Where parties stand on public service issues

On August 29, PIPSC sent questions on our top priorities to the leaders of the four federal parties running candidates across the country. We have summarized their responses to help you vote for public services.

Use our chart to quickly compare each party’s response, or read the full response from each party:

Green Party of Canada (GPC)
Liberal Party of Canada (LPC)
New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP)
Despite repeated requests, we did not receive responses from the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC).

Questions	Answers
Party	CPC	GPC	LPC	NDP
Tackling Climate Change Will your government ensure that all Canadians pay their fair share of taxes so we have the funds available to tackle challenges like climate change? If yes, how does your party plan to achieve this?	No response	Climate plan, no comment on taxation	Climate plan, no comment on taxation	Yes
Phoenix replacement Will your party commit to ensuring that Phoenix’s replacement, known as the NextGen HR-to-Pay system, receives sufficient up-front funding? Will your party commit to fully consulting unions during every step of the process when building a replacement system?	No response	No response	Yes	Yes
Tax Fairness Will your party commit to investing in training, new technologies and regional oﬃce audit and investigations staﬀ to help the CRA: catch wealthy tax cheats and hold large corporations accountable for what they owe; tax E-commerce companies fairly; create a publicly accessible “beneficial ownership” registry; and end “profit shifting”?	No response	Investment in CRA, close tax loopholes, tax e-commerce.	Investment in the CRA. No other commitments.	Yes
Public Science Will your party commit to: tasking the Chief Science Advisor of Canada with developing detailed metrics to better monitor federal science capacity; investing $107 million immediately into R&D at Environment and Climate Change Canada; reviewing internal science funding in other science-based departments and agencies; and protecting scientific integrity policies in the public service?	No response	No response	Support Chief Science Advisor. No future funding commitment.	Expanded Chief Science Advisor, new Parliamentary Science Officernew Parliamentary Science Officer.
Costly and wasteful outsourcing Will your party commit to establishing a government/union taskforce to resolve the problem of outsourcing and to reduce spending on outside consultants to 2005-06 levels?	No response	Support, no commitment on taskforce or spending.	Support, no commitment on taskforce or spending.	Support, no commitment on taskforce or spending.
Protecting Retirement Security for Working Canadians Will your party commit to supporting retirement security? Will your party work to enhance retirement security and expand access to Defined Benefit pension plans? Will your party commit to not introducing legislation like Bill C-27 from the last Parliament that worked to convert Defined Benefit plans to Target Benefit plans?	No response	No response	No to Bill C-27, no other commitment.	No to Bill C-27, strengthen pensions, Pension Advisory Commission.
Quality Public Child Care Will your party commit to allocating $1 billion for child care transfers to the provinces and territories in its first federal budget? Will your party invest an additional $1 billion each year to make affordable child care a reality for all Canadians by 2030?	No response	No response	At least $535 million per year.	$1 billion in 2020 growing annually.
Pharmacare Does your party support taking the next step of providing public universal coverage of prescription drugs for all Canadians?	No response	No response	Will create a Canadian Drug Agency, unclear on pharmacare.	Yes

Published on 15 October 2019