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On a five-point scale from very low to very high, employees at the Public Prosecution Service of Canada reported the highest average level of work-related stress of any department or agency surveyed (excluding respondents working in micro-organizations with fewer than 150 employees). Headquartered in Ottawa with offices across the country, PPSC has about 1,000 employees and is primarily occupied with prosecuting federal offences. According to its website, drug prosecutions make up the largest proportion of its caseload.

Compared with 17 per cent of all survey respondents across the public service, 29 per cent of respondents at PPSC indicated a high or very high level of work-related stress — a proportion that’s barely budged since 2017, the first year of available data.

Among the most significant stressors for PPSC employees last year were “not enough employees to do the work”, a “heavy workload,” “balancing work and personal life,” and “overtime or long work hours.”

PPSC employees also indicated feeling the most consistently emotionally drained after their workday, compared with averages across all departments and agencies surveyed. Approximately 42 per cent of respondents at PPSC said they always, almost always or often felt emotionally drained after a day of work in 2019 — up from 34 per cent in 2017.

In a statement, PPSC acknowledged that the PSES results show “our organization is facing issues concerning work-related stress and employee well-being.” In response to this, the department said, it launched new “Healthy Workplace Services” available to all its employees. The PPSC statement describes the series of services, available on a confidential basis, as “a simple way for employees to access information on both informal and formal processes, and advice on harassment, discrimination, workplace conflict, career development, handling of finances and a variety of other employee services that can contribute to work-related stress and emotional drain.”