Return To Office - Why Is This Still An Issue? - October 9, 2026

Some Effects Of COVID-19 Still Linger

The City of Ottawa is holding a municipal election later this month.  There were rumours circulating that three of the mayoral candidates were campaigning on a promise to overturn the Return-To-Office (“RTO”) mandate for civil servants, among other policy promises they were making.  According to Treasury Board statistics, there are approximately 146,000 federal civil servants that live in the Ottawa-Gatineau area. This makes up almost 20% of the workforce in Ottawa, and approximately 18% of eligible voters for the upcoming municipal election.  During COVID, approximately 70% of these civil servants worked from home (Source - Statscan, Treasury Board). This group of workers in Ottawa deeply embraced working-from-home (“WFH”), and adjusted their daily way of life to this new-found flexibility.

So, one could understand why eliminating an RTO mandate would be an appealing campaign promise.  When I first heard these statements I thought, “How can they promise this? The civil servants don’t work for the Mayor or the City of Ottawa”.  A mayor has zero control over the work terms and conditions of federal civil servants.  

Some research into what these candidates actually promised in their campaigns proved that while they didn’t go so far as to overstep their potential mandates as mayor (ie, - they didn’t explicitly promise a ban on RTO requirements). But, they did take advantage of the current environment of information overload, and ambiguous narratives. They made it seem like, if elected, they could impact the work conditions of federal civil servants. 

What Did They Say?

• One candidate promised to end the RTO requirement for City of Ottawa municipal workers, and would “put pressure on the federal and provincial governments to end theirs, too”.

• Another mayoral candidate said he would “demand a delay”.

• The third mayoral candidate promised he would use city-owned land and zoning to help build federal satellite offices in the suburbs of Ottawa. 

Thus, the notion that a city mayor can “ban” an RTO mandate for civil servants is false. Two of the candidates are simply promising to lobby the federal government on behalf of voters who are civil servants.  The third candidate has proposed some concrete actions but those ideas will take about a decade to implement, if they can get approved by the broader City Council.  

Why Resist Return-To-Office?

As we all remember, WFH became a thing during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.  Working remotely gave people back a portion of their day that they previously spent commuting to an office.  Plus, it gave them some flexibility to deal with family and health matters that came up from time-to-time. Some people moved houses to areas further away from their offices, with the intent of improving their living conditions.  Being able to WFH became a quality-of-life issue these workers didn’t want to give up.  

Why Did Employers Want Their Teams Back In The Office?

Employers believe that in-person work improves the company culture, fosters collaboration and allows for better mentoring of junior and entry-level staff.  As a long-time entrepreneur and business leader, I’m a big believer that culture and trust among the team cannot be built over Zoom or Teams.  

Some managers didn’t feel their staff were as productive when working from home. Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom's research found fully remote workers are 10-20% less productive than in-office workers.  

In Ottawa in particular, there is a sentiment among the general public that many employees who work from home, are in fact out running personal errands during regular working hours. I don't have an office job at the moment and thus it’s ok if I’m in a store in the middle of the work day.  But, as a taxpayer, I don’t want to see civil servants in a shopping mall when they should be working.  

Full disclosure - I’m a big fan of having employees working from the office; working-from-home is ok on an as needed basis (occasional health issues, children’s needs, periodic logistical issues, etc.) but it should not be the default work arrangement, for the reasons mentioned above. 

Is The Resistance To RTO Universal, Or Only In Some Cities?

Large commercial centres such as New York, Toronto and London never embraced WFH as a permanent option, and most companies located in those cities required their staff to work from the office once it was deemed safe to do so.  Large US financial institutions such as JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs imposed a full RTO in March of 2025, after allowing a hybrid work arrangement for a number of years.  The Globe & Mail reported that downtown Toronto office vacancy had dropped by 50%, driven mostly by banks headquartered there implementing RTO mandates.  A RTO is not an issue in large commercial cities. 

However, in federal government cities such as Ottawa and Washington, there has been a strong push by the civil service work force to maintain the right to work from home. Earlier in this article we addressed the situation in Ottawa. How about Washington D.C.? 

In Washington during COVID-19 occupancy at federal government buildings dropped to 12% and the US federal government started shedding millions of square feet of office space, either selling or transferring buildings. The office infrastructure was shrunk to accommodate about 60% of the work force at any given time.  With a RTO mandate, there was no longer room for 100% of the civil servants to work from the office.  

By achieving a short-term goal of reducing costs by shedding office space, both the US and Canadian governments find themselves in a jam now of not having enough space for all their employees.  What’s perplexing about this is that the decision-makers must have known that COVID-19 wasn’t going to last forever, and that eventually they would need that office space for all the employees return to the office.  However, short term cost reduction took priority over long-term planning, leaving both governments without sufficient space for a full return.

A Different Mandate In Washington D.C.

There are reports that the RTO mandate with US civil service is tied to other objectives of the Trump administration.  That being, to reduce the size and cost of the Federal government.  Thus by forcing US civil servants back to their offices, and terminating the employment of those that don’t return, the Administration achieves its objective of shrinking the federal government.  

What Do The People Paying These Salaries Want?

Civil service salaries are paid through taxpayer dollars, and ultimately they work and provide federal services for the taxpayers, the people…shouldn’t they have some say in how this work is done? 

An Angus Reid Poll found that 59% of Canadians supported federal workers spending more time in the office.  71% of those polled feel that civil servants already enjoy better working conditions than everyone else.  

In the US, a national voter poll found 70% of Americans support having federal workers back in the office.  

The Final Word

I never understood the resistance from any work force, civil service or private sector, to being asked to return to your office, your place of work.  Unless you specifically negotiated for and were granted the right to do your job from home, either part-time or full-time, why would you resist a return to the work conditions you previously agreed to.  Anyone who was required to perform their paid duties at the employer’s office before any WFH allowance were granted, should not object to being asked to return to the same work conditions in place prior to the WFH period.  That’s what you signed up for, and what you did in order to receive your pay cheque.  

My conversations with colleagues in industry around Canada and the US confirm that this reluctance to RTO is not really an issue in other cities, and is most pronounced in Ottawa, because of the large number of civil servants who live here.  The same phenomenon applies to some degree in Washington, because of their equally large civil service population.   

As an employer dealing with this situation, if your team doesn’t want to return to your office, it may be time to move on.  The pain from being short-staffed temporarily is far less than the pain caused by a poor culture and the lack of cohesiveness amongst your team members.  A team cannot gel over video conferencing. 

Thanks for reading!

Are you a civil servant?  How do you feel about being asked to return-to-the office?  Share your thoughts in the comments section below.  

Are you living in a city with lots of civil servants? How do you feel about civil servants working from home? Share your thoughts in the comments section below. 

Are you an employer dealing with reluctance from your staff to return to the office?  How are you dealing with this?  Share your thoughts in the comments section below.