EDITORIAL: Feds’ work-from-home isn’t working anymore

Prime Minister Mark Carney is reportedly getting tough about returning the federal civil service to the workplace. He told the Ottawa Board of Trade last week that his government is in discussions with public sector unions to get them back into the office.

Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe has expressed concern that a prolonged work-from-home employment ethos is creating a ghost town in the capital’s downtown core.

Federal public employees are now expected to be in the office three days a week. Managers have to be in the office a minimum of four days.

One big issue will be how to fit all those public servants into the available office space. The federal public service ballooned under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. A recent report by the Fraser Institute points out that the bureaucracy grew by 950,000 people between 2015 and 2024. Where are all those people working from currently?

Fraser report author Jason Childs, an economics professor at the University of Regina, says that in all provinces except Manitoba, public sector employment growth outpaced private sector employment growth, which exerted “increased pressure on government finances.”  There are wide regional discrepancies. In Atlantic Canada, public sector employment represents 30% of all employment. In Alberta, that number is 18%.

“The trend toward sustained strong public sector employment growth is worrisome given Canada’s weak productivity and persistent deficits by both provinces and the federal government,” Childs says.

“The size of the broad public sector workforce will have to shrink, both absolutely and relative to overall Canadian employment.”

Given those facts, you’d think public sector unions would be rarin’ to get their membership back into the office, if only to show we still need them. Instead, they’re pushing back. While union leaders insist that work-from-home is as efficient as in-office work, not everyone agrees. A recent auditor’s report, for example, slammed the Canada Revenue Agency for long wait times and a lack of accuracy in handling routine tax questions.

We have a bloated public service and only mediocre results. The tail’s wagging the dog. It’s time to get the federal public service back to the office. The problem, it would seem, is how to squeeze nearly one million extra workers hired over the last decade into existing workspaces.