The Canadian Food Inspection Agency told staff on January 27, 2026, that 1,371 jobs would be affected by federal cost-cutting, with 587 positions to be eliminated outright, the Agriculture Union said. Days earlier, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada confirmed it would cut 665 positions and close seven of its 20 research operations across the country.
Inspectors told at a town hall
CFIA employees learned the numbers at an all-staff town hall on Tuesday, where the agency laid out its share of a government-wide expenditure review. The Agriculture Union, which represents roughly 4,000 of the agency’s nearly 6,400 employees, said 1,371 jobs are affected by what are called employment transition measures and 587 will be cut altogether. Affected employees receive workforce adjustment notices warning their jobs may change or disappear, though it is not yet clear how many who got notices will ultimately be laid off.
The union said the cuts cannot be absorbed. “When you make cuts to food safety, the outcomes are clear. More people will get sick from preventable foodborne illnesses, more poultry and livestock will die from avian flu and other diseases, and our food production industry will suffer,” said Milton Dyck, the union’s national president. “Fewer CFIA inspectors means fewer frontline workers to catch food that should be recalled.”
The union noted that while the federal public service grew by about 30 per cent in recent years, CFIA staffing has declined three per cent over the last decade — even as food recalls have risen 150 per cent over the same period.
Where the cuts land
Figures the union shared from the agency’s plan show the reductions concentrated in inspection work: 117 jobs tied to meat inspection operational efficiencies, 98 tied to poultry slaughter inspection modernization, and a further 40 from reduced daily shift inspection in non-export meat plants. In a letter to staff, CFIA president Paul MacKinnon said the agency would protect front-line inspection capacity and emergency readiness while streamlining its structure — a pledge the union’s numbers immediately put in question, since so many of the affected positions sit in inspection programs themselves.
Research stations next
The CFIA news landed days after Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada confirmed its own reductions: 665 positions eliminated, about 1,050 employees given notice, and seven of its 20 research operations to close within 12 months. The research centres in Guelph, Ont., Quebec City and Lacombe, Alta., are slated to shut, along with satellite research farms in Scott and Indian Head, Sask., Portage la Prairie, Man., and Nappan, N.S.
Some of the sites carry long histories. The Saskatchewan and Nova Scotia operations date to 1887 and have produced major advances in crop production, sustainability and food safety. The Guelph centre specializes in food safety innovation and processing technology, including a pilot-scale facility for testing new food processing methods. “These cuts will sabotage important gains we’ve made in agricultural research and set research on Canadian food products back by decades,” Dyck said.
Part of a much larger reduction
The agriculture agencies are one piece of a government plan to cut 40,000 public service jobs. Unions say more than 10,000 federal public servants received notices in January alone warning their jobs could be affected. The Public Service Alliance of Canada has called the process reckless and is demanding the government publish a staffing plan showing where the cuts fall.
PSAC national president Sharon DeSousa said the drip of notices gives workers no full picture. “What I see is these notifications that just tell me 15 people here or a hundred people here or 350 here — it doesn’t give us the full story as to where the cuts are and what will happen to these departments and agencies because the work doesn’t go away,” she said.
Industry voices, including Canadian Federation of Agriculture president Keith Currie, have joined the unions in urging Ottawa to pause the cuts and the research closures.
