Like most federal departments, Library and Archives Canada is adjusting to reductions announced in the 2025 federal budget and the ongoing Comprehensive Expenditure Review.
Most departments are managing a 15% budget reduction target, with workforce reductions of about 10%. The expectation (hope) is that many cuts will be made through attrition, voluntary departures, early retirement incentives, and expiring programs rather than through explicit elimination.
The full scope of these reductions at Library and Archives Canada remains unclear. Some items are being quietly revealed.
The Documentary Heritage Communities Program is being eliminated, with an annual expenditure of $1.5 million, plus administrative costs.
A table in “Workforce reductions in the federal public service,” updated on 11 February, includes a line showing the impact on employees and executives.
Total population as of March 2025: 1,138
Number of Employee positions to be reduced: 152
Number of Executive positions to be reduced: 9
Number of Employee positions to be reduced through WFA/CT: 53
Number of Executive positions to be reduced through WFA/CT: 3
Letters of affected or at-risk status sent to Employees: 90
Letters of affected or at-risk status sent to Executives: 4
WFA = Workforce Adjustment CT = Career Transition, a process to support executive sgnificant career change, whether they seek continued employment within it or choose to leave the Public Service.
To put the reductions in context, using data from Population of the federal public service by department or agency, the bar chart shows the LAC population since 2015, and the 2026 population with position reductions added as the red bar. It shows that LAC’s 14% population reduction means it is returning to very near the median since 2015.
It remains to be seen where the axe will fall within LAC. We have to read the tea leaves to judge the impact on the now delayed opening of Adisoke. Will LAC cut what appears to be an unnecessarily cautious ATIP procedure regarding WW2 service files? Will robust digitization reduce demand for producing archival documents? Will we have to wait until the Estimates document is tabled to find out?
These cuts especially to the DHCP are going to cripple so many community and under-resourced archives across Canada. Why doesn’t the federal government care about access to authentic and truthful records of our history? And digitization takes time and staff and funding – it is not an answer.