The federal government was allegedly warned by a Canadian intelligence official that the Beijing-linked video-sharing app TikTok was misleading governments and the general public about its data-harvesting methods nearly half a year before Ottawa banned the app from all federal devices, according to an internal briefing note. A document prepared for the government in September…

More than half a billion dollars in overpayments to federal employees due to previous errors in Ottawa’s Phoenix Pay System are yet to be recovered, according to recently released federal records. Cabinet disclosed a number of figures in an Inquiry of Ministry related to the failed payment system, which Ottawa launched in 2016 in an effort to consolidate a…

The federal minister responsible for the much-criticized access-to-information system says her focus is on improving service amid growing calls to go further and rewrite the transparency law. Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said in an interview Friday her priority is better administration of the Access to Information Act, not a legislative overhaul. A House of…

A day after 120,000 Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) workers reached a tentative deal with the federal government, around 35,000 Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) workers remain on strike. While most federal employees returned to work on May 1 following 10 days of strike action, the Union of Taxation Employees (UTE)—an arm of PSAC that represents CRA…

Treasury Board President Mona Fortier said May 1 that the tentative deal Ottawa has reached with the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) for 120,000 of PSAC’s members will cost taxpayers $1.3 billion per year. “This wasn’t easy. We negotiated, we compromised, and we found creative solutions,” Fortier said at a press conference on Parliament…

Employees with the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) blocked access to Toronto Pearson International Airport on April 27 as the escalating strike over wages and remote work entered its ninth day. Some 500 PSAC members held a demonstration at Pearson, which prompted the airport to advise passengers to give themselves more time amid the possibility of…

As the second week of the Public Service Alliance of Canada’s (PSAC) strike begins, several employees gathered in downtown Ottawa said they are hopeful the union and the federal government can soon sign a deal so they can return to work. “I really just want to get back to work, to be honest with you,”…

As negotiations continue with the union representing over 150,000 striking public servants, the government says it is looking to reduce the number of third-party consultants it contracts for various tasks, while noting that completely cutting them would harm service deliverability. Mona Fortier, president of the Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat, outlined in an open letter on…

On the seventh day of the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC)’s strike, workers escalated the protest by blocking access to office buildings in downtown Ottawa and disrupting traffic. Hundreds of protestors gathered outside the Prime Minister’s Office building and the Treasury Board headquarters, where they limited entry to one person every five minutes. Another…

As the federal public service workers’ strike reaches its sixth day, the union representing the workers said on April 24 that it will move its picket lines to “strategic locations” in order to cause greater disruption to the federal government. “This government seems content to prolong this strike and its impact on Canadians by dragging…