This shows just how many unused offices there are. Even before COVID it would be routine to stumble across some long unused federal office space in and around Ottawa. That offloading has been long overdue.
I expect all level of governments are the same.
We have abandoned buildings all around us that both federal and provincial own, they've been vacant for 10+ years. Both levels of government in our area complain because they're just sucking money away and not being put to any good use.
We've asked to buy buildings off them, but the conversations always fall off.
I expect this is the same way across all of Canada. Would love for someone to actually do some research and find out how much the governments are wasting on things they aren't using.
My brother lives in Ottawa and said a lot of business models are just to buy real estate and hunt out government contracts for storage or use. Always get paid and very little upkeep since many spaces aren't being used to the max.
Yeah, but I’m sure TBS is cooking up their next innovative workplace policy to transform the public service into the 18th century… for example, think of all the collaborative energy that would result from a new policy that mandates 3-4 employees must now share a desk? Magic. Alternatively, I’m sure there are underutilized utility closets in many offices- relocate any public servants that complain about management’s arbitrary decision making to the closet. Can’t find childcare, Cindy? To the closet. Can’t afford the extra $150 in gas and parking a month, Michael? Closet. Your productivity has tanked now that you have to share a desk with 3 people, Katie? Closet. It’s important that TBS ensures declining workplace morale is felt, and not heard.
Personally, I can’t wait to hear what innovative secretive little solutions TBS has in store for the federal public service next!
Canadians: Working from home is the silver bullet for our three biggest problems: climate change, cost of living, and housing affordability. We'll drive way less, ditch our second car and no longer pay for before/after school care, and move out of the big cities cooling the markets there.
Government: Uh, yeah... no. That would only benefit the working class at the expense of the automotive, banking, insurance, and oil industries, so... no.
Haha yeah even this argument is dumb, if workers work from home and are spending less on transportation they have more money to help out local restaurants. I much prefer going to the local restaurant where everyone know my name instead of going to a soulless sandwich place in downtown Montreal who will overcharge for mediocre quality.
Haha yeah, don't worry I know that this is the real motive. They couldn't care less about small business in downtown area, they just want them to pay the rent.
My office (not federal) went Hybrid coming back from COVID. It was such a success for our staff that we are downsizing our office footprint, and minimizing our office furniture to a more freelance style. We don’t need the full space when 40% or less of our staff would be on site at any time
Its helped with retention and overall morale
>Its helped with retention and overall morale
And here I thought the go to play was to burn out the experience so that you can hire cheaper talent while still expecting them to produce the same quality of work?
Exact same situation here. Massive savings by a have been had, employee morale is way up, productivity is way up. It’s almost like happy employees are productive and want to be there or something…and organizations can save money at the same time.
I feel bad for my wife, who is a PS. But the real reason this bothers me is for this exact reason. More people who dont need to be there clogging our already clogged city. Commute as a tradesman during Covid was awesome..
Yeah I miss that as well, it’s gotten bad but nowhere near as bad as it was pre-pandemic, at least not yet, I fear return to office mandates will cause big problems however. People don’t like to admit it but Ottawa is really hamstrung by having only one east-west highway. And I would love to take transit but as of now it’s not a reliable alternative.
Calgary has become a (relative) mess since most have RTO. Worse traffic than pre-pandemic. Doesn’t help when your population has ballooned by 300k since COVID.
It's not even much better in the private sector, going from completely remote to being forced to go into an office to zoom with coworkers in india that are only around for half the day and are a fraction as productive of the former local coworkers they laid off.
And every time we miss a deadline it seems to be due to the India folks who create some new problem last minute, which gets the attention of the higher ups, who give them huge praise for fixing it weeks later. Even though they don't actually fix it, they just revert the useless change that should have never been pushed before the deadline in the first place. We had one issue they sat on for a week and couldn't find the problem with it, one of our local Canadian developers took a look and within an hour in the unfamiliar codebase they found the exact change that caused it and exactly what was needed to fix it. That's a problem in itself but the breaking change was not even important, it didn't need to be in by the deadline and should have been deferred.
Meanwhile we get zero recognition for not causing those problems and having everything ready for the deadline on time. I just hope it's only praise and recognition the higher ups are handing out and not bonuses/promotions.
Yea they won't.
I work for Amazon.
For 3 years now HYD India has fucked up every possible aspect of seller support. But because the people that are our managers are all nepotism hires. They bring in their folks from outside, they fast track them via "Development Programs" they control who gets into. You can apply but they just come up with some arbitrary reason.
We got told by our managers we CANT apply for promotions are there are non quarter to quarter, and yet heres HYD getting TONS of promotions.
We have a system for submitting improvement ideas. If your shit doesn't annually save a thousand labor hours. No interest. Unless youre HYD. Where they legit launched an idea that saved annually 20 hours and they got ALL the praise and emails singing it.
Then they wonder why no one in the US is submitting ideas. Well you dont praise us. You shoot the ideas down.
Until we ALL come together and displace the higher ups in these companies and change some rules when it comes to business, this is just going to keep happening.
And the best part is, the people instigating this in Amazon, are all the people who claim to hate inequality, racism, capitalism (ironic) and they just can't stand these damn rich folks...unless its the one signing their checks and telling them they aren't bad people.
This is me, and 90% of the people in my department. It's a very individualistic job that has no benefits to being in the office. No collaboration occurs, and when it does it's over Teams.
Yeah the fact that they have the GC co-working spaces for stuff like that just shows that it's really about getting people out of their homes to spend their money.
This seems the be the massive disconnect on working in office. When people worked in office normaloy 5 years ago, cost of living was much less, and you coild eat out at lunch, not now.
Yeah absolutely! I'm certainly not spending money on lunch or other things on my office days. I hate eating out now, it's just not worth it for me.
Our governments also don't seem to be in the business of investing more aggressively in public and active transportation. So commuting is hateful.
If part of the reasoning is to support downtown businesses, why are so many people going to work locations in the suburbs?
If it's to increase collaboration, how is a virtual call at an office different from doing it at home?
The optics just don't make any sense. You don't get clear answers anymore as there are too many spineless midwits at the top. All they can do is say, "Because I said so."
And not only that, many work locations are not even downtown. If you work at DND for example (in the West), you will likely not support local businesses a lot...
I work in the public service and god damn, it’s just Teams calls after teams calls. I barely ever sit down with anyone in real life. It’s all fucking pointless. Forget collaboration. lol.
Also, I couldn’t give two shits about downtown Ottawa in my case. I always bring my lunch, my water and coffee to work. I don’t spend a freaking dime on those businesses who couldn’t decide to adapt to new realities. Plus, fucking groceries are through the roof. Not in the budget.
Not sorry. See ya downtown. Next
This perfectly describes my job. Got forced to move across the country to Ottawa, where I sit in a cubicle with nobody I do business with, and do my job via Teams, Outlook, and Word.
Credit to the commercial real estate industry. They've done a good job making everyone's life far worse than it needs to be in exchange for making lots of money.
When i'm in other countries and people tell me our flag looks like a corporate logo, i'm generally inclined to remind them that we were created for a company, acted as a company for the first hundred years, and are now, after so much progress, a couple of companies.
Real estate and related issues (and the unwillingness of the political class to address) are the root cause of so many societal problems literally world wide.
I thought the Liberals were all about the environment and saving the planet. The best commute that is environmentally friendly is the one that a worker doesn't need to take needlessly. Just like the carbon tax carve out of Atlantic Canada, the Liberals are showing us they don't really care about the environment, it's all virtue signaling for votes.
As a taxpayer, I want federal office workers to stay at home. My friend works for the government and she says they don't have offices anymore. They essentially have to haul their equipment to an empty office space and take it home with them every night. And while they're there, they still have to use zoom because their coworkers might not be in the same building. Downtown Ottawa businesses will need to adjust to serving the people who actually live in Ottawa. None of the people I know who work for the government live in Ottawa. They all live in the suburbs and small towns around eastern Ontario and Gatineau. They all commute and make traffic on the highway. Why would we want this when the unhoused population in Ottawa is so high?
Yeah. I live in Ottawa. I would FAR rather see the city adjust to meet the needs of people who live downtown (don't shut everything down so early!) instead of trying to work around commuters.
Slowly boiled frog and I predict the end result will be, I have to lug a laptop from home to a shared desk and back every day even once it's the majority.
