Canada’s public service has barely had a breather since the pandemic. The Trudeau government had more than 750 priorities, and the crises kept coming – wildfires, inflation, housing, immigration.
Now, a Trump-era trade war, the election and an unpredictable transition of a new government – and a new Canada.
Also on a steady rise: mental-health claims by public servants. Is it any wonder?
Source: iStock
Today:
“A huge drain”: The toll of political anxiety. A record pace: Mental illness is driving disability claims. The savagely blunt crusader: Bill Wilkerson put wellness on the agenda. Sick-day stockpiling: How the system favours older public servants. It starts with churn: Wilkerson had a list of 10 problems to fix. Be gracious. Be kind: Advice from a researcher of stress and politics.
IT’S EVERYWHERE The growing politics of anxiety
Political anxietyis real. It’s not an official diagnosis, but it’s showing up in workloads, burnout, and a rising sense of dread. Experts now talk openly about the toll politics is taking on us all – and how it’sdifferent from everyday anxiety.
Last week, Nova Scotia’s s premiercalled Donald Trump’s tariff threats a “huge drain on the mental health of Canadians.” (In Minnesota, Republican senatorsintroduced a billto classify “Trump Derangement Syndrome” as a mental illness – citing paranoia, hostility, and even violence toward Trump supporters.)
And public servants – expected to deliver on Canada’s economic reset – are in the thick of it.
The galloping pace of mental-health claims. In 2023, mental illness accounted for 60 per cent of all approved disability claims. That’s a record, led by depression, stress, and anxiety. Even after adjusting for a larger workforce, public servants file mental-health claims at almost twice the rate of the private sector, says mental-health and benefits expert Joseph Ricciuti, co-founder of Mental Health International. The 2024 stats are expected in June.
Executives and non-unionized public servants are in a separate disability plan. Mental health accounts for 51 per cent of all claims in that plan.
No one knows exactly why claims are up. Maybe it’s because mental-health struggles are more openly accepted and people feel safer asking for help. Maybe it’s burnout or RTO backlash. Whatever, the trend isn't slowing.
Behind those numbers is a man who spent years trying to fix a system he believed was making people sick. Bill Wilkerson was a global mental-health advocate – and a savagely blunt critic of the stress that “infected the public service like a super-bug.”
Wilkerson died in January at age 82. At a celebration of his life last week, he was hailed for putting mental health on the agendas of governments and corporate boardrooms around the world when no one was talking about it.
The stigma was real. Back then, mental health was taboo. Public servants admitting to depression or seeing a psychiatrist could be flagged as a security risk. Maybe even a blackmail target. Also, mental illness accounted for 24 per cent of approved disability claims.
Photo by Julie Oliver, courtesy of Mental Health International
The newsmaker, the doer. Wilkerson talked in headlines – and made them. He called government “the worst of the worst workplaces,” “the most toxic place to work,” and dubbed Ottawa “the depression capital of Canada.”
People who worked with him called him a pioneer. Articulate, provocative, and bloody-minded. He got people to the table to turn ideas in actions and get things done.
I covered Wilkerson’s crusade. He couldn’t be ignored. He made headlines every time he spoke. The one above is from a story I wrote as an Ottawa Citizen reporter more than a decade ago.
He struck a chord with public servants, especially managers and executives. He made mental health a productivity issue and pushed to make wellness central to public-service reform. He wanted to rid the bureaucracy of the management practices, policies and rules churning up stress and anxiety in the workplace.
“He was out in front like no one ever was,” said one longtime disability expert. “He showed what a disaster the public service was, and the minimal effort the government was putting in to address it.”
Wilkerson led a twisty-turnycareerthat unfolded by chance. He called his autobiographyFluke. It just came out.
He was a journalist who went on to become a political aide, a crisis-comms expert, an executive and an advocate. He was interim president at Liberty Health, an insurer, where he read a report predicting depression would be the epidemic of the next 30 years.
The economics of depression. In 1997, Wilkerson and Michael Wilson, a former finance minister under the Mulroney government, founded the Global Business and Economic Roundtable on Addiction and Mental Health.
Wilson’s son died by suicide in 1995. Wilkerson had his own struggles with depression.
(Wilson and Wilkerson were central players in creating the Mental Health Commission of Canada along with former senator Michael Kirby, who wrote the landmark 2008 studyOut of the Shadows at Last, on gaps in mental-health care. Kirby and Wilson later chaired the commission.)
Wilkerson later co-founded Mental Health International, leading a similar campaign across Europe. This time he linked business with science, a partnership he hoped would lead to a cure for depression.
He quickly won over business. He pitched mental health as an economic problem, not just a personal problem. It was the fastest-growing cause of disability.
