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The Conservative government, which has cut nearly 26,000 jobs in Canada’s public service over the past three years, is poised to shed another 8,900 jobs by 2017.

Treasury Board’s latest employment numbers show 257,138 people working in the core public service at the end of March, compared to 2010-11 when the federal payroll peaked at 282,980.

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But the plans and priorities reports done by federal departments indicate they are braced to eliminate another 8,900 jobs over the next three years, said Mostafa Askari, the assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer.

“Those 8,900 reductions are presumably beyond what has already been done,” he said.

That would bring total cuts to about 35,000.

That’s a far cry from the 19,200 jobs the Conservative government pledged to cut in its major austerity budget of 2012, which launched a downsizing that trimmed $5.2 billion in spending over three years. Most of those cuts were managed by attrition and done in the first year.