OTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney could soon face an uproar from public service unions as the Liberal government prepares its return-to-office plans on the heels of Premier Doug Ford’s all-in approach.
The prime minister earlier this week said plans for more office days will “come to a sharper view” over the coming weeks, adding “there will likely be different levels of return” depending on seniority, role and office capacity.
His comments came amid escalating rumours and reports in the city about looming changes, which have raised concerns among labour unions already angry over the Carney government’s plans to shed thousands of government jobs and cut federal spending by around $60 billion in the next five years.
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But civil service unions have received “nothing official” from the government about a change from the current model, which requires at least three in-office days for most public servants, said Alex Silas, the national executive vice-president of the nearly 240,000-member Public Service Alliance of Canada.
“We’re definitely concerned that the prime minister may have been hinting at unilateral changes,” Silas told the Star.
Carney has framed his plans as a “transformation” of the public service and has defended looming job cuts as a way to bring the government’s size to more sustainable levels. He said this week the Liberal government will be “engaging with public sector unions” on the appropriate levels of that return, but unions say they’ve yet to be consulted.
Silas said many government departments are sidestepping the current three-day in-office plan because it has not worked out in practice. The federal Treasury Board did not provide data on hybrid work when reached by the Star, saying those numbers are not “centralized.”
“When the three day was first implemented, you had a lot of people going down to the office like they were told to do, only to find out that they didn’t have an actual workstation that day, that it had been double booked, that there’s no more spaces available, and then getting sent back home,” Silas said. “All of that is a waste of time and a frustration for that worker, but it’s also a waste of taxpayer resources.”
“There’s nothing making me feel optimistic there,” Silas added.
On the provincial side, Premier Ford has ordered Ontario civil servants to a full-time return to the office after Jan. 5, but the Star revealed this week that nearly 11,000 government employees, about one in six, have formally requested alternative arrangements, leaving Queen’s Park scrambling.
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Silas said it’s too early to tell how the process will unfold federally, but he would expect a similar reaction if the Carney government tried to order them back without flexibility.
It’s a politically thorny territory for the Liberal government.
The entire Ottawa-area, where many public servants are concentrated, voted for Liberal MPs in the last election — including in Carney’s own Nepean riding — shutting out Conservative and New Democrat challengers as the Liberals promised to “cap,” not cut the civil service.
Sean O’Reilly, the head of the more than 80,000 member Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada, told the Star he expects those MPs to be advocating for their constituents’ concerns because “these are the people that put them into power.”
“For our members, (return-to-office) is a very, very important aspect of their jobs, and they are willing to fight for it, whatever form that takes,” O’Reilly said, alluding to the next round of collective bargaining as an example.
Government House Leader and Gatineau MP Steve MacKinnon told reporters this week that the federal government is “looking around at what may be best practices in the private sector and other provinces, and I know that they’ll want to do what’s right for the public service.”
But as concerns rise, Ottawa-area Liberal MPs have expressed hope the government will be flexible with employees in its plans.
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I continue to be a proponent of hybrid work,” Ottawa Centre MP Yasir Naqvi told the Star. “I think that we should look at perfecting it.”
Liberal MP Bruce Fanjoy, who unseated Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre in his Carleton riding during the election, made the same case recently, saying he doesn’t go to Parliament Hill every day as an MP.
“I don’t see a lot of benefit in forcing someone to be stuck in traffic for 45 minutes in order to jump on a Zoom call downtown,” Fanjoy told The Canadian Press.
Matthieu Perrotin, a spokesperson for Treasury Board President Shafqat Ali, reiterated the prime minister’s comments in a statement to the Star.
“As the prime minister said, we will be engaging with unions on the modalities of these changes. We will come to a clearer view over the course of the next several weeks,” Perrotin wrote. “The public service is needed at a critical time, and we must ensure they have the tools they need.”
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