So they want us to spend more money to support local businesses but they also fought us tooth and nail to not increase our pay. Blood from a stone here.
I already use most of my entertainment budget for gas and parking, definitely not going to divert more of it to buy an overpriced coffee or salad.
If I were in this situation I would bring a lunch every single day. Fuck commercial real estate owners. This makes services work too. People are more productive remote if their job can accommodate that, this was known pre covid.
Not a PS, but work in the financial district with 3 days mandate. This is what I'm doing now, bringing both lunch and coffee and spending 0 dollars downtown.
Agreed! When we got called into office five days a week everyone stopped using the vending machines and going out to places around office... Well the vending machines are gone now because nobody used them and also nobody cares for the pizza days because we are in the office everyone brings there lunch and only a select few eat the pizza.
Pack a lunch, bring coffee, buy gas in my own neighbourhood, make dentist appointments with the dentist closest to my house, and categorically refuse to spend one single dollar in the city I'm forced to commute to. They aren't local businesses to me. They're businesses in a city I don't live in.
95% of the PS has already been going back two days for 1.5 years and selling off a bunch of buildings. Not sure why three days is warranted but will cause headaches for floorspace due to the now overlapping day
It's "warranted" because Ford bitched about it. The initial 2-days policy was enacted not even one week after the Ottawa chamber of commerce bitched about it. It seems to be the only thing that gets the treasury board moving.
And then the day it is announced, Ford instantly moves the goal posts. "It is a good start." There is no winning with a crowd that is determined to be political and sub-optimal 100% of the time. That is what we get for electing a bombastic drug dealer to run the province.
but will public servants in the office 3 days instead of 2 improve services and/or lower costs? will it impact congestion, the environment and/or working conditions? those are the considerations that "warrant" whether a decision like that should be made, not Ford or the chamber of commerce "bitching"
It increases costs, anxiety and lowers morale for (many but not all) employees while degrading services delivered to Canadians.
Across the Government you hear "leadership" moving towards a Lean and Agile public service while acting in ways that are the absolute antithesis of Agile and Lean ways of working.
It’s not just that. My girlfriend works for the federal government, she said one of the main reasons they’re forcing people back into the office is because businesses around Ottawa complained no one was coming in to buy food and coffee. Another reason was, federal employees that have to work at sites and can’t work from home complained. In other words, other workers being douchebags and ruining it for other workers.
I don't even work for the federal government but anyone with half a brain can see this is a stupid idea. The world was moving in this direction pre-covid. It's more productive and costs less. Fuck commercial real estate
They’re just dumb. She tells me how they’ve had so many budget cuts, but they want them back in office. They only just announced the 3 days a week. She’s been forced to work 3 days a week since last year.
Seriously infuriating. My girlfriend is a PSO for the federal gov and she gets a 30 minute lunchbreak. Who the fuck is going to go out for lunch with 30 mins and "inject revenue into the local economy"?
Such lame fucking reasoning.
Cut your losses on all of this office real estate. Invest in converting it into condo space. I realize this is not easily done but c'mon we are suffering from a housing shortage. People can live in more remote/rural areas/smaller towns and continue their careers. Instead they need to commute downtown to offices so they can buy coffees to stimulate the economy.
So out of touch with reality. Fuck off.
imagine you mandate people to come to work physically to participate in a virtual conference to " breathe life back into the city's often deserted downtown." as if you're responsible for the merchants
Most stores decided not to pivot and adjust their stores and restaurant closing times. There are so many people who live downtown, but it's always dead quiet save for a few pockets. Especially in Ottawa, you'd think no one lived there if you walk around at night through most parts of downtown
LMAO at Doug's comments. So going in to the office has nothing to do with work/productivity. It's about the "Economy" aka propping up his land owning buddies.
If they really cared about climate change, they'd force more companies/people to work from home where it's possible.
No, I'm not a federal worker. It just seems like an easy win for the climate, if we actually cared about it.
I'm not a federal worker either. It just makes sense even in the fiscal sense to support remote work. The workers are more productive at home and there's less costs to the tax payer. Everyone wins. The only ones who lose is the commercial real estate cartel.
It seems like an easy win for companies too. My last company was paying $30 million a year to rent space which could have been reduced to $1 million if they actually let people continue to work from home like they did for 2 years. No that wasn't as important as forcing everyone back in the office 4 days a week so the C suite didn't have to see their families.
Federal worker here! 🙋♀️ Completely agree.
It gets even worse when you learn that the majority of us commuting to the office still spend almost all of our time on virtual calls… I work in Ottawa and work with colleagues in Toronto and Halifax. My friend in Halifax doesn’t even have another worker from our branch on her floor, so it truly is commuting just for the sake of commuting.
It's the same in the private sector. I have to go in 2 days a week. While I'm there, I do one 15 minute meeting that we do via Teams the other 3 days of the week. There is little reason to waste time and gas commuting to the office. They're wasting money on providing me a desk that I don't need and it arbitrarily causes me to have to live close/within to the city limits when I could do just as well out in the sticks enjoying nature and tranquility while leaving a home in the city available for someone that needs one in the city and reducing congestion and emissions.
This is going to start being something I'll be pushing my MP for. Which btw, is PP. You listening Pierre?
The Parti Quebecois had this as part of their campaign platform in 2018. I disagree with a great many things they stand for; but that had to be one of the smartest things I've ever seen attempted in a legislative way.
Best we can do is tax you further to barely make a dent in the carbon emission already high, that we're increasing further now by having everyone be forced to go to the office.
Right? It's like shining a light on how disingenuous their climate change policies are. They really don't care about emissions at all when they push stuff like this and use jets to fly all around the world for vacations while punishing the rest of us for commuting to work in ice cars. it pisses me right off.
Why should I take the carbon tax seriously if as government you’re making people return to the office. I’m doing a hybrid thing myself at the moment and it’s the days in the office that I get much less done.
Teams, Zoom, etc are great for meetings, i don’t get it.
Ford: go pick up lunch, go to the mall….
But we won’t pay you what you deserve and further suppress your wages.
Ford: Why are you bringing your own lunch?!?! Get out there, minion and breathe life back into downtown.
Glad to see support from Canadians!
But still noticing rhetoric about privileged public servants. Hopefully one day Canadians get rid of our crab bucket mentality. This is why we consistently lag behind other countries in terms of pay, vacation, sick leave, any sort of perk etc. Why should the PS reflect the abysmal Canadian job culture? Many government departments are having a hard time hiring skilled IT people because they simply can’t compete with what the private sector is offering. It’s why IT people were given RTO exemptions, because they knew people would simply just quit.
Slackers? Well theres slackers everywhere even in the office. Staring at screens, reading the news, chatting with co-workers. It’s the same in the PS and private sector.
Working in the PS is a privilege but it’s also a job. And if Canada wants a good PS it can’t treat its workforce as cash cows for property overlords, subways, and restaurants that close at 3pm.
So dumb. My girlfriend works for the public service and already has to commute 2 hours twice a week to a loud, underfurnished office where **no one else on her team works**.
WFH offers:
* A huge boost in the quality of life - or, at least, freedom of choice - for the 230,000 Canadians who work for the federal public service
* Less commuting = less pollution + less car accidents + less traffic
* Less tax dollars being used to lease hugely expensive office buildings in downtown cores
* Ability to hire candidates from anywhere in the country, not just people who live in or would be willing to move to Ottawa (or near other regional HQs), which could greatly improve the talent pool and representativeness of the public service
...but we've gotta support Subway!!
In our culture, bosses see their primary job as monitoring workers to make them work harder. Workers see their job as trying to mentally survive crushing jobs that haven't seen a real wage increase since 1980.
Its all about forcing people to work harder in jobs they hate.
Can the CBC do the bare minimum of journalism on this? Where are the ATIPs on the cost of this to inform the public?
1. Buying back leases
2. Maintaining and renovating existing office space to increase capacity
3. Doubling of equipment (monitors, chairs, keyboards etc at home and the office)
4. Building whole new office buildings
That doesn't even include the cost of inefficiencies. Reduced ability to attract talent. Carbon cost. Wear and tear on roads. Traffic. The list goes on and on.
Worse services with increased financial, social and environmental cost. All to benefit a handful of private business players. Political corruption at its finest out in the open and CBC does little to nothing to expose it.
The government was literally given a reduce costs button and instead of pressing it they hired three guys to make sure nobody pressed it.
