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More workplaces in Canada are going back to the office full time. Here’s what this means for you

Published

10 months ago

January 8, 2024

Around a quarter of the workforce in Canada was working exclusively from home two years ago. But now, with more and more employers returning to in-person work, what does this mean for Canadians who embraced remote work?

When COVID-19 struck Canada in early 2020, it came with a huge shift in how we work, with many offices closing their doors and office workers vacating cubicles in favour of remote work to cut down their risk of transmission.

It was a mass exodus to remote work that had never been seen before. According to Statistics Canada, only seven per cent of workers in Canada said they “usually” worked from home in 2016. This jumped to 24.3 per cent by May 2021, and remained there until early 2022.

But since then, workers have slowly been trickling back into the office. By May 2022, the share of workers working exclusively from home had gone down to 22.4 per cent, then 20.1 per cent in May 2023.

As of November 2023, StatCan data shows that just 12.6 per cent of the workforce aged 15 to 69 years old still exclusively work from home.

Part of this change has been due to an increase in hybrid work arrangements, in which workers work some hours at home and some outside the home. The amount of workers in hybrid arrangements has more than tripled in the last two years, going from 3.6 per cent of workers to 11.7 per cent by November.

Navigating the how, when and why of whether to return to in-person work is a complicated prospect because of the way these remote arrangements started, said Jon Pinkus, a labour and employment lawyer with Samfiru Tumarkin LLP.

“Whenever we’re talking about the rights of employees, it’s a question really of contract, right? Sometimes we’re talking about a written contract. Sometimes we’re talking about implied rights of contract. And this has been, in many cases, uncharted waters, right? Because we’ve never had a situation where everyone, all of a sudden, became remote,” he told CTVNews.ca in a phone interview.

Generally, the way it’s always worked is that if someone is hired as a remote worker and has been working remotely for a number of years, “that’s become a term of your employment,” he said. This holds true even during the pandemic — if you were hired in a remote position, you can’t be forced to suddenly attend an office as a requirement of your employment.

But what about those whose jobs became remote only because of the pandemic?

All of the case law surrounding remote work is from before the pandemic, making it hard to say for certain what the legal precedent is.

“An employee who is being asked now to go back to the office after having worked remotely for several years should absolutely be consulting with a lawyer,” Pinkus said.

With 2024 just around the corner, any employer who went remote during the pandemic and wants to bring employees back to the office against their wishes has kind of missed the window to do this easily, he added.

“The time to set parameters was in 2020 and 2021, where it could be conveyed to those employees that look, we may be continuing this into 2023, but this is ultimately a temporary arrangement, and we expect we’re going to bring you back in as soon as circumstances allow,” he said.

Employers who laid out these expectations earlier can refer back to them in the event of employees complaining about a return to the office.

“If you have an employee who was hired in person, let’s say in 2015, and then during the pandemic, was put in a remote arrangement, and then in mid-2022 was told to come back to the office, it’d be very difficult for that employee to say, ‘Well, it’s now a term of my employment that I get to work remotely,’” Pinkus said.

But if employers didn’t set official expectations early on around a return to work and just allowed employees to continue working remotely since early 2020 up until now, they will likely have more difficulty pushing a sudden requirement to return to the office, he said.

The World Health Organization removed its state of emergency declaration for COVID-19 in the spring of 2023, Pinkus pointed out, and if employees who went remote in 2020 were still working remotely past that point, “it starts to look like an indefinite arrangement.”

“And once an employee has an indefinite arrangement, whether that be they’re working in a certain location, or they’re working from home, they’re entitled to have that continued,” Pinkus said. “And if the employer says, ‘Well, now we don’t want you to work from home remotely anymore,’ that could be seen as a fundamental change that the employee could decline.”

Employers can still fire whoever they want, he added, but an employee who was fired in this situation could argue the firing was without cause and that they are entitled to compensation.

“I think the only solution available with respect to employees who are not agreeable to going back into the office is to give them advance notice,” he said. “And potentially significant advance notice of that change.”

That advance notice should be the same amount of time, generally speaking, as that person’s severance entitlements, Pinkus explained.

