Canada’s remote workforce has been breathing new life into small cities, but that may come crashing down soon. The Government of Canada (GoC) has ordered its remote workforce back to the office starting next week. The reasons cited haven’t been particularly strong, but the impact on big cities has been. Downtowns have been hollowed out as workers moved to smaller regions and took their spending with them. Now big cities and their leaders have been trying to get workers to go back into the office, for just enough days to prevent them from moving too far out of their pricey regions.
Canada’s Public Servants Ordered Back-To-Office Next Week
Back in December 2022, the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) announced that public workers will have to be on-site for 2 or 3 days per week, or between 40-60% of their regular schedule. This came shortly after business leaders publicly called for an end to work-at-home policies in the Federal Government.
In May 2024, the TBS rolled out the “prescribed presence” directive for those working in public administration. This requires the public service to work on-site a minimum of 3 days for workers, and 4 days for executives. It goes into effect on September 9th, less than a week from today.
Government of Canada Cites Weak Logic, To Appear In Court
The GoC argues their back-to-office mandate is necessary. Officially, the reasons cited are strengthening confidence in public service, “fairness,” and attracting the best talent. In other words, all buzz-term objectives with no actual reason cited.
Most research shows workers generally perform better in a work-from-home environment. Studies show productivity increased by 22%, and office-free environments tend to attract higher-quality talent. Only a handful of studies show the opposite and largely attribute the decline to management.
Public workers aren’t keen on the idea. The Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), representing 240,000 public servants, called the decision “arbitrary” and a one-size-fits-none policy. A survey of their membership showed 91% of respondents were against the mandate, and 75% were willing to fight the mandate.
The survey found that the biggest reason workers opposed the policy was the cost, with 91% of respondents agreeing. Other popular reasons include commute time (90%), work-life balance (89%), the environment (84%), and mental health (83%).
The GOC has been fighting an application for a full hearing in Federal Court. They lost that fight last Friday and it was granted last-minute, according to PSAC. A hearing doesn’t reverse the decision, just allows it to be heard publicly and fairly—an issue the GoC is more concerned about than PSAC, it appears.
Canadian Back-To-Office Mandates Are About Real Estate Demand
Like most issues in Canada, this is about real estate. Cities carry substantial premiums due to the proximity to amenities, such as industry. A high-traffic region of offices is also a big boom to the downtown core of major cities, breathing life and supporting further commercial real estate premiums.
Now the exact opposite is happening with work-from-home. The steep premiums don’t make sense to many workers, who are now fleeing to smaller regions. It’s created a lot of economic activity in smaller cities, reviving many sleepy towns. That’s left small cities with huge demand boosts and big ones with a complete lack of demand, and starting to look overpriced.
The great decentralization of office space has led to a major flight from downtown cores. Greater Toronto office space went from highly coveted pre-pandemic to a record fifth of space sitting vacant. Not quite as bad as downtown Calgary offices, where a quarter of the space is vacant. Ottawa office vacancies are double pre-pandemic volumes, while Vancouver is sitting at triple its rate. Even with Nova Scotia’s population boom, over 1 in 7 sqft of office space sits empty in Halifax.
Canada’s Largest Cities Want Workers (& Their Wallets) Tethered
Consequently, powerful people have been pushing for a return to the office. Most notably, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and 32 business leaders penned an open letter requesting the GoC bring office workers back to office. The group, including the heads of the retail and restaurant associations, cited concern over the hollowing out of downtown regions—especially Ottawa.
Politicians are also urging a return to office from federal workers—some more directly than others. For example, Ontario Premier Doug Ford demanded a return-to-office.
“It sounds crazy. I’m begging people to go to work for three days — not that they aren’t working at home, but it really affects the downtown,” stated Premier Ford, at a press conference standing beside the Mayor of Ottawa.
Speaking of the Mayor of Ottawa, he is amongst a growing group of big city mayors indirectly calling for a return-to-office. The Mayor of Ottawa denies lobbying the GoC, but publicly voiced concern over the “hollowing out” of downtown Ottawa. There’s that term again.
The Mayor of Toronto is also publicly pushing for a return-to-office, citing the lack of activity downtown. While she voiced her concerns publicly, she opted to privately court office workers instead.
Provincial governments are also on the same boat. Both Ontario and Nova Scotia have respectively ordered public workers back to the office soon.
It’s worth noting that most of the government return-to-work orders don’t require a full back-to-office campaign. Instead they’ve largely focused on 2-3 days of in-office appearances, not even necessarily on the same day as their peers—not a great argument for improving peer-to-peer interaction. However, it’s just enough to prevent people from moving out of the city for more affordable housing, an issue typically seen at the peak of real estate bubbles.
What’s confounding is the amount of traffic still on the 401 E/W at all hours. If people are working from home 2/5 days. Where’s all this congestion coming from? Is this the 407 sale haunting the GTA for the next 90 years?
Toronto has fewer cars going through it too. Traffic is like 70% of what it was pre-pandemic still. It’s the bike lanes.