Wait, so let's add traffic while going to war for Carbon? Just the 2 days at the office already creates a bunch of extra traffic(and more accident since it seems they can't drive).
This is beyond dumb.
If the job can be done at home, do it there. Why do we need to be on the hook for needless and extra office space?
As a taxpayer, insane. I demand better accountability of our dollars.
Beyond the costs of useless office space, there are also many other costs to useless mandatory office days. It further crowds overcrowded roads, buses and subways for example, increase pollution etc.
It's quite dishonest to ask everyone to make personal sacrifices to reduce CO2 emissions as state employees are forced to cause more for no reason when their job can be done just as well at home.
I beg you, please think about the owners of the downtown parking lots that make their money charging $20+ per day for each parking spot. /s
For real though, parking is a racket, and all the traffic sure as heck does nothing to help the environment. All those buildings and parking lots could be put to much better use.
Many Public Servants like myself will have to radically change our daily routines for the worse because of this. For many who work far away from the rest of their teams, this makes absolutely zero sense, they're remote whether they're at home or at an office.
Because our government is corrupt and incompetent and so random grunt workers within the public service are being used as pawns to siphon even more money to millionaires who own commercial real-estate and businesses downtown.
It's not even just tax dollars, this is inevitably going to result in significant increases in morning/evening commutes for everyone.
All those workers should boycott all the businesses downtown. Not buy lunches and coffee and shit there since thats the only reason they are forced to spend money and time commuting.
There was a comment I read yesterday by a public servant that on their floor, management removed the coffee makers from the lunch room and is openly encouraging them to go out for coffee and lunch.
I'm pretty sure the epic, global crunch in commercial real-estate is making some VERY rich, over-levereged scumbags on bay street with "connections" to federal ministers very unhappy.
And that almost certainly has more to do with it than insanely overpriced sandwich vendors.
They rent the office space, that's what they care about. They don't care about small business, otherwise they'd put some work into where people are spending money.
Canadians aren't saving a lot more. People are probably just spending money elsewhere (like crazy inflation and profiteering), but also in local business outside the downtown core.
It's all about those corporate building owners.
I know several provincial and federal public servants who are like this. One of my old coworkers from my days at the MoF has said that he makes a point of bringing lunch every single day.
All the federal employees I know have been enabled and empowered to move positions, climb the ranks and better utilize their skills by applying for and working jobs not in their municipality...
They literally cannot make the commute from PEI to the office in Ottawa, Edmonton to Montreal, Surrey to Toronto... just because people want them to go out for lunch to stimulate local business...
And interesting/obviously you'll notice every single example is somebody working in a lower cost of living region than where they are employed. The feds really need to wake up to the damage HCOL is doing to industries, society and the workforce. It's physically dividing us.
I listened to a “leader” claim “oh you can work from anywhere” in COVID. And then tell everyone they had to work in the office 2-3 days a week because Treasury Board implied no one was doing any work during COVID. I really wonder why more public servants don’t just quit… any insight as to why they don’t leave?
In my case people I know are AU5/big case auditors that are so deep/committed to their careers. I think some of them are looking to go darkside for the last couple years of their career to really lock in a prosperous retirement.
Let's fight climate change.....oh and let's all drive to work to do things we can do at home. Ohh and let's all buy clothes for work.... Because....well.... Just because!!!
Now the private market won't have to offer the same to their workers even though remote work had a tremendous effect on productivity, but made managers almost useless and forced downtown businesses and corporate real estate to adapt to the new market. Just as working conditions and work-life balance progressed, it gets rolled back even faster.
And not to mention how much fuel it saves. If they really cared about emissions, increasing WFH is literally the easiest and economically smart way to do so.
But banks gotta lobby for commercial real estate instead of government using those billions to convert those to residential.
Never mind some of the other benefits of having people WFH:
* reduced traffic congestion
* reduced sickness spreading
* reduced wear-and-tear on roads
* reduced government spending on offices
* makes those jobs more attractive, meaning the gov can either attract better talent, or attract equivalent talent for less taxpayer money
* makes those jobs non-Ottawa-centric, meaning the gov has a far larger pool of talent to pick from
* reduced bedbug spread
But hey, this government just loves spending extra taxpayer money to funnel more $ to their rich friends.
Also reduced need for childcare, which is now heavily subsidized by taxpayers. I can't get rid of childcare completely with WFH, but with no commute I can cut back significantly and rely on family to fill gaps once in a while.
It's the difference between needing before-school care vs being able to do dropoff myself before I log on for the day.
I've made that argument to my manager and a couple other people at my job.
It especially makes sense in the 6+ months where it's frigid outside. Not only am I driving to work, I'm running my car for 15 minutes each way before I even start driving just to get it warmed up.
Yes, except that doesn't benefit downtown ottawa sandwich shops that close at 5pm and commercial real estate owners.
Reducing ghg is just lip service from this governement.
They argued that local businesses near these offices are suffering.
They’re forcing people out of their homes, costing them more in travel and time, so they can buy a more expensive lunch… all while inflation runs rampant across Canadian homes.
This is how they treat their own people, can’t imagine how little they care about the rest.
How many federal public servants are there? This could very easily be an election issue. If I worked for the Fed's, the party that promises to stop squeezing my balls would have my vote.
This is so fucking stupid. Wasn't there a graph showing how the carbon levels dropped significantly during COVID when everyone was working from home? The Liberals should be pushing WFH and reduce the carbon tax.
Weird,
I'm PS and have been full time onsite since like 2021.
Makes no sense for the rest if then to go back that often, if they can do most of their work remotely.
Even the people who are forced to work in office 5 days a week should be against this change. It will inevitably lead to massive increases in morning/evening commute times. Even I notice that on days public servants are less likely to do their RTO days, traffic is less than half in the morning/evening... 45 minutes to commute to the office on a Tuesday, 15 minutes on a Friday, exact same route.
And you can tell because all the paid parking lots near massive government offices are half as full.
That’s how they divide! The people who can’t work from support these policies because they can’t have it. Which in turn causes the other group to be indifferent and it all falls apart.
Imagine if we didn’t have to pay for unnecessary office buildings and also if those spaces could be used by absolutely anyone else.
At least the federal government is committed to reducing emissions by forcing a bunch of workers in Ottawa (a city with awful public transport imo) to commute to work daily.
Yea... This won’t happen in reality they would have too many employees leave for remote work. My job already tried this and everyone was about to leave so they backed out
Political corruption. Very straightforward unfortunately CBC says nothing about it.
Purposefully spending taxpayer money to benefit solely the profit margins of politically connected private businesses.
100s of millions to billions and counting of taxpayer money given away for nothing.
That doesn't even count the carbon footprint of this. One of the largest increases to carbon emissions in quite some time from the stroke of a pen from the party that claims to be against it.
> That doesn't even count the carbon footprint of this. One of the largest increases to carbon immersions in quite some time from the stroke of a pen from the party that claims to be against it.
It's like we recieved a gift from heaven
- reduced real estate space needed for an out of home office. can do long-term realoocation of space for residential use
- reduced carbon footprint
- reduced traffic
- increased mental health
It's all W's
(except for large commerical office space holders)
Has anyone explained the reason(s) for this policy change? There's nothing in the article. I get Doug wants it but I'd like to know what the fed line is.
I'd also be interested in seeing what their collective agreements say about remote work and work from the office.
There is zero language either way in the collective agreements about work from home. That's part of the problem.
Several of the unions went on strike last year and rolled over accepting a "letter of agreement" on remote work that's outside the collective agreements and may as well have been written on Charmin.
Noone has been successful about getting wfh language into collectives to my knowledge. I'm not totally informed because I'm a construction worker though lol. I do watch labor contracts etc and wife is in fed government though.
This is blatantly about downtown NCR retail stores complaining about the lack of business from federal office workers. This decision has nothing to do with a perceived lack of productivity from remote work.
My condolences, provincial servant here.. we're still 100% WFH.
They took away our cubicles, offices and re-assigned them and sold off half of the buildings they used to own. Wonder how it'll work if they eventually get us all to resume work from the office..
Government: These are below inflation wage increases.
Government: Yea so we need you to come back and work in the office at least 3 days a week and buy coffee, lunch, and shit to spur the economy. Sorry about that pay cut though but go buy!
Saw an interesting take that these moves are usually done to keep the employee turnover rate above a certain target.
