A federal financial agency, responsible for ensuring disclosure from the financial institutions it regulates, has not disclosed one of its own transparency documents six months after all other government organizations released them.
The Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions (OSFI) is tasked with regulating and supervising more than 350 financial institutions and 1,200 private pension plans for employees working in federally regulated industries.
Months behind every other department and agency, OSFI has yet to release its departmental plan — a key transparency document and major milestone in the federal government’s annual budget reporting and approval cycle — for the current fiscal year.
Departmental plans are spending documents that describe the priorities, programs and resource needs of each federal government organization over a three-year period.
At a House of Commons committee meeting in March, Treasury Board Secretary Bill Matthews said the plans were one of a “suite” of four transparency measures relating to the Carney government’s public service spending review, a key component of ongoing efforts to trim the public service by thousands of jobs over the next several years.
“They are absolutely a key document to understanding the requests made by each department,” Matthews said at the time. “They will be tabled in the coming days.”
The government typically tables the plans in Parliament before March 31. This year, Treasury Board President Shafqat Ali did so for 91 departments and agencies on March 13.
OSFI’s plan was absent.
In response to a request from the Ottawa Citizen, OSFI spokesperson Scott McLarens said the plan was “not yet available” but was “expected to be released in the coming weeks.”
Pressed for a more specific release date, McLarens said, “we are waiting for the tabling in Parliament to be scheduled and cannot offer more information.”
After the Citizen followed up in May, spokesperson Cory Harding said the agency had “nothing to add,” but would post the plan on its website once it was tabled — a statement he reiterated in another response this week.
Parliament rose for its summer break on June 18 and will return for its fall sitting this upcoming Monday, Sept. 21.
When reached for comment in May, Department of Finance spokesperson Benoit Mayrand, said the release of OSFI’s departmental plan would be “forthcoming.”
On Sept. 16, Marie-France Faucher, another spokesperson for the Department of Finance, said in an email that departmental plans may be tabled at different times and “OSFI remains compliant with its reporting obligations.”
“With the House set to resume next week, tabling will once again be possible,” she said. “OSFI’s 2026–27 Departmental Plan will therefore be tabled in due course.”
While the banking regulator hasn’t yet released its departmental plan, it has signalled how it intends to manage its workforce.
Despite being spared from the government’s public service spending review, OSFI has nonetheless committed to cutting jobs in an effort to adhere “to the spirit of cost constraint.”
OSFI isn’t dependent on Parliament for funding (as most of its budget comes from fees collected from financial institutions), but the agency committed to slashing 82 positions by March 31, 2027. Annual Treasury Board data updated in June shows OSFI’s headcount dropped by 65 employees from 1,256 in 2025 to 1,191 in 2026.
