The federal government will require public servants to work at least two to three days a week in person, or between 40 to 60 per cent of their regular schedule, in the spring.
At a news conference Thursday afternoon, Mona Fortier, president of the Treasury Board, said the change was to create a common approach to remote work for the federal public service.
“In-person work better supports collaboration, team spirit, innovation and a culture of belonging,” she said.
“We’ve now seen that there needs to be greater fairness and equity across our workplaces and we need consistency in how hybrid work is applied across the federal government.”
The one-size-fits-all hybrid model will come into full effect March 31.
This move represents a change for some departments, although many public servants already work in person several days a week.
Need for ‘fairness and equity’
To allow for a smooth transition, the government will use a phased introduction by Jan. 16, with full implementation by March 31, 2023.
Government of Canada office buildings, as seen in downtown Gatineau, Que., in July 2022, won’t be as empty in the spring of 2023. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
Fortier said the government had decided to move to a hybrid system and told departments and organizations to experiment with different hybrid systems to find what worked and what didn’t.
Through that period, Fortier said they identified inconsistencies in approach, mainly through what she described as “fairness and equity” in the system.
“I understand that there were conversations and feedback shared … we informed the unions about this new decision from the management, that location of work is a right of the employer.”
Union calls decision ‘disingenuous’
Jennifer Carr, president of the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC), which represents about 70,000 scientists and professionals working for government, said workers have been doing their jobs effectively from home and she is not satisfied by the reasons given for the mandate.
Carr also said her union was given a one-hour notice on the announcement.
“To hear the minister say … the decision was about serving Canadians, and not providing specific examples [about how], is one of the things that I find kind of disingenuous,” she said.
“They are paid for the work that they produce, not where they produce it,” Carr said of her members.
“To meet this mandate, they will have public service come into [Government of Canada] work hubs or work locations and sit on computers and do exactly the same type of work.”
Public Service Alliance of Canada president Chris Aylward called a new in-person work mandate for public servants a ‘knee-jerk reaction’ from the federal government.
Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC) President Chris Aylward echoed the sentiments of Carr, saying members have shown they can work remotely.
“We see this as a poorly planned and knee-jerk reaction from the government that doesn’t have the best interest of workers or Canadians at heart, and it’s completely at odds really with the direction that this government has been moving towards on remote work.”
He said the union is currently negotiating a new contract with the federal government and members want the agreement to include their right to work remotely.
“For Treasury Board to unilaterally basically change the terms and conditions of our members’ employment, and imposing a mandatory return to the offices, is an egregious violation of workers’ collective bargaining rates,” he said.
“When you go into collective bargaining, there is a freeze on terms and conditions of employment and certainly that’s not what we’re seeing here.”
“This is a slap in the face of unions and of our members who have shown nothing but complete dedication to their employer and Canadians since the beginning of the pandemic,” said CAPE President Greg Phillips. Read our statement: <a href=”https://t.co/skQdYk1c3k”>https://t.co/skQdYk1c3k</a> <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/CanLab?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#CanLab</a> <a href=”https://t.co/1bAFI22d1j”>pic.twitter.com/1bAFI22d1j</a>
The Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE), which represents 23,000 workers, released a statement after the announcement, calling the move “a slap in the face.”
President Greg Phillips said the timing of the announcement, “happening right in the middle of a nationwide viral cocktail of three viruses,” is concerning, noting the current strain being put on the health-care system.
In its statement, CAPE said it was co-ordinating a joint response with the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), PIPSC and other bargaining agents.
In a brief statement issued Thursday afternoon, Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe applauded the federal government’s decision.
“The federal government is the largest employer in Ottawa, and having clarity around the future of its workforce is critical for our local economy,” Sutcliffe said.
“When public servants return to government offices, it will be beneficial to both our public transit system and our downtown.”
Please see my statement following the federal government’s announcement of the hybrid working model.<br>—-<br>Veuillez voire ma déclaration à la suite de l’annonce par le gouvernement fédéral du modèle de travail hybride. <a href=”https://t.co/Ub0FXd9hz2″>pic.twitter.com/Ub0FXd9hz2</a>
Fortier said departments will have the latitude to decide whether they require employees to work anywhere from 40 per cent of the time at the office to 60 per cent.
The new model will be applied to the entirety of the core public administration, with it being strongly recommended that separate agencies adopt a similar strategy.
Some exceptions will be made in a very limited set of circumstances and will need approval of management, the news release added.
