Economists say the Liberal government's projected cuts could rival those of former prime minister Stephen Harper.

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The federal government is projecting that the public service will lose 40,000 jobs from its peak in in 2023-24. Article content

The reduction, revealed in the federal budget released Tuesday, would be around 10 per cent of the public service’s headcount. Economists equated the size of these cuts to those of the government of former prime minister Stephen Harper between 2011 and 2014. Article content Article content

“So these are cuts, I think, Harper could support,” said David Macdonald, an economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, a left-leaning think tank.

Macdonald projected this could mean a reduction of 15,300 public service jobs

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