“Basically, the employer would have to look at it as, we’re terminating this person, giving them working notice and these will be the new terms,” he said. “So you could say, ‘We are going to require you to work from the office from now on, but we acknowledge that you are someone who has a 12-month severance entitlement, so it’s not going to be effective until this time next year.’”

This would give the employee time to either search for a new job where they could continue working remotely, or make the changes needed to support their return to in-person work.

WHAT IF I MOVED DURING THE PANDEMIC?

In the early years of the pandemic, a trend that came along with remote work was workers moving farther away from the office, with some even moving to other provinces while continuing to work remotely for the same company.

If someone has moved away during the pandemic but an employer is trying to make employees return to in-person work, a key piece of information would be whether the employer knew about the move, Pinkus said.

“If the employee just moved without telling anyone, then the employer is not going to be held responsible for that,” he said.

“But if the employer says, ‘Oh, OK, you’re moving to P.E.I., that’s fine, you’re remote’ and they update their system, they don’t make any plans or requirements for them to come back at a certain date and they don’t set any parameters around that, then I think the employer bears the responsibility and is now going to have to deal with that employee as a remote employee going forward. And if they terminate that employee, they could do it, but they’re going to owe a severance package.”

DISABILITY RIGHTS IN A RETURN TO WORK SCENARIO

One of the benefits of the shift to more remote work was that it opened up more opportunities for people with disabilities.

In 2022, the percentage of people with disabilities who were employed rose to 21.3 per cent, the highest it’s been since 2008 and more than two percentage points up from 2021, BNN Bloomberg reported earlier this year. The same year, labour force participation rate went up three times as much for people with disabilities compared to those without disabilities.

Some experts have expressed concerns that the shift away from remote work will strip away some of the opportunities that opened up for people with disabilities.

The good news is that if an employee was hired as a remote employee and has disabilities that prevent them from in-person work, employers would have a difficult time justifying cutting them now because they can’t go to the office.

Pinkus added that employees who do not have physical disabilities but who cannot attend an office due to being immunocompromised or otherwise at a high risk from COVID-19 should still be able to point to this as a reason to stay remote if they have proper documentation.

“If COVID has introduced permanent risks to their health that can only really be properly mitigated by remote work, I think those employees would have a leg to stand on to say, ‘I need this, here’s my doctor’s note confirming that I need this and the doctor says this is what’s required,’” Pinkus said.

“I think it’s gonna be very difficult for an employer to refuse that because they’re going to have to show that it poses what we call ‘undue hardship’ for that employee to work from home.”

MOST OFFICE RETURNS GOING SMOOTHLY, EMPLOYERS FINDING COMPROMISES

Although the dynamics are slowly returning to more in-person work, Pinkus said he hasn’t personally seen many cases of employees disputing a return to work, nor employers navigating how to force employees back.

In cases where the workforce prefers remote work, employers have largely found compromises or simply allowed certain employees to stay remote.

“What I have seen for the most part is that employers have implemented hybrid arrangements or have continued the remote arrangements,” he said.

“Most employers and employees have reached somewhat of an equilibrium on this issue. Although (conflict has) kind of cropped up here and there, it’s not been common.”

According to StatCan, many workers still working remotely were parents with young children. In November 2023, one in three parents with at least one child under the age of five were working exclusively from home or had hybrid arrangements.

Every work situation is different, Pinkus said, and all of these discussions surrounding whether an employee can be required to return to the office, or whether employers can expect this of employees, relies on the communication that has passed between all parties — what contracts say, what expectations were expressed and how employees performed while remote.

“While everything we’ve talked about is kind of a good rule of thumb and a good guideline, ultimately, anyone who’s thinking of refusing to return back to work shouldn’t do so before they speak with a lawyer to understand what their rights are,” Pinkus said.

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As sports betting addiction takes hold in Brazil, the government moves to crack down

Published

4 hours ago

November 6, 2024

Anne Joseph

SAO PAULO (AP) — “King” doesn’t disclose his real name. Even clients of his Sao Paulo newsstand have to call him by his moniker. The Brazilian online sports gambling addict lowered his profile after a loan shark threatened to put bullets in his head if he didn’t pay up.

Broke and embarrassed, King sought treatment and support earlier this year.

