The Public Service Commission of Canada is pushing to speed up hiring for certain agencies even as the overall federal workforce trends downward, its president told Radio-Canada. The context is a government that plans job cuts while some departments are set to expand rapidly.
In an exclusive interview timed with the release of the PSCC’s annual report, Marie-Chantal Girard said there’s a clear tension: departments like National Defence, the Canada Border Services Agency, and Public Safety Canada will be recruiting heavily, even as the broader public service pool shrinks by about 40,000 positions.
New federal data released by the PSCC shows for the first time in ten years a net decrease in the size of the federal public service. The total number of federal employees decreased by one percent to 279,707, a drop primarily driven by reduced external hiring.
A key challenge highlighted by the report is the time it takes to hire. The median hiring time rose to 221 days, up from 214 days in the prior year, and the PSCC aims to bring this down to 167 days. Girard noted that the current process is not very competitive with the private sector, and faster hiring is essential to attract skilled staff.
Delays are partly blamed on hiring criteria, including bilingual language requirements for many roles. The current process evaluates applications in a sequential manner, with each stage—resume screening, candidate evaluation, and qualification certification—conducted one after another. Girard envisions a more parallel approach, allowing multiple aspects of an application to be assessed at the same time to speed things up.
The timing of the report aligns with the 2025 federal budget, which projects a reduction of about 16,000 full-time equivalents in the public service over the next three years (roughly 4.5% of the current workforce).
Additionally, the data indicate that the share of federal employees working outside the National Capital Region has held steady at about 53% for five years.
As always, these shifts raise questions about how to balance efficiency, competitiveness with the private sector, and the government’s broader employment strategy. Do you think the public service should prioritize rapid hiring even if it means relaxing some criteria, or should it maintain stricter standards to ensure quality at a slower pace? Share your thoughts in the comments.