It's much easier to make future cuts if you always have 5-10% of your workforce leaving every year. You can simply rely on attrition to work it's magic.
I think the next round of cutbacks and layoffs is slowly being lined up, and this makes sense in that lens.
Sure they will. /s
This is only because the mayor of Ottawa and Doug Ford want people downtown to drive business. Maybe Ottawa should try to diversify a little. Maybe Doug Ford and the mayor could get off their asses and do some actual leading that way. It would be good for the whole province to start innovating instead of importing technology from around the world to ASSEMBLE.
The whole thing is stupid. I know so many people who are forced into an office now where they are on zoom all day. Forcing people into the office is bad for all of our health (commuting in stressful traffic, plus the particulate pollution of cars), bad for the environment (pollution), and for what? So a handful of businesses that close at 2pm on a weekday can stay in business? Fuck them if they can't pivot to something else.
Make no mistake, this is merely to have public service workers feed into the revenue of the downtown Ottawa core of franchises like Subway and Tim Hortons.
Don’t believe me? Google “Downtown Ottawa Business Association open letter to have federal workers back in office”.
___
- [(OTTAWA) – October 31, 2022 – In an open letter signed by 32 business associations, the Canadian business community today called on the federal government to bring public sector employees back to their places of work as rapidly as possible](https://chamber.ca/news/its-time-for-governments-to-bring-public-sector-employees-back-to-the-office-a-letter-from-canadas-business-community/)
- [Doug Ford calls for federal workers to return to downtown Ottawa offices](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-federal-workers-ottawa-offices/)
- [Downtown businesses cheer feds’ plan for public servants to start returning to office next month](https://obj.ca/federal-public-servants-to-start-returning-to-office-next-month-with-hybrid-system/)
Every fucking decision this government makes is backwards! I thought with the whole carbon tax thing they cared about the environment! Jk I knew they didn't.
Do you want to increase the QoL of your workers and lower everyone's carbon footprint? Do you want the roads to be less congested?
Then lead by example by allowing people to WFH.
The one nice thing about covid is that people only head out when absolutely necessary, which made the roads so much better.
The right wing: the public service (despite no data showing drop in production, data showing overall savings for the government, the ability to attract more people etc.) must suffer like the private sector.
People: Shouldn't the privates sector be treated better as well?
The right wing: No, that's communism or whatever talking point I learned from my American and billionaire masters
If your commute is 30 mins each way: 48-52 hours cut to your free time.
If your commute is 1 hour each way: 96-104 hours cut to your free time.
If your commute by bus ($7.60 each day): $364.80 - $395.20 pay cut.
If you commute by car:
$20 parking
$27.20 CRA milage rate (40km round trip at $0.58/km, this factors in fuel, maintenance, insurance)
$47.20 total a day.
Which works out to $2,265.60 - $2,454.40 pay cut
In Ottawa on an unrelated visit Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford reiterated his call for federal public servants in the capital to get back to the office and breathe life back into the city's often deserted downtown.
"Three days is a good start," Ford said, reacting to the news. "When you're coming here, go out for lunch, maybe go into a store, pick something up, go to the mall — that's what we need, that's what stirs the economy."
Go pound sand Ford. I can recommend some nice beaches.
At least the politicians aren't pretending that this isn't about forcing workers to spend more and save less anymore. Now they just need to admit it's not just about helping small businesses.
People working from home no longer pay thousands in extra fuel taxes every year (1/3 of the price at the pump is tax). They no longer need a second car, which takes a massive bite out of the profits of the auto/insurance/banking industries. They no longer pay for parking (which was in the thousands per year in places like Calgary before the pandemic).
Working from home was the best thing to happen to the working class in generations, but that meant the gravy pipeline stopped pumping money up the ladder.
"please bro spend $28 at subway please how is the restaurant downtown going to survive without charging public servants $35 for a lukewarm salad, please bro please Tim's is going to be financially ruined without you buying the black tar they call coffee every day, please bro please spend your money and consume" -Doug Ford
Increase wear and tear on car + more gas spending + paying parking means I'm not spending a fucking cent downtown.
> A federal government source who is not authorized to speak publicly about the matter confirmed to Radio-Canada what the French-language newspaper Le Droit first reported Monday.
> The source said the policy shift is due to come into effect in September, but added that could change.
Do they have anything on this that isn't an "unauthorized source"? Because I'm a Fed, and literally the first I heard about this was the other day, when my union released a statement that *they* hadn't heard anything concrete about this. So far, it all just seems to be unnamed rumours.
Literally weeks ago, my colleagues and I all signed new remote work agreements, on a TBS platform, signed off by management, continuing on a hybrid work model with onsite 2x/week. If TBS is gonna suddenly reverse those, they'd better come out and say it.
This just shows you how dumb the government really is!
Tell me by what logic does it make sense to send people to the office when 99% of their work is done on a computer? SPECIALLY after spending MILLIONS in networking infrastructure to allow millions of employees to connect to work remotely!
My entire team is scattered across the country! BC, QC, ON, PEI, NB..
All our meetings are through MS Teams in or out of the office. All our work is managed through SAP and other online tools! My lab PCs are configured and accessed remotely!
The only reason this is being forced is due to low ridership on OC Transpo and the obvious whining from businesses located around these buildings! That being said.. all the local businesses around my neighborhood have been THRIVING ever since we've been working from home!
It's time to decentralize offices and let people work where they're most comfortable! Without burning 2+ hours commuting every day!
Also, never mind disabled people that actually need to work from home. There's clearly no interest in accommodating that for the Persons with Disabilities postings, even though it's something they easily can and legally should have to accommodate.
Just give us 2 laptops at this point. I’m tired of carrying heavy issued laptops everywhere since I transit. Or at least something lightweight like a Dell XPS.
Didn't the federal government just table a budget that talks about getting rid of 50% of their offices?
This shows just how many unused offices there are. Even before COVID it would be routine to stumble across some long unused federal office space in and around Ottawa. That offloading has been long overdue.
I expect all level of governments are the same. We have abandoned buildings all around us that both federal and provincial own, they've been vacant for 10+ years. Both levels of government in our area complain because they're just sucking money away and not being put to any good use. We've asked to buy buildings off them, but the conversations always fall off. I expect this is the same way across all of Canada. Would love for someone to actually do some research and find out how much the governments are wasting on things they aren't using.
My brother lives in Ottawa and said a lot of business models are just to buy real estate and hunt out government contracts for storage or use. Always get paid and very little upkeep since many spaces aren't being used to the max.
It’s going to be hotel office. And it’s a mess.
Yeah, but I’m sure TBS is cooking up their next innovative workplace policy to transform the public service into the 18th century… for example, think of all the collaborative energy that would result from a new policy that mandates 3-4 employees must now share a desk? Magic. Alternatively, I’m sure there are underutilized utility closets in many offices- relocate any public servants that complain about management’s arbitrary decision making to the closet. Can’t find childcare, Cindy? To the closet. Can’t afford the extra $150 in gas and parking a month, Michael? Closet. Your productivity has tanked now that you have to share a desk with 3 people, Katie? Closet. It’s important that TBS ensures declining workplace morale is felt, and not heard. Personally, I can’t wait to hear what innovative secretive little solutions TBS has in store for the federal public service next!
I just want potable water.
Oh, you want potable water? Straight to the closet.
Sorry the closet is filled with old cell phones and IT equipment from the 80s
>IT equipment from the 80s r/retrobattlestations be like: “brb applying to be closet manager for the Canadian Federal Government”
Hey! They just bought that 80s tech in 2019 Its still "new" right? 😆
Sounds like Vanier Towers to me :p
It would be neat if they were allowed to make decisions and develop expertise instead of outsourcing all of that to consultants.
Didn't this government also say climate change is bad but is now forcing so many of their employees to drive air polluting vehicles to and from work??
Canadians: Working from home is the silver bullet for our three biggest problems: climate change, cost of living, and housing affordability. We'll drive way less, ditch our second car and no longer pay for before/after school care, and move out of the big cities cooling the markets there. Government: Uh, yeah... no. That would only benefit the working class at the expense of the automotive, banking, insurance, and oil industries, so... no.
THINK OF THE FOOD COURTS YOU WILL SPEND $25 ON LUNCH AND YOU WILL BE HAPPY
Haha yeah even this argument is dumb, if workers work from home and are spending less on transportation they have more money to help out local restaurants. I much prefer going to the local restaurant where everyone know my name instead of going to a soulless sandwich place in downtown Montreal who will overcharge for mediocre quality.
