New UCP budget shows 100s of job cuts

The Government of Alberta announced their latest budget yesterday. The 2022–2023 budget will probably be their last budget before next year’s provincial election.

Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll pull out some data from the budget for several articles. But for my first “breaking” story, I wanted to do something that most mainstream outlets probably won’t be.

This news story will focus on how this budget will affect public sector jobs.

Before I do that, I just wanted to give a high-level snapshot of this year’s budget.

	2021-2022 (budget)	2022-2023 (budget)	Change
Revenue	$43.7 billion	$62.6 billion	$18.9 billion
Expenses	$62.0 billion	$62.2 billion	$0.2 billion
Deficit/surplus	-$18.2 billion	$0.5 billion	—

Resource revenue alone increases by $10.984 billion in this year’s budget over last year’s initial budget. That’s 58.1% of the increase revenue. As well, federal transfers, personal income tax, and corporate income tax are up by around $2 billion each.

Like I said, I’ll do a breakdown on that in a future article.

Let’s get to jobs.

First let’s start with the Government of Alberta jobs. In Schedule 21 of the 2021–2022 budget, the government said that there were 25,878 workers in the various government ministries and departments.

In this year’s budget, the number drops down to 25,844. That means that this government plans to get rid of 34 workers over the next year.

The largest cut will come in the ministry of community and social services, which will axe over 100 workers, nearly 4% of its workforce. Children’s Services, on the other hand, will see the largest increase, at 99 new workers.

Here’s how workers in the various departments will fare over the next fiscal year:

Department	2021–2022	2022–2023	Change
Community & Social Services	2,649	2 ,547	-102
Advanced Education	512	490	-22
Treasury Board & Finance	591	572	-19
TB&F – Public Service Comm.	573	554	-19
Labour & Immigration	851	837	-14
Culture & Status of Women	503	498	-5
Transportation	765	775	10
Justice & Solicitor General	6,592	6,605	13
Health	848	873	25
Children’s Services	2,916	3,015	99

Anyone else find it slightly ironic that the ministry of labour is cutting their workforce? No? Just me?

Anyhow, all other ministries/departments saw no change in their number of workers.

Now, that we have had 4 budgets from the UCP government, I thought I’d take a look at the change in the number of workers projected in the NDP’s last budget and the number of workers projected in the UCP’s budget.

	2018-19	2022-23	Change
Advanced Education	575	490	-85
Ag, Forestry & Rural Economic Dev.	1,701	1,301	-400
Children’s Services	2,768	3,015	247
Community & Social Services	3,163	2,547	-616
Culture & Status of Women	568	498	-70
Education	553	507	-46
Energy	562	491	-71
Environment & Parks	2,213	2,095	-118
Executive Council	122	118	-4
Health	910	873	-37
Indigenous Relations	230	175	-55
Infrastructure	938	809	-129
Jobs, Economy & Innovation	373	338	-35
Justice & Solicitor General	6,987	6,605	-382
Labour & Immigration	816	837	21
Municipal Affairs	590	593	3
Seniors & Housing	269	249	-20
Service Alberta	2,238	2,132	-106
Transportation	732	775	43
Treasury Board & Finance	548	572	24
TB&F – Comm. & Public Engagement	309	270	-39
TB&F – Public Service Commission	710	554	-156
Total	27,875	25,844	-2,031

What we see here is that over the last 4 years, the UCP sent over 2,000 workers to the unemployment line. That’s assuming that the follow through with their commitment to lay off 35 workers this year.

The largest cut came to—once again—community and social services, which has lost over 600 workers since 2018–2019. Children’s Services saw the largest increase, at nearly 250.

Over the last 4 years, 17 ministries and government departments laid off workers, and 7 of them laid off more than 100 each.

Only 5 departments saw increases.

Now let’s look at workers in K–12, postsecondary, and Alberta Health Services, the so-called SUCH (schools, universities, colleges, and health) workers.

First, here’s how things look compared to last year.

	2021-22	2022-23	Change	% change
Post-secondary	32,140	32,140	0	0.00%
K–12, Certificated	36,565	36,672	107	0.29%
K–12, Non-certificated	25,746	25,799	53	0.21%
AHS	83,510	84,360	850	1.02%

According to the UCP’s new budget, they don’t plan on seeing any new workers in Alberta’s universities, colleges, and trade schools.

As far as, K–12 schools go, they plan on hiring 107 certificated workers, which I assume means teachers and administrators. There are 63 public, separate, and Francophone school districts/authorities in this province. That’s not even 2 new teachers per school district, let alone per school.

And a 0.29% increase won’t even be enough to cover the 0.9% increase in population the province saw between the third quarter of 2020 and the third quarter of 2021.

Same goes for non-certificated workers, which I assume are support workers of various kinds. The province plans to hire 53 more, at an increase of 0.21%.

The largest increase among the 4 areas is Alberta Health Services. This category includes, doctors, nurses, technical staff, support staff, and administration. The UCP government plans to hire 850 more people in this area, which seems like a lot, but it’s barely a 1% increase, which itself is enough to cover population growth leading up to this budget year. That doesn’t include this next year’s population increase.