Absenteeism, stress leave, lost time, and presenteeism were costing employers billions as productivity dropped.
And the public service was worse off than the private sector.
Wilkerson made a compelling argument: As the country’s largest workforce, the government shouldset the standardfor all employers. After all, how could government tackle the country’s$50-billion-a-year mental-health crisisif it couldn’t manage the chronic stress of its own workers?
Who’s the boss here? He also saw a public service paralyzed by ambiguity, with no one clearly in charge. People were going home feeling like they’d done nothing.
He laid part of the blame on the centralization of power in the Prime Minister’s Office, which sidelined ministers and MPs. Partisan politics, “vicious and emotionally violent,” was also taking a toll as it seeped into the bureaucracy, Wilkerson said.
He prodded the government into action on many fronts. He made big inroads under the Harper government, which set up the MHCC, passed a suicide-prevention bill and created a labour-management task force on mental health. It also created Brain Canada, a private-public partnership for brain research, to help find new treatments for mental illness.
Wilkerson helped lay the foundation for anational standard for a psychologically healthy workplace. The Mental Health Commission adopted it, and it became the backbone of the public service’s mental-health strategy after pressure from Wilkerson.
There’s now the Centre of Expertise on Mental Health in the Workplace. Health and benefits are expanded to cover more access to psychologists and psychiatrists.
A significant move came when Janice Charette, then clerk of the Privy Council, became the first top bureaucrat anywhere to make mental health a management priority in the performance contracts of deputy ministers.
But Wilkerson’s biggest reform push – replacing sick leave with a short-term disability plan – is unfinished.
“Bill’s legacy is found in all the progress made. But there’s a huge piece of unfinished business. The next government – whether it’s Poilievre’s or Carney’s – will have to deal with the broken and outdated sick-leave system still in place,” said Wernick.
The advantage of older workers. Wilkerson argued that today’s system, designed decades ago, doesn’t fit meet the realities of today’s workforce or modern “episodic” illnesses, where problems come and go. It delays help when workers need it most and creates big inequities between young and older workers.
Public servants get 15 sick days a year and can bank unused days. Younger workers who get seriously ill often don’t have enough time banked to bridge to long-term disability. Older workers can stockpile leave – and some see it as an entitlement to use up before retirement, not as insurance for when they’re truly sick.
A headline from 2012, as the debate over sick leave and mental-health claims heated up.
The Harper government came in determined to replace sick leave with a short-term disability plan. It escalated into a nasty fight. The government threatened legislation, painted public servants as chronic no-shows, citing absenteeism rates higher than the private sector.
Unions, led by PSAC, dug in hard. Giving up banked sick leave was a red line. Some unions eventually accepted a rough blueprint for change, but talks fell part before the details were nailed down.
Wilkerson’s push to make workplace health a core part of public service reform is still very much alive. Calls for change have only grown louder, as many question whether the public service is in any shapeto face a Trump world and whatever crises are around the corner.
At the same time, public servants are bracing for anything and everything: job cuts, spending, restraints, ripping up polices and racing to draft ones, a rollback of hybrid work, DEI promises, cuts to salaries and benefits. And AI is coming. It’s all up in the air, fueling anxiety.
Which brings me back to something Wilkerson once said.
“The public service is a tsunami of distractions – meetings, everything questioned, delegated, people moving ... and no one is really in charge. It’s the most transient, fluid, unsettling work environment on the planet. So why wouldn’t people be anxious and in distress? They are human beings.”
He had a top-10 list of problems to fix. How many of them still resonate today?
People bouncing from job to job, with no big-picture understanding of why – and an obsession with delegating until no one knows who’s responsible for what.
Responsibility without discretion.
Too much work, not enough resources.
A workplace ruled by email and texts, not conversation.
Everything is a priority.
Unclear roles, fuzzy accountability.
Mismatched skills and jobs.
No safe space to question workloads or priorities.
Lack of execution capacity.
Management that’s erratic, top-heavy, and constantly delegating – eroding trust and diffusing accountability.
STUDY LAUNCH A plea in uncertain times
The last word goes to Western University’s Amanda Friesen, who is launching a major study on politics and stress.She says these are unprecedented times and public servants face levels of uncertainty and anxiety they’ve never seen in their careers…
My charge to readers and the public – provide support and grace to the workforce that keeps this country going,” she says. “Be patient ... Let’s be in this together.”
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A bit about me. I cover and analyze the federal public service for Policy Options as the Accenture Fellow on the Future of the Public Service. I've been reporting on the public service for 25 years. My work has appeared in the Ottawa Citizen and iPolitics, and has earned a National Newspaper Award. My full bio. X: @kathryn_may.