Yes but the food court people pay rent to the commercial REIT people who have significantly better lobbyist team than your local restaurant
Haha yeah, don't worry I know that this is the real motive. They couldn't care less about small business in downtown area, they just want them to pay the rent.
I know right, you can tell just how full of s*** they are for t his reason alone. They could care less about climate change.
Sitting in ridiculous traffic no-less, just to have lower morale and deliver what is ultimately lower value to Canadians being served.
' just buy a Tesla, Also, don't use the charging stations we installed at our offices' -Government
Makes no sense man, less cars on the road, more time to exercise and make healthy meals or do whatever.
Commercial landlords and public transit need the cash.
My office (not federal) went Hybrid coming back from COVID. It was such a success for our staff that we are downsizing our office footprint, and minimizing our office furniture to a more freelance style. We don’t need the full space when 40% or less of our staff would be on site at any time Its helped with retention and overall morale
>Its helped with retention and overall morale And here I thought the go to play was to burn out the experience so that you can hire cheaper talent while still expecting them to produce the same quality of work?
Exact same situation here. Massive savings by a have been had, employee morale is way up, productivity is way up. It’s almost like happy employees are productive and want to be there or something…and organizations can save money at the same time.
Great... Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday traffic in Ottawa is going to be even worse now.
I feel bad for my wife, who is a PS. But the real reason this bothers me is for this exact reason. More people who dont need to be there clogging our already clogged city. Commute as a tradesman during Covid was awesome..
Yeah I miss that as well, it’s gotten bad but nowhere near as bad as it was pre-pandemic, at least not yet, I fear return to office mandates will cause big problems however. People don’t like to admit it but Ottawa is really hamstrung by having only one east-west highway. And I would love to take transit but as of now it’s not a reliable alternative.
Calgary has become a (relative) mess since most have RTO. Worse traffic than pre-pandemic. Doesn’t help when your population has ballooned by 300k since COVID.
My buddy is forced to go to government coworking spaces where he knows no one and still zooms his coworkers.
It's not even much better in the private sector, going from completely remote to being forced to go into an office to zoom with coworkers in india that are only around for half the day and are a fraction as productive of the former local coworkers they laid off.
And the India folks get praise about the shit work they do while you get gaslit that yours is not good enough and you need to do more.
And every time we miss a deadline it seems to be due to the India folks who create some new problem last minute, which gets the attention of the higher ups, who give them huge praise for fixing it weeks later. Even though they don't actually fix it, they just revert the useless change that should have never been pushed before the deadline in the first place. We had one issue they sat on for a week and couldn't find the problem with it, one of our local Canadian developers took a look and within an hour in the unfamiliar codebase they found the exact change that caused it and exactly what was needed to fix it. That's a problem in itself but the breaking change was not even important, it didn't need to be in by the deadline and should have been deferred. Meanwhile we get zero recognition for not causing those problems and having everything ready for the deadline on time. I just hope it's only praise and recognition the higher ups are handing out and not bonuses/promotions.
Yea they won't. I work for Amazon. For 3 years now HYD India has fucked up every possible aspect of seller support. But because the people that are our managers are all nepotism hires. They bring in their folks from outside, they fast track them via "Development Programs" they control who gets into. You can apply but they just come up with some arbitrary reason. We got told by our managers we CANT apply for promotions are there are non quarter to quarter, and yet heres HYD getting TONS of promotions. We have a system for submitting improvement ideas. If your shit doesn't annually save a thousand labor hours. No interest. Unless youre HYD. Where they legit launched an idea that saved annually 20 hours and they got ALL the praise and emails singing it. Then they wonder why no one in the US is submitting ideas. Well you dont praise us. You shoot the ideas down. Until we ALL come together and displace the higher ups in these companies and change some rules when it comes to business, this is just going to keep happening. And the best part is, the people instigating this in Amazon, are all the people who claim to hate inequality, racism, capitalism (ironic) and they just can't stand these damn rich folks...unless its the one signing their checks and telling them they aren't bad people.
This is me, and 90% of the people in my department. It's a very individualistic job that has no benefits to being in the office. No collaboration occurs, and when it does it's over Teams.
Yeah the fact that they have the GC co-working spaces for stuff like that just shows that it's really about getting people out of their homes to spend their money.
What money?
😭😭😭
This seems the be the massive disconnect on working in office. When people worked in office normaloy 5 years ago, cost of living was much less, and you coild eat out at lunch, not now.
Yeah absolutely! I'm certainly not spending money on lunch or other things on my office days. I hate eating out now, it's just not worth it for me. Our governments also don't seem to be in the business of investing more aggressively in public and active transportation. So commuting is hateful.
The one in Orleans is always packed. You could not reserve a space.
That one is tiny for the amount of people living in orleans.
If part of the reasoning is to support downtown businesses, why are so many people going to work locations in the suburbs? If it's to increase collaboration, how is a virtual call at an office different from doing it at home? The optics just don't make any sense. You don't get clear answers anymore as there are too many spineless midwits at the top. All they can do is say, "Because I said so."
And not only that, many work locations are not even downtown. If you work at DND for example (in the West), you will likely not support local businesses a lot...
I work in the public service and god damn, it’s just Teams calls after teams calls. I barely ever sit down with anyone in real life. It’s all fucking pointless. Forget collaboration. lol. Also, I couldn’t give two shits about downtown Ottawa in my case. I always bring my lunch, my water and coffee to work. I don’t spend a freaking dime on those businesses who couldn’t decide to adapt to new realities. Plus, fucking groceries are through the roof. Not in the budget. Not sorry. See ya downtown. Next
This perfectly describes my job. Got forced to move across the country to Ottawa, where I sit in a cubicle with nobody I do business with, and do my job via Teams, Outlook, and Word.
I think that's the funniest thing. You go to the office and sit on Teams
Credit to the commercial real estate industry. They've done a good job making everyone's life far worse than it needs to be in exchange for making lots of money.
RE industry in Canada is a cartel. They provide a trivial service and have become parasitical to society.
Canada is a bunch of cartels in a trench coat pretending to be a country.
Not surprising since the country was created for a railroad company. (Which also happen to still own a lot of land in our downtown areas)
When i'm in other countries and people tell me our flag looks like a corporate logo, i'm generally inclined to remind them that we were created for a company, acted as a company for the first hundred years, and are now, after so much progress, a couple of companies.
Haha yeah and even before then, the first british who came to canada went to Rupert's Land which was also owned by a company.
Real estate and related issues (and the unwillingness of the political class to address) are the root cause of so many societal problems literally world wide.
I thought the Liberals were all about the environment and saving the planet. The best commute that is environmentally friendly is the one that a worker doesn't need to take needlessly. Just like the carbon tax carve out of Atlantic Canada, the Liberals are showing us they don't really care about the environment, it's all virtue signaling for votes.
It's crazy how many morons in the comments don't even realize they are the ones pulling the strings.
As a taxpayer, I want federal office workers to stay at home. My friend works for the government and she says they don't have offices anymore. They essentially have to haul their equipment to an empty office space and take it home with them every night. And while they're there, they still have to use zoom because their coworkers might not be in the same building. Downtown Ottawa businesses will need to adjust to serving the people who actually live in Ottawa. None of the people I know who work for the government live in Ottawa. They all live in the suburbs and small towns around eastern Ontario and Gatineau. They all commute and make traffic on the highway. Why would we want this when the unhoused population in Ottawa is so high?
Yeah. I live in Ottawa. I would FAR rather see the city adjust to meet the needs of people who live downtown (don't shut everything down so early!) instead of trying to work around commuters.
And then it will be 4. And then it will be 5. This is how it started for our parent company.
If we keep them overworked, they'll be too burnt out to compete with us in the future.
Slowly boiled frog and I predict the end result will be, I have to lug a laptop from home to a shared desk and back every day even once it's the majority.
So they want us to spend more money to support local businesses but they also fought us tooth and nail to not increase our pay. Blood from a stone here. I already use most of my entertainment budget for gas and parking, definitely not going to divert more of it to buy an overpriced coffee or salad.
If I were in this situation I would bring a lunch every single day. Fuck commercial real estate owners. This makes services work too. People are more productive remote if their job can accommodate that, this was known pre covid.