“I was once addicted to slot machines, but then sports betting was so easy that I changed. I got carried away all the time,” he told The Associated Press.

King’s story is that of many vulnerable Brazilians in recent years. The country has become the third-biggest market in the world for sports betting, following the U.S. and the U.K., a report by data analysis company Comscore said last year. But unlike those countries, rampant advertising and sponsorship have been coupled with an unregulated market. The government is now — belatedly, some say — striving to get a handle on the epidemic.

On a recent evening, King’s Gamblers Anonymous meeting took place in an improvised classroom inside a church, with coffee and cookies to keep everyone awake, and supportive messages scrawled onto the blackboard. One that’s become ubiquitous in Brazil and beyond: “Only for today I will avoid the first bet.”

King and other attendees, all Christian, started a prayer and the meeting began.

King said his financial problems arose from his addiction to online sports betting, chiefly on soccer.

“I miss the adrenaline rush when I don’t bet,” he said before the gathering. “I have managed to stop for a couple of months, but I know that if I do it once again, even a small bet, it will all come back.”

Driven by the pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic was a key driver for Brazilians embracing sports betting. King said he transformed almost every sale during that time into a bet. His hook was the non-stop advertising on TV, radio, social media as well as sponsorship of local soccer teams’ jerseys. He asked for bank loans to pay his gambling debts and then, to cover those, went to the moneylender. His total debt now amounts to 85,000 reais ($15,000) — impossible to pay off with his monthly income of 8,000 reais.

Digging oneself out of debt in Brazil is especially daunting with its sky-high interest rates. Loans from Brazilian banks could add interest of almost 8% per month to the borrowed sum, and from loan sharks could be even more.

Four Gamblers Anonymous meetings attended by the AP in October featured discussions about difficulties paying down debts, forcing working-class members to postpone housing payments and cancel family vacations.

Some members of impoverished Brazilian families have used welfare money for betting instead of paying for groceries and housing, official data suggests. In August, beneficiaries of Brazil’s flagship program Bolsa Familia spent 3 billion reais ($530 million) on sports betting, according to a report from the central bank. That was more than 20% of the program’s total outlay in the month.

A host of gambling related problems

Sports betting was made legal in 2018 in a bill signed by former President Michel Temer. The subsequent turmoil has recently been setting off alarm bells, with addicts venting on social media and media reports of people losing huge sums.

On Oct. 1, the economy ministry prevented more than 2,000 betting companies from operating in Brazil for having failed to provide all the required documents. Soccer-loving President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in an interview on Oct. 17 that he will shut down the entire market in Brazil if his administration’s new regulations — presented at the end of July— fail to work. And Brazil’s Senate on Oct. 25 opened an investigation into betting companies, focusing on crime and addiction.

“There’s tax evasion, money laundering of organized crime, the use of influencers to trick people into betting. These companies need to be audited,” Sen. Soraya Thronicke, who proposed the inquiry, told journalists in Brasilia.

Sérgio Peixoto, a ride-sharing app driver in Rio, is one of many lower-middle-income Brazilians who have reduced their spending due to sports betting debt. Peixoto’s debt currently amounts to 25,000 reais ($4,400). His monthly income is four times less than that.

“It stopped being a game, it wasn’t fun. I just wanted to get the money back, so I lost even more,” said Peixoto, 26. “I could have invested that money. It would surely have given me more benefits.

Pressure to bet

Pressure on people to gamble is everywhere. Current and former soccer players, including Vinicius Júnior, Ronaldo Nazário and Roberto Rivellino, are among the poster boys for local and foreign brands. All but one of the top-tier soccer clubs have betting companies among their main sponsors, with their name and logo emblazoned on their kits. There have been cases of kids and teenagers setting up accounts using their parents’ personal information and money, multiple local media outlets have reported.

Brazil’s economy ministry estimates that Brazil’s sports betting market had $21 billion in transactions last year, a 71% increase compared with the first year of the pandemic, 2020.

The ministry’s newly presented regulations include facial recognition systems for gamblers to bet, the identification of a single bank account for transactions involving sports betting, new protections against hackers and the government-authorized domain, bet.br, which will host all betting sites that are legal in Brazil. Once they are in place, come January, between 100 and 150 betting companies will continue to operate in the South American nation.

