A version of this was published by the Globe and Mail, December 20 2024.

Sharon DeSousa, National President of the Public Service Alliance of Canada:

Every day, federal public sector employees across the country go to work to support people in Canada. They dedicate their careers as firefighters, Coast Guard workers, housing assistants, and many others to help protect their communities, support our most vulnerable, and, quite simply, ensure everyone has access to critical government services.

Every month, these workers take a portion of their paychecks and invest in their retirement through the federal public sector pension plan. They make these investments with the belief their employer, the federal government, will honour its commitment to protect their pensions.

For Canada's public service workers, an unsettling reality has come to light. While they’ve made contributions with the promise of security and dignity in retirement, the government has other ideas for their money.

Treasury Board President Anita Anand has announced the Liberal government plans to scoop $1.9 billion from the pension surplus to pad the government’s bottom line, without a firm commitment to using it to support public services or its workers.

It gets worse though, the government also attempted to hide the fact that it intends to take a 32-month contribution holiday, saving itself $7.4 billion on the backs of Canada’s public service workers.

When PSAC rightfully pushed back against this unfair attack against the 700,000 workers and retirees who paid into this pension plan, Minister Anand immediately accused us of spreading “misinformation”. Let me be clear, what the government is doing is pension theft, plain and simple.

Minister Anand claims her hands were tied by legislation, that she had no choice but to scoop billions and bolster the government’s coffers. What she is hiding is that the legislation doesn’t require the government to simply swipe your retirement security.

Instead, the law would have allowed the government to reverse the unfair two-tier pension system that forces younger workers to work five years longer before they can retire. Minister Anand could also have invested part of the surplus back into the workers who paid into it, offering them a contribution pause alongside the government, providing much-needed financial relief during hard economic times.

What’s making matters worse, is this pension betrayal disproportionately harms racialized, Black, Indigenous, and younger workers who have joined the public service over the past decade and are still early in their careers.

To put it plainly, both workers and the government contribute together to this fund, but it is only the boss who is getting a break. The biggest holiday present of the year is the one the government is giving to itself.

Unfortunately, this type of betrayal is getting all too familiar for public sector workers. This is a continuation of how the Liberals have treated its employees for years. From the Phoenix pay debacle, to the arbitrary telework edicts, and now looming job cuts, public service workers are dealing with blatant disrespect from a government with supposed progressive values.

In this latest attack, the Liberals seem to have forgotten that pensions are not just numbers on a page; they are deferred wages, a promise made to workers when they accept a job that they will find security in retirement.

Everyone in Canada deserves a government that honours its promises and invests in the people who serve our nation every day. The workers who have paid into their pensions deserve a government that respects the commitments it made to them. It’s not too late for the Liberals to do the right thing: rebuild trust with its employees, protect retirement security, and set an example of fairness for all workers.