The Liberal government’s budget bill cleared the Senate Thursday, paving the way for Ottawa to launch a promised buyout program for public servants that will be a key part of its cost-cutting plans.
Bill C-15 was tabled in the House of Commons on Nov. 18, shortly after Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne released the government’s 2025 budget.
At more than 600 pages, the bill covers a wide range of measures that were referenced in the budget. But one of the most time-sensitive items is a provision to offer buyout incentives worth a combined $1.5-billion for qualifying public servants.
Government departments want to move ahead with their staffing reduction plans, which have been largely on hold as they waited for the budget bill to pass. The number of employees who accept the buyout will affect the degree to which departments must rely on other means, such as layoffs, to hit their job-reduction targets.
In December, letters went out to around 68,000 public servants informing them that they may be eligible for the buyout.
The incentive is expected to play a major role in the government’s efforts to reduce the size of the public service by 30,000 positions over three years.
The government has said it couldn’t release the detailed eligibility rules for the buyout until the budget bill becomes law.
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On Thursday afternoon, the Senate voted 60 to 10 to give its final approval of the bill.
However, earlier this week, the Senate’s National Finance committee released a report criticizing the increasing use of budget bills to pass legal changes that are not strictly financial in nature.
Titled “Omnibus Budget Bills: A Growing Problem,” the report’s cover is an illustration of mountains of documents piled sky-high.
The report says the size of budget bills, or Budget Implementation Acts (BIAs), have expanded significantly since the 1990s and increasingly bundle non-financial measures in with core financial changes.
Senators say this makes it harder for them to study individual elements of large budget bills. It also ties their hands because of a convention that the Senate should be reticent to amend financial legislation.
“It is regrettable that BIAs, once brief and focused on financial measures, have evolved into increasingly lengthy and complex bills that bundle diverse, and sometimes controversial, non-financial measures to expedite their passage, a practice that undermines Parliament’s ability, and Canadians’ opportunity, to give these measures the thorough examination they deserve,” the Senate report states.
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Conservative Senator Leo Housakos referenced the issue Thursday just ahead of the vote.
“My fundamental problem with this is very simple: This is an omnibus bill like we’ve never seen before,” he said. While he said the practice has been going on for decades, he expressed the view that it has become progressively worse.
“I think at some point we need to tell the other place that this has to stop,” he said, in reference to the House of Commons.
Mr. Champagne praised the Senate Thursday for approving the budget bill. When asked about the Senate’s criticism of omnibus budget bills, he defended the practice.
“Canadians understand that the speed, scope and scale of change in the world is quite unprecedented,” he told reporters. “So we need to do things at scope and speed that we may not have seen before. And therefore, when you have a legislative tool in order to address a number of issues, I think Canadians will be understanding to say this is a very exceptional time in our nation’s history, and we need to do a lot of things at the same time.”
In addition to the buyout provisions, Bill C-15 includes several tax changes, including repealing the Digital Services Tax Act. It also establishes new laws, including the National School Food Program Act, the Stablecoin Act and the High-Speed Rail Network Act.