“If this is about ticking a box about being present in the workplace, and not about how we’re performing, not about the work that we produce, I really have to question the logic,” Carr said.
“Especially the amount of savings that they have garnered over the pandemic and could garner in saving taxpayer money.”
Immunocompromised employees will continue to be able to apply for an accommodation.
“As has been the case from the outset of the pandemic, employees can be confident that effective measures continue to be taken to protect their health and safety in the workplace,” the news release states.
Businesses in downtown Ottawa have long decried federal workers who no longer come downtown to work. But the government has stopped short of saying it would eventually bring all employees back to the office five days a week.
“Hybrid work is the future of the public service,” the release said.
Downtown bar manager hopes for bump in business with return to work
Dominique Labelle of Château Lafayette in downtown Ottawa says she expects a return to a “somewhat normal” existence when public servants come back to the office for two to three days a week.
Montreal Alouettes wide receiver Tyson Philpot has announced he will be out for the rest of the CFL season.
The Delta, B.C., native posted the news on his Instagram page Thursday.
“To Be Continued. Shoutout my team, the fans of the CFL and the whole city of Montreal! I can’t wait to be back healthy and write this next chapter in 2025,” the statement read.
Philpot, 24, injured his foot in a 33-23 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Aug. 10 and was placed on the six-game injured list the next week.
The six-foot-one, 195-pound receiver had 58 receptions, 779 yards and five touchdowns in nine games for the league-leading Alouettes in his third season.
Philpot scored the game-winning touchdown in Montreal’s Grey Cup win last season to punctuate a six-reception, 63-yard performance.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained a concussion for the third time in his NFL career, leaving his team’s game Thursday night against Buffalo after running into defensive back Damar Hamlin and hitting the back of his head against the turf.
Tagovailoa remained down for about two minutes before getting to his feet and walking to the sideline after the play in the third quarter. He made his way to the tunnel not long afterward, looking into the stands before smiling and departing toward the locker room.
The Dolphins needed almost no time before announcing it was a concussion. The team said he had two during the 2022 season, and Tagovailoa was diagnosed with another concussion when he was a college player at Alabama.
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said Tagovailoa would get “proper procedural evaluation” and “appropriate care” on Friday.
“The furthest thing from my mind is, ‘What is the timeline?’ We just need to evaluate and just worry about my teammate, like the rest of the guys are,” McDaniel said. “We’ll get more information tomorrow and take it day by day from here.”
Some players saw Tagovailoa in the locker room after the game and said they were encouraged. Tagovailoa spoke with some players and then went home after the game, McDaniel said.
“I have a lot of love for Tua, built a great relationship with him,” said quarterback Skylar Thompson, who replaced Tagovailoa after the injury. “You care about the person more than the player and everybody in the organization would say the same thing. Just really praying for Tua and hopefully everything will come out all right.”
Tagovailoa signed a four-year, $212 million extension before this season — a deal that makes him one of the highest-paid players in the NFL — and was the NFL’s leading passer in Week 1 this season. Tagovailoa left with the Dolphins trailing 31-10, and that was the final score.
“If you know Tua outside of football, you can’t help but feel for him,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said on Amazon following the game. “He’s a great football player but he’s an even greater human being. He’s one of the best humans on the planet. I’ve got a lot of love for him and I’m just praying for him and his family, hoping everything’s OK. But it’s tough, man. This game of football that we play, it’s got its highs and it’s got its lows — and this is one of the lows.”
Tagovailoa’s college years and first three NFL seasons were marred by injury, though he positioned himself for a big pay bump with an injury-free and productive 2023 as he led the Dolphins into the playoffs. He threw for 29 touchdowns and a league-best 4,624 yards last year.
When, or if, he can come back this season is anyone’s guess. Tagovailoa said in April 2023 that the concussions he had in the 2022 season left him contemplating his playing future. “I think I considered it for a time,” he said then, when asked if he considered stepping away from the game to protect himself.
McDaniel said it’s not his place to say if Tagovailoa should return to football. “He’ll be evaluated and we’ll have conversations and progress as appropriate,” McDaniel said.
Tagovailoa was hurt Thursday on a fourth-down keeper with about 4:30 left in the third. He went straight ahead into Hamlin and did not slide, leading with his right shoulder instead.
Hamlin was the player who suffered a cardiac arrest after making a tackle during a Monday night game in January 2023 at Cincinnati, causing the NFL to suspend a pivotal game that quickly lost significance in the aftermath of a scary scene that unfolded in front of a national television audience.