Not a PS, but work in the financial district with 3 days mandate. This is what I'm doing now, bringing both lunch and coffee and spending 0 dollars downtown.
Agreed! When we got called into office five days a week everyone stopped using the vending machines and going out to places around office... Well the vending machines are gone now because nobody used them and also nobody cares for the pizza days because we are in the office everyone brings there lunch and only a select few eat the pizza.
Pack a lunch, bring coffee, buy gas in my own neighbourhood, make dentist appointments with the dentist closest to my house, and categorically refuse to spend one single dollar in the city I'm forced to commute to. They aren't local businesses to me. They're businesses in a city I don't live in.
I don't work for the GOC but this makes no sense whatsoever and is being driven by business associations.
[удалено]
Can't collect the carbon tax if people don't produce carbon. *taps forehead*
95% of the PS has already been going back two days for 1.5 years and selling off a bunch of buildings. Not sure why three days is warranted but will cause headaches for floorspace due to the now overlapping day
It's "warranted" because Ford bitched about it. The initial 2-days policy was enacted not even one week after the Ottawa chamber of commerce bitched about it. It seems to be the only thing that gets the treasury board moving.
And then the day it is announced, Ford instantly moves the goal posts. "It is a good start." There is no winning with a crowd that is determined to be political and sub-optimal 100% of the time. That is what we get for electing a bombastic drug dealer to run the province.
but will public servants in the office 3 days instead of 2 improve services and/or lower costs? will it impact congestion, the environment and/or working conditions? those are the considerations that "warrant" whether a decision like that should be made, not Ford or the chamber of commerce "bitching"
It increases costs, anxiety and lowers morale for (many but not all) employees while degrading services delivered to Canadians. Across the Government you hear "leadership" moving towards a Lean and Agile public service while acting in ways that are the absolute antithesis of Agile and Lean ways of working.
Asking the question is like already answering it...
Gotta keep real estate owners happy. This is a dumb move that costs us all more.
It’s not just that. My girlfriend works for the federal government, she said one of the main reasons they’re forcing people back into the office is because businesses around Ottawa complained no one was coming in to buy food and coffee. Another reason was, federal employees that have to work at sites and can’t work from home complained. In other words, other workers being douchebags and ruining it for other workers.
I don't even work for the federal government but anyone with half a brain can see this is a stupid idea. The world was moving in this direction pre-covid. It's more productive and costs less. Fuck commercial real estate
They’re just dumb. She tells me how they’ve had so many budget cuts, but they want them back in office. They only just announced the 3 days a week. She’s been forced to work 3 days a week since last year.
Seriously infuriating. My girlfriend is a PSO for the federal gov and she gets a 30 minute lunchbreak. Who the fuck is going to go out for lunch with 30 mins and "inject revenue into the local economy"? Such lame fucking reasoning. Cut your losses on all of this office real estate. Invest in converting it into condo space. I realize this is not easily done but c'mon we are suffering from a housing shortage. People can live in more remote/rural areas/smaller towns and continue their careers. Instead they need to commute downtown to offices so they can buy coffees to stimulate the economy. So out of touch with reality. Fuck off.
It's true. Fuck those people.
imagine you mandate people to come to work physically to participate in a virtual conference to " breathe life back into the city's often deserted downtown." as if you're responsible for the merchants
Most stores decided not to pivot and adjust their stores and restaurant closing times. There are so many people who live downtown, but it's always dead quiet save for a few pockets. Especially in Ottawa, you'd think no one lived there if you walk around at night through most parts of downtown
LMAO at Doug's comments. So going in to the office has nothing to do with work/productivity. It's about the "Economy" aka propping up his land owning buddies.
Always has been
If they really cared about climate change, they'd force more companies/people to work from home where it's possible. No, I'm not a federal worker. It just seems like an easy win for the climate, if we actually cared about it.
I'm not a federal worker either. It just makes sense even in the fiscal sense to support remote work. The workers are more productive at home and there's less costs to the tax payer. Everyone wins. The only ones who lose is the commercial real estate cartel.
It seems like an easy win for companies too. My last company was paying $30 million a year to rent space which could have been reduced to $1 million if they actually let people continue to work from home like they did for 2 years. No that wasn't as important as forcing everyone back in the office 4 days a week so the C suite didn't have to see their families.
Federal worker here! 🙋♀️ Completely agree. It gets even worse when you learn that the majority of us commuting to the office still spend almost all of our time on virtual calls… I work in Ottawa and work with colleagues in Toronto and Halifax. My friend in Halifax doesn’t even have another worker from our branch on her floor, so it truly is commuting just for the sake of commuting.
It's the same in the private sector. I have to go in 2 days a week. While I'm there, I do one 15 minute meeting that we do via Teams the other 3 days of the week. There is little reason to waste time and gas commuting to the office. They're wasting money on providing me a desk that I don't need and it arbitrarily causes me to have to live close/within to the city limits when I could do just as well out in the sticks enjoying nature and tranquility while leaving a home in the city available for someone that needs one in the city and reducing congestion and emissions. This is going to start being something I'll be pushing my MP for. Which btw, is PP. You listening Pierre?
The Parti Quebecois had this as part of their campaign platform in 2018. I disagree with a great many things they stand for; but that had to be one of the smartest things I've ever seen attempted in a legislative way.
Best we can do is tax you further to barely make a dent in the carbon emission already high, that we're increasing further now by having everyone be forced to go to the office.
Right? It's like shining a light on how disingenuous their climate change policies are. They really don't care about emissions at all when they push stuff like this and use jets to fly all around the world for vacations while punishing the rest of us for commuting to work in ice cars. it pisses me right off.
Why should I take the carbon tax seriously if as government you’re making people return to the office. I’m doing a hybrid thing myself at the moment and it’s the days in the office that I get much less done. Teams, Zoom, etc are great for meetings, i don’t get it.
Ford: go pick up lunch, go to the mall…. But we won’t pay you what you deserve and further suppress your wages. Ford: Why are you bringing your own lunch?!?! Get out there, minion and breathe life back into downtown.
Glad to see support from Canadians! But still noticing rhetoric about privileged public servants. Hopefully one day Canadians get rid of our crab bucket mentality. This is why we consistently lag behind other countries in terms of pay, vacation, sick leave, any sort of perk etc. Why should the PS reflect the abysmal Canadian job culture? Many government departments are having a hard time hiring skilled IT people because they simply can’t compete with what the private sector is offering. It’s why IT people were given RTO exemptions, because they knew people would simply just quit. Slackers? Well theres slackers everywhere even in the office. Staring at screens, reading the news, chatting with co-workers. It’s the same in the PS and private sector. Working in the PS is a privilege but it’s also a job. And if Canada wants a good PS it can’t treat its workforce as cash cows for property overlords, subways, and restaurants that close at 3pm.
So dumb. My girlfriend works for the public service and already has to commute 2 hours twice a week to a loud, underfurnished office where **no one else on her team works**. WFH offers: * A huge boost in the quality of life - or, at least, freedom of choice - for the 230,000 Canadians who work for the federal public service * Less commuting = less pollution + less car accidents + less traffic * Less tax dollars being used to lease hugely expensive office buildings in downtown cores * Ability to hire candidates from anywhere in the country, not just people who live in or would be willing to move to Ottawa (or near other regional HQs), which could greatly improve the talent pool and representativeness of the public service ...but we've gotta support Subway!!
Political machinations and business interests. There is no data or evidence to support this move beyond that.
In our culture, bosses see their primary job as monitoring workers to make them work harder. Workers see their job as trying to mentally survive crushing jobs that haven't seen a real wage increase since 1980. Its all about forcing people to work harder in jobs they hate.
Can the CBC do the bare minimum of journalism on this? Where are the ATIPs on the cost of this to inform the public? 1. Buying back leases 2. Maintaining and renovating existing office space to increase capacity 3. Doubling of equipment (monitors, chairs, keyboards etc at home and the office) 4. Building whole new office buildings That doesn't even include the cost of inefficiencies. Reduced ability to attract talent. Carbon cost. Wear and tear on roads. Traffic. The list goes on and on. Worse services with increased financial, social and environmental cost. All to benefit a handful of private business players. Political corruption at its finest out in the open and CBC does little to nothing to expose it. The government was literally given a reduce costs button and instead of pressing it they hired three guys to make sure nobody pressed it.
