Union confirms job cuts coming to Environment Canada
Environment Canada has sent notice to hundreds of employees that they will be affected by a wave of job cuts that will take place over the next 90 days.Gary Corbett, the president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, says his union received notice about the pending cuts on Monday.
"These type of announcements cause a lot of havoc in the department and people are certainly wondering what is going to happen now," Corbett told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview on Thursday morning.
Corbett said a total of 776 Environment Canada employees have since received notices that they will be affected by the job cuts, though not all of them will ultimately end up leaving the department. Some employees will be moved into new positions within the department, while others will be offered new jobs in other parts of the public service.
"The department has quite clearly said that they expect 300 (employees) to be surplused," said Corbett. But Corbett said it is not a simple process to uproot scientists and other professionals from Environment Canada into other jobs.
Dozens of physical scientists and engineers within the department have received notices, as have a smaller number of chemists and meteorologists.
The pending cuts have also raised concerns that Environment Canada will be hard-pressed to deliver the services it is required to provide with diminished staff capacity. "At the very least, the Harper government owes the public clear explanations of how the core activity of Environment Canada will not be harmed by these layoffs. What is the timeline and what areas of the department will be affected? How will we ensure that critical roles are not left vacant?" Green Leader Elizabeth May said in a statement released Wednesday night.
"There are too many questions and no good answers regarding this slashing of a critical government department."
The Environment Canada website says the department has more than 7,000 employees, which implies that about 1 in 10 workers will be affected by the pending job cuts.
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Kelly McParland: Cut the budget, ruin the world as we know it | Full Comment | National Post
"The reason governments have so much trouble balancing their budgets is because no expenditure can ever be cut, for any reason, without disaster, impoverishment and social injustice ensuing."
"So you see? Governments can’t cut costs because we’d all go uneducated, uncared-for and unprotected. We’d freeze in the dark of our own homes and our children would wander the streets aimlessly. And we wouldn’t know whether it’s going to rain on Saturday. It’s a wonder we made it this far. How did the planet manage to get to the 21st century before we had governments that knew how to care for us?"
Preachy fallacious crap.
