Federal departments and agencies plan to spend more than $18.7 million reconfiguring and acquiring office space to enforce Ottawa’s new four-day-a-week in-person work mandate, even as the government moves to cut as many as 28,000 public service jobs by 2029, according to figures reported by BNN Bloomberg.
Of the 13 federal organizations that disclosed related costs, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada reported the largest outlay at $5.7 million, followed by Fisheries and Oceans Canada at $4.2 million, the Canada Border Services Agency at $3.9 million and Correctional Service of Canada at $1.37 million. The identities of the other nine organizations, and the full breakdown of their spending, were not disclosed in the reporting, and Public Services and Procurement Canada said it was still assessing its own costs.
The spending follows a mandate that took effect in stages this year, with executives in core public service departments required onsite five days a week by May 4 and all other employees four days a week by July 6, up from a previous three-day requirement for most staff. The policy has landed in the middle of the deepest round of federal job cuts in years. Ottawa has issued more than 24,000 workforce adjustment notices since the spring as it works toward eliminating up to 28,000 positions by 2029, through a mix of program reviews, attrition and early retirement, according to figures reported by Benefits and Pensions Monitor. Roughly 10,000 of the affected jobs fall within the membership of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the largest federal public sector union.
That timing is the contradiction the wire coverage of the spending figures did not examine. PSAC says the government’s own internal analysis had projected as much as $6 billion in potential savings from expanded remote work and reduced office footprints, a figure the union has cited in arguing the new mandate runs counter to Ottawa’s stated fiscal priorities. “It is insulting for any employer, let alone the government, to change the conditions of work while its workers are in bargaining,” the union said in a statement, adding that the mandate was announced without consulting unions and that it is examining legal options. PSAC national president Sharon DeSousa has called the policy “insulting,” and Nathan Prier, president of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, said it shows “wilful disregard for reality and absolute contempt” for workers.
The money is also going toward space that, by some accounts, is not yet usable. Vivian Funk, a union representative who has toured federal workplaces in the National Capital Region, described offices as overcrowded, with employees “having to search for desks in the morning,” and cited buildings with mould, contaminants and non-functional heating systems, according to reporting by Benefits and Pensions Monitor. Real estate analyst Shawn Hamilton questioned whether the government has a workable plan to expand capacity at all, saying there are no visible steps to add office space in the National Capital Region beyond the costs now surfacing. Transportation planner Pierre Barrieau separately warned that a fuller return to in-person work will strain regional transit, including the Societe de transport de l’Outaouais, which he said has faced “decades of underfunding.”
For a government that has spent much of the fall framing its agenda around fiscal restraint, the return-to-office math is not straightforward. Ottawa has not detailed how the $18.7-million figure fits its broader spending targets, and it remains unclear whether the nine undisclosed departments’ costs, once released, will push the total higher. Public servants, in the meantime, are navigating a mandate that arrived, critics say, without either the office space or the bargaining process to match it.
Via BNN Bloomberg. Additional reporting from Benefits and Pensions Monitor and the Public Service Alliance of Canada.