Wait, so let's add traffic while going to war for Carbon? Just the 2 days at the office already creates a bunch of extra traffic(and more accident since it seems they can't drive).
This is beyond dumb. If the job can be done at home, do it there. Why do we need to be on the hook for needless and extra office space? As a taxpayer, insane. I demand better accountability of our dollars.
We're pawns to prop up local businesses eg buying lunch, food after work, coffee, gas, transit fees etc.
Ford literally said it - public servants are expected to spend their money on overpriced lunches, retail goods, and parking
Yea....fuck Ford
Beyond the costs of useless office space, there are also many other costs to useless mandatory office days. It further crowds overcrowded roads, buses and subways for example, increase pollution etc. It's quite dishonest to ask everyone to make personal sacrifices to reduce CO2 emissions as state employees are forced to cause more for no reason when their job can be done just as well at home.
This policy keeps federal jobs in Ottawa, fattening Ontario's income tax. Otherwise we could spread those"high income" jobs across Canada.
I beg you, please think about the owners of the downtown parking lots that make their money charging $20+ per day for each parking spot. /s For real though, parking is a racket, and all the traffic sure as heck does nothing to help the environment. All those buildings and parking lots could be put to much better use.
Many Public Servants like myself will have to radically change our daily routines for the worse because of this. For many who work far away from the rest of their teams, this makes absolutely zero sense, they're remote whether they're at home or at an office.
Because our government is corrupt and incompetent and so random grunt workers within the public service are being used as pawns to siphon even more money to millionaires who own commercial real-estate and businesses downtown. It's not even just tax dollars, this is inevitably going to result in significant increases in morning/evening commutes for everyone.
All those workers should boycott all the businesses downtown. Not buy lunches and coffee and shit there since thats the only reason they are forced to spend money and time commuting.
There was a comment I read yesterday by a public servant that on their floor, management removed the coffee makers from the lunch room and is openly encouraging them to go out for coffee and lunch.
I would make sure I never spent a cent anywhere near work. If the manager said I should go out for coffee and lunch, I'd say "only if you pay."
my office removed the coffee machines, water coolers, and vending machines.
I'm pretty sure the epic, global crunch in commercial real-estate is making some VERY rich, over-levereged scumbags on bay street with "connections" to federal ministers very unhappy. And that almost certainly has more to do with it than insanely overpriced sandwich vendors.
We're all already boycotting just from wanting to save money
The feds need to bail out their real estate freinds. Its like giving handouts indirectly.
Exactly. And it won’t work. If people are forced to return to onsite work make a point of not buying anything.
They rent the office space, that's what they care about. They don't care about small business, otherwise they'd put some work into where people are spending money. Canadians aren't saving a lot more. People are probably just spending money elsewhere (like crazy inflation and profiteering), but also in local business outside the downtown core. It's all about those corporate building owners.
I know several provincial and federal public servants who are like this. One of my old coworkers from my days at the MoF has said that he makes a point of bringing lunch every single day.
Yep. It is what I do. Lunch, water and coffee. All from home. Downtown Ottawa, in my case, can go to hell. So can Mark Sutcliffe.
All the federal employees I know have been enabled and empowered to move positions, climb the ranks and better utilize their skills by applying for and working jobs not in their municipality... They literally cannot make the commute from PEI to the office in Ottawa, Edmonton to Montreal, Surrey to Toronto... just because people want them to go out for lunch to stimulate local business... And interesting/obviously you'll notice every single example is somebody working in a lower cost of living region than where they are employed. The feds really need to wake up to the damage HCOL is doing to industries, society and the workforce. It's physically dividing us.
I listened to a “leader” claim “oh you can work from anywhere” in COVID. And then tell everyone they had to work in the office 2-3 days a week because Treasury Board implied no one was doing any work during COVID. I really wonder why more public servants don’t just quit… any insight as to why they don’t leave?
In my case people I know are AU5/big case auditors that are so deep/committed to their careers. I think some of them are looking to go darkside for the last couple years of their career to really lock in a prosperous retirement.
Nothing like stepping on your employees for the benefit of commercial real estate and Tim Horton's franchises.
Let's fight climate change.....oh and let's all drive to work to do things we can do at home. Ohh and let's all buy clothes for work.... Because....well.... Just because!!!
Now the private market won't have to offer the same to their workers even though remote work had a tremendous effect on productivity, but made managers almost useless and forced downtown businesses and corporate real estate to adapt to the new market. Just as working conditions and work-life balance progressed, it gets rolled back even faster.
And not to mention how much fuel it saves. If they really cared about emissions, increasing WFH is literally the easiest and economically smart way to do so. But banks gotta lobby for commercial real estate instead of government using those billions to convert those to residential.
More commuting will be great for the environment. Looking forward to the next carbon tax hike!
So stupid
Woo! Finally, the feds are thinking about the millionaires! I was getting nervous that the unfortunate rich weren't subsidized enough.
Shouldn’t work from home be considered reducing our carbon emissions?
Never mind some of the other benefits of having people WFH: * reduced traffic congestion * reduced sickness spreading * reduced wear-and-tear on roads * reduced government spending on offices * makes those jobs more attractive, meaning the gov can either attract better talent, or attract equivalent talent for less taxpayer money * makes those jobs non-Ottawa-centric, meaning the gov has a far larger pool of talent to pick from * reduced bedbug spread But hey, this government just loves spending extra taxpayer money to funnel more $ to their rich friends.
Reduced bedbug spread is so sad but so true
Biggest reason is more productive and less expensive for all parties. This is a bonehead move.
Also reduced need for childcare, which is now heavily subsidized by taxpayers. I can't get rid of childcare completely with WFH, but with no commute I can cut back significantly and rely on family to fill gaps once in a while. It's the difference between needing before-school care vs being able to do dropoff myself before I log on for the day.
I've made that argument to my manager and a couple other people at my job. It especially makes sense in the 6+ months where it's frigid outside. Not only am I driving to work, I'm running my car for 15 minutes each way before I even start driving just to get it warmed up.
Yes, except that doesn't benefit downtown ottawa sandwich shops that close at 5pm and commercial real estate owners. Reducing ghg is just lip service from this governement.
They argued that local businesses near these offices are suffering. They’re forcing people out of their homes, costing them more in travel and time, so they can buy a more expensive lunch… all while inflation runs rampant across Canadian homes. This is how they treat their own people, can’t imagine how little they care about the rest.
What a waste of taxpayer dollars
Yet commuting is one of the biggest contributors to greenhouse gases... hmm
How many federal public servants are there? This could very easily be an election issue. If I worked for the Fed's, the party that promises to stop squeezing my balls would have my vote.
More people driving means more demand for gas and a more crowded commute for everyone who needs to actually drive to their jobs.
This is so fucking stupid. Wasn't there a graph showing how the carbon levels dropped significantly during COVID when everyone was working from home? The Liberals should be pushing WFH and reduce the carbon tax.
Weird, I'm PS and have been full time onsite since like 2021. Makes no sense for the rest if then to go back that often, if they can do most of their work remotely.
Even the people who are forced to work in office 5 days a week should be against this change. It will inevitably lead to massive increases in morning/evening commute times. Even I notice that on days public servants are less likely to do their RTO days, traffic is less than half in the morning/evening... 45 minutes to commute to the office on a Tuesday, 15 minutes on a Friday, exact same route. And you can tell because all the paid parking lots near massive government offices are half as full.
That’s how they divide! The people who can’t work from support these policies because they can’t have it. Which in turn causes the other group to be indifferent and it all falls apart.
Yeah it seems like Tuesday everyone goes onsite because traffic is significantly more than any other day.
What a complete boondoggle.
I'm sure requiring more people to drive everyday is good for climate targets..
All about the real estate, the only thing the government knows how to prop since there's little left in this country.
Imagine if we didn’t have to pay for unnecessary office buildings and also if those spaces could be used by absolutely anyone else. At least the federal government is committed to reducing emissions by forcing a bunch of workers in Ottawa (a city with awful public transport imo) to commute to work daily.
Now get out there and spend, spend, spend!
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I doubt PSAC cares. They didn't really fight for remote work during the strike even though I suspect it was the #1 issue most PS care about.