You know the old biketard adage of more roads mean more cars? When they eliminated traffic lanes to implement the bike lanes, it reduced through put. From my window I can see the Gardiner back up for miles because people can’t exit the ramp in a timely fashion so a handful of people can have a weekend activity.
Toronto is run by a bunch of hyper weird single degenerates who make it their life goal to inflict pain on the people they don’t like, and pretend it’s about making a better city.
They can mandate back to the office but it’s not going to make a lick of difference to people who want a normal life. It’s just not possible to run a city with coffin condos if there’s other options in the same country. New York is finding that out the hard way.
Alberta gov workers were ordered back last year due to Calgary’s office market. Not enough, land prices are just so inflated it makes no sense.
What gets me is the whole issue of completely ignoring productivity distribution. Gov employee productivity is down largely because the growth is all city and provincial workers. So you get people who aren’t worried not about the amount of work fed employees do, but where they do it.
It’s rather interesting to think, we are wanted back to office so we’ll spend more money in the city. However, we don’t have enough money to spend now. How is increasing our cost to go to work going to help us to spend more money unless we are offered a wage increase to match.
Not a Federal worker but I do live in Ottawa and saw the mayor discuss this, and he doesn’t have a clue.
He literally stated that downtown is hollowing out because it’s too expensive, then went on to advocate for concentrating people downtown. How does that help lower the rents? It’s a joke that we elect these clowns.
They haven’t considered that part of the plan yet.
There’s never a consideration of anything beyond immediate effects.
In Ottawa they have decreased the LRT train service and it is jammed! People couldn’t get on the trains today and many were late for work or school.
And in a week, public servants return for an extra day a week…
Chao, simply chaos
I know couple ladies whom work for provincial governments. They have 8 weeks paid holidays/ annually. Work from home, absolutely unproductive ladies, do everything to avoid going downtown. Know she and her union want a 30% wage increase, because they only had 2-3% wage increases before ( keeping up with inflation). This mentality of the government worker. No concerns for budgets, accountability, working for a pension ( screw the country). These entitlements need to end. Canada 🇨🇦 will never get ahead with 34% workforce in government unions.
That seems more like a performance management issue that a blanket statement that should affect all workers.
The push to return to office work under the guise of “collaboration” has been incredibly frustrating. For many of us, working from home has been a game changer not just for productivity but for mental health and work-life balance as well. The flexibility and reduced distractions have significantly improved my well-being and have been a godsend, especially for people with disabilities or those who live outside the core areas. This shift towards remote work is inclusive and should be seen as an opportunity to attract diverse talent, not a setback.
I understand that some people might feel that if they don’t have the option to work remotely, they don’t want others to have it either. However, it’s important to recognize that remote work boosts efficiency and overall quality of life. If you want this option for yourself, there’s nothing stopping you from applying for remote positions or advocating for change within your own workplace—if that’s feasible.
Also, downtown businesses need to adapt and rethink their models to thrive in this new landscape. Why should I be restricted in where I spend my money? Supporting local businesses near my home is a choice that benefits my community. How is this a bad thing?? It’s disappointing to see us potentially taking a step backward when progress is so attainable. Let’s focus on what truly enhances productivity, career growth, and well-being, rather than clinging to outdated norms.
Thanks, Stephen, for connecting all the dots…
I could care less about hollowed out downtowns, I care about my small town being hollowed out…. Because that’s where I live.
Bingo. Small cities don’t have the political clout that big ones do, so they’re more than happy to take their tax money and give little in return. It’s kind of sad tbh.
They should all be laid off and reapply for their jobs if they don’t wanna come back to work for 5 days then they don’t get hired it should be canadians first and most of all and other nationality to feel in the jobs if we can’t find a canadians first. And look at the collective agreements and make sure all civil servants are accountable to all canadians mI live with 2 roommates one is a civil servant who goes and works at the cottage 3 days a week I wish I could go to the cottage and work for 3 days and invite my friends to come and party wow and he is a immigrant how messed up is this country I remember whether everyone had to go to work boy how sad is Canada now our country will never be the same.
This article is so biased. I know five government employees in good paying positions. All of them are mouse wigglers. They just bring their laptops to restaurants and wiggle the mouse every so often. My other friend renovated his whole house on the clock, stopping to wiggle the mouse every so often. Sorry but they need to be supervised. If my taxes pay their income they should be working for their cushy paycheques.
Yes, the article is biased because no one ever goes to the office and does no work. I’m being sarcastic btw.
If an employee is able to game the system by just clocking hours, they’re not needed. Their manager should have benchmarks to meet, and if they don’t the manager needs to be fired too.
This isn’t Soviet Russia. The gov shouldn’t be trying to fill seats just for the sake of filling seats.
The few federal workers who seem to have enough time on their schedule to talk and gossip most of the time tend to get promoted in the federal government. Why is it that?
Interesting how the solution to every problem is to treat people like cattle.
Additional deaths and injuries from overcrowding already jammed highways and streets with more commuters? Who cares, commercial real estate needs a boost.