, ON]

Thank you for the question.

[The Chair, Conservative, Kelly McCauley]

I'm afraid there were only eight seconds left for a response, but there will be one more intervention from the Liberal side. Perhaps you can answer during that time.

Mr. Kelly, go ahead for five minutes.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

What will the early retirement incentive program cost?

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton—Chinguacousy Park, ON]

I can ask my secretary to respond to that question.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

If you don't know the answer, we'll maybe get to that in the next hour.

Why is there a need for the program if you are successfully reducing numbers through voluntary attrition?

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton—Chinguacousy Park, ON]

That early retirement incentive is a part of this voluntary attrition exercise.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

You said that you have reduced the number already to 346,000 as of September without this program. You're only going down another 16,000.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton—Chinguacousy Park, ON]

If my colleague could dive deep into that information, he will find more appropriate information. It says that in the next three years, by 2027-28, we will achieve that goal.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

According to the PBO summary I read, the number in September 2025 was 346,000. The budget says that you're going to hit 330,000 by 2028-29. I hope I'm not going too deep here. I have to go deeper to do the subtraction—

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton—Chinguacousy Park, ON]

You said that we already had done it, so why is it needed.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

No, you have gone from a height of 358,000. You kind of got halfway there without this program. You don't know what it's going to cost. I'm just wondering if you need the program at all.

[Shafqat Ali, Liberal, Brampton—Chinguacousy Park, ON]

That's a program we need and that's why we're achieving those goals.