Tagovailoa wound up on his back, both his hands in the air and Bills players immediately pointed at him as if to suggest there was an injury. Dolphins center Aaron Brewer quickly did the same, waving to the sideline.
Tagovailoa appeared to be making a fist with his right hand as he lay on the ground. It was movement consistent with something that is referred to as the “fencing response,” which can be common after a traumatic brain injury.
Tagovailoa eventually got to his feet. McDaniel grabbed the side of his quarterback’s head and gave him a kiss on the cheek as Tagovailoa departed. Thompson came into the game to take Tagovailoa’s spot.
“I love Tua on and off the football field,” Bills edge Von Miller said. “I’m a huge fan of him. I can empathize and sympathize with him because I’ve been there. I wish him the best.”
Tagovailoa’s history with concussions — and how he has since worked to avoid them — is a huge part of the story of his career, and now comes to the forefront once again.
He had at least two concussions during the 2022 season. He was hurt in a Week 3 game against Buffalo and cleared concussion protocol, though he appeared disoriented on that play but returned to the game.
The NFL later changed its concussion protocol to mandate that if a player shows possible concussion symptoms — including a lack of balance or stability — he must sit out the rest of the game.
Less than a week later, in a Thursday night game at Cincinnati, Tagovailoa was concussed on a scary hit that briefly knocked him unconscious and led to him being taken off the field on a stretcher.
His second known concussion of that season came in a December game against Green Bay, and he didn’t play for the rest of the 2022 season. After that, Tagovailoa began studying ways where he may be able to fall more safely and protect himself against further injury — including studying jiu-jitsu.
“I’m not worried about anything that’s out of my hands,” McDaniel said. “I’m just worried about the human being.”
NEW YORK (AP) — When her husband turns on the television to hear news about the upcoming presidential election, that’s often a signal for Lori Johnson Malveaux to leave the room.
It can get to be too much. Often, she’ll go to a TV in another room to watch a movie on the Hallmark Channel or BET. She craves something comforting and entertaining. And in that, she has company.
While about half of Americans say they are following political news “extremely” or “very” closely, about 6 in 10 say they need to limit how much information they consume about the government and politics to avoid feeling overloaded or fatigued, according to a new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.
Make no mistake: Malveaux plans to vote. She always does. “I just get to the point where I don’t want to hear the rhetoric,” she said.
The 54-year-old Democrat said she’s most bothered when she hears people on the news telling her that something she saw with her own eyes — like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — didn’t really happen.
“I feel like I’m being gaslit. That’s the way to put it,” she said.
Sometimes it feels like ‘a bombardment’
Caleb Pack, 23, a Republican from Ardmore, Oklahoma, who works in IT, tries to keep informed through the news feeds on his phone, which is stocked with a variety of sources, including CNN, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.
Yet sometimes, Pack says, it seems like a bombardment.
“It’s good to know what’s going on, but both sides are pulling a little bit extreme,” he said. “It just feels like it’s a conversation piece everywhere, and it’s hard to escape it.”
Media fatigue isn’t a new phenomenon. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in late 2019 found roughly two in three Americans felt worn out by the amount of news there is, about the same as in a poll taken in early 2018. During the 2016 presidential campaign, about 6 in 10 people felt overloaded by campaign news.
But it can be particularly acute with news related to politics. The AP-NORC/USAFacts poll found that half of Americans feel a need to limit their consumption of information related to crime or overseas conflicts, while only about 4 in 10 are limiting news about the economy and jobs.
It’s easy to understand, with television outlets like CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC full of political talk and a wide array of political news online, sometimes complicated by disinformation.
“There’s a glut of information,” said Richard Coffin, director of research and advocacy for USAFacts, “and people are having a hard time figuring out what is true or not.”
Women are more likely to feel they need to limit media
In the AP-NORC poll, about 6 in 10 men said they follow news about elections and politics at least “very” closely, compared to about half of women. For all types of news, not just politics, women are more likely than men to report the need to limit their media consumption, the survey found.
White adults are also more likely than Black or Hispanic adults to say they need to limit media consumption on politics, the poll found.
Kaleb Aravzo, 19, a Democrat, gets a baseline of news by listening to National Public Radio in the morning at home in Logan, Utah. Too much politics, particularly when he’s on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram, can trigger anxiety and depression.
“If it pops up on my page when I’m on social media,” he said, “I’ll just scroll past it.”
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Sanders reported from Washington. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.
The AP poll of 1,019 adults was conducted July 29-August 8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
