Two major unions argue the Legault government’s sub-contracting out of certain services to private firms costs taxpayers more than public sector employees.
The freeze on recruitment outside the civil service was announced by the Treasury Board. It will come into force on Nov. 1 “to curb the growth in the number of civil servants and respect the budgets allocated for the current year.”
It will not apply to the health, education and higher education networks, the hiring of interns and students, or even seasonal workers benefiting from a right of recall.
In an interview on Friday, Christian Daigle, president of the Syndicat de la fonction publique et parapublique du Québec (SFPQ), said the announcement by Treasury Board President Sonia LeBel means a return to the policies of austerity used by the then-provincial Liberal government, even though François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec refuses to describe it as such.
“For us, it was an open secret that the announcement was coming. We didn’t want to say the word ‘austerity,’ because we don’t want to be associated with the Liberal Party, which has already done it several times before, but that was definitely what was coming. We saw it coming and there, they just officially announced it,” Daigle said.
Guillaume Bouvrette, president of the Syndicat des professionnels du gouvernement du Québec (SPGQ), said the recruitment freeze will inevitably be felt by the population, which is already facing delays in accessing certain government services.
“What this means is that there will inevitably be an impact on services to the population. It would be utopian to assert that there will be no additional delays in the processing of requests, in the management of social programs,” he warned.
“By not hiring, by not replacing positions that are already vacant — because there are some — public administration is not doing well; most people denounce the work overload; it’s not going to be resolved by magic, that’s obvious.”
The two unions argue ministries, nevertheless, resort to subcontracting. This is already the case in IT in particular, Daigle noted. “These budgets are not affected. When we asked the question, the answer was: ‘They are not the same budgets’.”
The two presidents emphasized resorting to subcontracting to the private sector costs the state much more than public sector employees.
“We find it deplorable that the government decides to make tax cuts, then after that, it turns around to say that it lacks money to provide services to the population,” Daigle said.