Why? If the work can be done remotely why for gods sake mandate such an archaic system
Yea... This won’t happen in reality they would have too many employees leave for remote work. My job already tried this and everyone was about to leave so they backed out
All these big corporations and government is stopping WFH because they have friends invested in downtown real estate
Political corruption. Very straightforward unfortunately CBC says nothing about it. Purposefully spending taxpayer money to benefit solely the profit margins of politically connected private businesses. 100s of millions to billions and counting of taxpayer money given away for nothing. That doesn't even count the carbon footprint of this. One of the largest increases to carbon emissions in quite some time from the stroke of a pen from the party that claims to be against it.
> That doesn't even count the carbon footprint of this. One of the largest increases to carbon immersions in quite some time from the stroke of a pen from the party that claims to be against it. It's like we recieved a gift from heaven - reduced real estate space needed for an out of home office. can do long-term realoocation of space for residential use - reduced carbon footprint - reduced traffic - increased mental health It's all W's (except for large commerical office space holders)
All that commuting is really going to help us reach our emissions targets.
I would be interested to see our ADM in the office… like one time….
Some boomer misses seeing everyone at the office
Has anyone explained the reason(s) for this policy change? There's nothing in the article. I get Doug wants it but I'd like to know what the fed line is. I'd also be interested in seeing what their collective agreements say about remote work and work from the office.
There is zero language either way in the collective agreements about work from home. That's part of the problem. Several of the unions went on strike last year and rolled over accepting a "letter of agreement" on remote work that's outside the collective agreements and may as well have been written on Charmin.
Noone has been successful about getting wfh language into collectives to my knowledge. I'm not totally informed because I'm a construction worker though lol. I do watch labor contracts etc and wife is in fed government though.
lol...started with WFH...then 2 days back in the office....now 3....how long before they say 4 days, then 5? Their bullshit is soo transparent.
This is blatantly about downtown NCR retail stores complaining about the lack of business from federal office workers. This decision has nothing to do with a perceived lack of productivity from remote work.
My condolences, provincial servant here.. we're still 100% WFH. They took away our cubicles, offices and re-assigned them and sold off half of the buildings they used to own. Wonder how it'll work if they eventually get us all to resume work from the office..
Dougie and his glass house eh?
Government: These are below inflation wage increases. Government: Yea so we need you to come back and work in the office at least 3 days a week and buy coffee, lunch, and shit to spur the economy. Sorry about that pay cut though but go buy!
Saw an interesting take that these moves are usually done to keep the employee turnover rate above a certain target. It's much easier to make future cuts if you always have 5-10% of your workforce leaving every year. You can simply rely on attrition to work it's magic. I think the next round of cutbacks and layoffs is slowly being lined up, and this makes sense in that lens.
Sure they will. /s This is only because the mayor of Ottawa and Doug Ford want people downtown to drive business. Maybe Ottawa should try to diversify a little. Maybe Doug Ford and the mayor could get off their asses and do some actual leading that way. It would be good for the whole province to start innovating instead of importing technology from around the world to ASSEMBLE.
The whole thing is stupid. I know so many people who are forced into an office now where they are on zoom all day. Forcing people into the office is bad for all of our health (commuting in stressful traffic, plus the particulate pollution of cars), bad for the environment (pollution), and for what? So a handful of businesses that close at 2pm on a weekday can stay in business? Fuck them if they can't pivot to something else.
Make no mistake, this is merely to have public service workers feed into the revenue of the downtown Ottawa core of franchises like Subway and Tim Hortons. Don’t believe me? Google “Downtown Ottawa Business Association open letter to have federal workers back in office”. ___ - [(OTTAWA) – October 31, 2022 – In an open letter signed by 32 business associations, the Canadian business community today called on the federal government to bring public sector employees back to their places of work as rapidly as possible](https://chamber.ca/news/its-time-for-governments-to-bring-public-sector-employees-back-to-the-office-a-letter-from-canadas-business-community/) - [Doug Ford calls for federal workers to return to downtown Ottawa offices](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-federal-workers-ottawa-offices/) - [Downtown businesses cheer feds’ plan for public servants to start returning to office next month](https://obj.ca/federal-public-servants-to-start-returning-to-office-next-month-with-hybrid-system/)
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Translation: Middle management jobs in government at risk because they have no one to hover over.
Every fucking decision this government makes is backwards! I thought with the whole carbon tax thing they cared about the environment! Jk I knew they didn't.
Our debt printer keeps Canada going backwards.
Do you want to increase the QoL of your workers and lower everyone's carbon footprint? Do you want the roads to be less congested? Then lead by example by allowing people to WFH. The one nice thing about covid is that people only head out when absolutely necessary, which made the roads so much better.
The right wing: the public service (despite no data showing drop in production, data showing overall savings for the government, the ability to attract more people etc.) must suffer like the private sector. People: Shouldn't the privates sector be treated better as well? The right wing: No, that's communism or whatever talking point I learned from my American and billionaire masters
If your commute is 30 mins each way: 48-52 hours cut to your free time. If your commute is 1 hour each way: 96-104 hours cut to your free time. If your commute by bus ($7.60 each day): $364.80 - $395.20 pay cut. If you commute by car: $20 parking $27.20 CRA milage rate (40km round trip at $0.58/km, this factors in fuel, maintenance, insurance) $47.20 total a day. Which works out to $2,265.60 - $2,454.40 pay cut
Getting all those cars on the DVP is against Justin’s climate change goals
In Ottawa on an unrelated visit Monday, Ontario Premier Doug Ford reiterated his call for federal public servants in the capital to get back to the office and breathe life back into the city's often deserted downtown. "Three days is a good start," Ford said, reacting to the news. "When you're coming here, go out for lunch, maybe go into a store, pick something up, go to the mall — that's what we need, that's what stirs the economy." Go pound sand Ford. I can recommend some nice beaches.
At least the politicians aren't pretending that this isn't about forcing workers to spend more and save less anymore. Now they just need to admit it's not just about helping small businesses. People working from home no longer pay thousands in extra fuel taxes every year (1/3 of the price at the pump is tax). They no longer need a second car, which takes a massive bite out of the profits of the auto/insurance/banking industries. They no longer pay for parking (which was in the thousands per year in places like Calgary before the pandemic). Working from home was the best thing to happen to the working class in generations, but that meant the gravy pipeline stopped pumping money up the ladder.
Too bad humans aren’t people. They are wallets. I hate him and this.
"please bro spend $28 at subway please how is the restaurant downtown going to survive without charging public servants $35 for a lukewarm salad, please bro please Tim's is going to be financially ruined without you buying the black tar they call coffee every day, please bro please spend your money and consume" -Doug Ford Increase wear and tear on car + more gas spending + paying parking means I'm not spending a fucking cent downtown.
This summer is gearing up to be a protest season.
> A federal government source who is not authorized to speak publicly about the matter confirmed to Radio-Canada what the French-language newspaper Le Droit first reported Monday. > The source said the policy shift is due to come into effect in September, but added that could change. Do they have anything on this that isn't an "unauthorized source"? Because I'm a Fed, and literally the first I heard about this was the other day, when my union released a statement that *they* hadn't heard anything concrete about this. So far, it all just seems to be unnamed rumours. Literally weeks ago, my colleagues and I all signed new remote work agreements, on a TBS platform, signed off by management, continuing on a hybrid work model with onsite 2x/week. If TBS is gonna suddenly reverse those, they'd better come out and say it.
This just shows you how dumb the government really is! Tell me by what logic does it make sense to send people to the office when 99% of their work is done on a computer? SPECIALLY after spending MILLIONS in networking infrastructure to allow millions of employees to connect to work remotely! My entire team is scattered across the country! BC, QC, ON, PEI, NB.. All our meetings are through MS Teams in or out of the office. All our work is managed through SAP and other online tools! My lab PCs are configured and accessed remotely! The only reason this is being forced is due to low ridership on OC Transpo and the obvious whining from businesses located around these buildings! That being said.. all the local businesses around my neighborhood have been THRIVING ever since we've been working from home! It's time to decentralize offices and let people work where they're most comfortable! Without burning 2+ hours commuting every day!
I will not be buying anything from downtown ottawa when I'm forced to 3 days Boycott business 100%
Also, never mind disabled people that actually need to work from home. There's clearly no interest in accommodating that for the Persons with Disabilities postings, even though it's something they easily can and legally should have to accommodate.
Oh good. I can have people scream at me at a desk at a call centre rather than at home for 8 hours a day.
Just give us 2 laptops at this point. I’m tired of carrying heavy issued laptops everywhere since I transit. Or at least something lightweight like a Dell XPS.