The changes in Brazil have prompted some companies to take preemptive action. A report by Yield Sec, a technical intelligence platform for online marketplaces, said several betting companies voluntarily restricted their operations in different places after the latest editions of the European Championships and Copa America in the hopes of presenting “the best possible license application face to the Brazilian authorities.”

Magnho José Santos de Sousa, the president of the Legal Gambling Institute, a betting think tank, said Brazil is currently “invaded by illegal websites that have licenses in Malta, Curação, Gibraltar and the United Kingdom.”

De Sousa expressed hope that the new regulations for advertising, responsible gambling and qualification of sports betting companies will transform the country’s deregulated arena into a more serious one that doesn’t exploit the vulnerable.

“The whole operation could turn from water into wine,” he said.

Gamblers Anonymous in high demand

Meantime, the demand for Gamblers Anonymous meetings in Sao Paulo has grown so much in recent years that the weekly gathering, in place since the 1990s, was no longer enough. Many groups have added a second day in the week to help new people recover, mostly sports bettors.

Earlier in October, a group on Sao Paulo’s northern edge admitted a man who was struggling with sports betting and card games. The 13 other people in the room stressed that he wasn’t alone.

“Welcome,” one long-time attendee said, in a greeting that has become a regular for the group. “Today, you are the most important person here.”

___

Dumphreys reported from Rio de Janeiro.

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Saskatchewan’s Jason Ackerman improves to 6-0 at mixed curling nationals

Published

4 hours ago

November 6, 2024

Anne Joseph

SAINT CATHARINES, Ont. – Saskatchewan’s Jason Ackerman remained undefeated on Wednesday with a 7-4 win over Newfoundland and Labrador’s Trent Skanes at the Canadian mixed curling championship.

After going down 3-1 through four ends, Ackerman (6-0) outscored Skanes (3-3) 6-1 the rest of the way, including three points in the seventh end.

Alberta’s Kurt Alan Balderston also earned a win, defeating New Brunswick’s Charlie Sullivan 9-2 in another matchup in the final draw.

The win improved Balderston’s record to 4-2 and sits in third in Pool B.

The top four teams from each pool will play four more games against the survivors from the other pool. The remaining three teams from the pool will play three more seeding games to help set the rankings for next year’s event.

The championship final is scheduled for Saturday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.

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Oilers fall 4-2 to Golden Knights in McDavid’s return from injury

Published

4 hours ago

November 6, 2024

Anne Joseph

EDMONTON – Noah Hanifin had a pair of goals as the Vegas Golden Knights won their first road game of the season, coming from behind to shock the Edmonton Oilers 4-2 on Wednesday.

Jack Eichel had a goal and two assists and Mark Stone also scored for the Golden Knights (9-3-1), who have won two in a row and six of their last seven. The Knights entered the game 0-3-1 on the road this year.

Brett Kulak and Zach Hyman replied for the Oilers (6-7-1), who have lost two straight despite getting captain Connor McDavid back from injury earlier than expected for the game.

Adin Hill made 27 saves for Vegas, while Stuart Skinner managed 31 stops for Edmonton.

Takeaways

Golden Knights: With an assist on the Knights’ second goal, William Karlsson has recorded at least a point in all five games he has played this season (two goals, four assists).

Oilers: McDavid was a surprise starter for the Oilers, coming back just nine days after suffering an ankle injury in Columbus and initially being expected to miss two to three weeks. The star forward came into the contest with 11 points (three goals, eight assists) during a six-game point streak versus the Golden Knights, but was held pointless on the night.

Key moment

With just 48.4 seconds left to play, the Golden Knights won a race to the corner and Ivan Barbashev was able to send it out to a hard-charging Hanifin, who sent a shot glove-side that beat Skinner for his second goal of the third period and third of the season.

Key stat

It was Hyman’s third goal in the last four games after the veteran forward went scoreless in his first 10 games this season following a 54-goal campaign last year. Hyman now has five goals in his last six games against Vegas.

Up next

Golden Knights: Head to Seattle to face the Kraken on Friday.

Oilers: Travel to Vancouver on a quick one-game trip to clash with the Canucks on Saturday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.

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