Federal Public servants can now apply for early retirement incentives

Now that the federal budget bill has received royal assent, the Treasury Board has started implementing early retirement incentives it is offering to public servants.

The Treasury Board is set to open a portal on its website where public servants who qualify for the incentive can apply by July 24. The incentives were announced in Budget 2025 as part of the federal government’s attempts to trim the size of the public service.

The government is planning to cut the public service by around 30,000 jobs over several years and has said it wants to do so mostly through voluntary departures.

If an eligible public servant is granted the incentive, they will be able to retire early without any penalties on their pensions.

Last December, about 68,000 public servants received letters notifying them that they were eligible for the incentives. There are two eligible groups of employees.

The first group includes those who joined the public service on or before Dec. 31, 2012, are at least 50 years old and have at least two years of pensionable service and 10 years of employment within the public service.

The second group includes those who joined the public service on or after Jan. 1, 2013, are at least 55 years old and have at least two years of pensionable service and 10 years of employment within the public service.

At a parliamentary committee on March 26, the day the budget bill received royal assent, Treasury Board Secretary Bill Matthews told parliamentarians that the program did not mean “anyone who wants to go gets to go.”

Ottawa Citizen

~WakenyaCanada