Now, let’s look at the changes since the 2018–2019, when the NDP were last in office.

	2018-19	2022-23	Change	% change
Post-secondary	33,588	32,140	-1,448	-4.31%
K–12, Certificated	37,197	36,672	-525	-1.41%
K–12, Non-certificated	26,452	25,799	-653	-2.47%
AHS	80,570	84,360	3,790	4.70%

In the last 4 years, Alberta has lost nearly 1,500 people working in its universities, colleges, and trade schools. It’s lost over 500 certificated K–12 employees and over 650 non-certificated employees.

On the plus side, we’ve seen nearly 3,800 new people working with AHS. I’d be curious to see how many were hired specifically as part of the province’s efforts to respond to COVID-19.

That being said, between the first quarter of 2018, when the NDP released their final budget, and the last quarter of 2021, the most recent data available, Alberta’s population increased by 4.58%.

So the increase in AHS employees barely covers population growth, and that’s not including any growth in population over the next fiscal year.

Remember, however, that the UCP government brought in more healthcare workers to deal with increased demand in COVID-19 testing and dealing with needed but temporary increased capacity for addressing COVID-19 hospitalizations. Which makes me wonder what the staffing increase would’ve been like if COVID-19 never happened.

Finally, here is the change in employees for various agencies and arms length organizations.

	2021–22	2022–23	Change
Agriculture Financial Services Corp.	561	561	0
Alberta Energy Regulator	970	1,048	78
Alberta Enterprise Corp.	8	11	3
AB Indigenous Opportunities Corp.	15	15	0
Alberta Innovates Corporation	587	589	2
Alberta Insurance Council	24	24	0
Alberta Investment Mgmt Corp.	572	621	49
Alberta Pensions Services Corp.	316	333	17
Alberta Securities Commission	221	232	11
Alberta Utilities Commission	132	132	0
Canadian Energy Centre	10	10	0
Health Quality Council of Alberta	33	36	3
Invest Alberta Corporation	20	50	30
Legislative Assembly	736	748	12
Natural Resources Conserv. Board	34	34	0
Safety Codes Council	60	60	0
Travel Alberta Corporation	80	80	0
Victims of Crime & Public Safety Fund	191	191	0
Total	4,570	4,775	205

Not a single one of these entities will see a loss of employees between now and the next provincial election. Overall, these groups will see a combined increase of 205 new employees. The largest increase will go to the Alberta Energy Regulator, who will employ 78 more people over the next year.

Here are the same entities but with the change in employees since 2018–2019:

	2018–19	2022–23	Change
Agriculture Financial Services Corp.	630	561	-69
Alberta Energy Regulator	1,240	1,048	-192
Alberta Enterprise Corp.	6	11	5
Alta Indigenous Opportunities Corp.	—	15	15
Alberta Innovates Corp.	712	589	-123
Alberta Insurance Council	24	24	0
Alta Investment Management Corp.	427	621	194
Alberta Local Authorities Pension Plan	8	—	-8
Alberta Pensions Services Corp.	297	333	36
Alberta Securities Commission	205	232	27
Alberta Utilities Commission	143	132	-11
Canadian Energy Centre (war room)	—	10	10
Energy Efficiency Alberta	34	—	-34
Health Quality Council of Alberta	35	36	1
Invest Alberta Corp.	—	50	50
Legislative Assembly	746	748	2
Natural Resources Conserv. Board	47	34	-13
Safety Codes Council	60	60	0
Transportation Safety Board	12	—	-12
Travel Alberta Corp.	80	80	0
Victims of Crime & Public Safety Fund	54	191	137
	4,760	4,775	15

This shows a much different story. Here we see an increase of only 15 employees, and 10 of those are from the oil and gas war room alone.

And remember how the Alberta Energy Regulator saw the largest year-over-year increase? Well, they’re at the opposite end of the spectrum this time, with a loss of nearly 200 employees over the last 4 years.

The largest increase went to Alberta Investment Management Corporation, pretty much cancelling out AER’s losses.

Here’s a summary of the three areas of public sector employees: ministries and departments, SUCH, and agencies.

First, year-over-year changes.

	2021–22	2022–23	Change	% change
Ministries	25,878	25,844	-34	-0.13%
SUCH	177,961	178,971	1,010	0.57%
Agencies	4,570	4,775	205	4.49%
	208,409	209,590	1,181	0.57%

And here are the changes for the last 4 years.

	2018–19	2022–23	Change	% change
Ministries	27,875	25,844	-2,031	-7.29%
SUCH	177,807	178,971	1,164	0.65%
Agencies	4,760	4,775	15	0.32%
	210,442	209,590	-852	-0.40%

It might seem impressive that the UCP government plans to hire nearly 1,200 public sector workers over the next year. However, it’s less impressive once you consider all the jobs they cut during the first 3 years.

And now we have a net loss of nearly 900 public sector jobs since 2018–2019.

From a party that had as its 2019 election campaign slogan, “Jobs. Economy. Pipeline.”