(Version française disponible ici.)

During the pandemic, remote work became much more common for employees, including many public servants, whose jobs could be done from home. As public-health pressures eased, governments began to reconsider what role remote and hybrid work should play over the longer term. Governments have made different choices and have not converged on a single return-to-office (RTO) model for public servants.

The federal government and some provinces are increasing in-office requirements, in some cases moving toward full-time or near-full-time attendance. Others are maintaining hybrid arrangements, while some have not set out a clear government-wide minimum in-office requirement. The result is a patchwork of return-to-office policies for public services across Canada.

We have mapped those choices, and the variations are clear. The reasons behind them less so. Public announcements do not always explain why governments have chosen one approach over another or whether they have considered the wider effects.

This matters because return-to-office policies interact with a much broader set of policy objectives than workplace management alone.

Work location is no longer simply an operational decision. For many workers, it has become part of the employment bargain. RTO policies can influence governments’ ability to recruit and retain workers.

These policies also interact with the wider labour market and can impact fiscal, transportation and equity objectives. Decisions about where public servants work must balance multiple priorities rather than optimizing a single outcome.

Remote work changed the employment bargain

Although relatively uncommon before the pandemic, remote and hybrid work arrangements have since become regular features of many office-based jobs. Statistics Canada estimates about 7.2 per cent of Canadian workers worked most of their hours from home in early 2020, before the pandemic. By April 2020, that share had reached 41.1 per cent. The way Statistics Canada measures work location has since changed and hence is not directly comparable, but recent data shows working from home remains common. By May 2026, 11.4 per cent of employed Canadians worked exclusively from home and another 9.8 per cent had a hybrid arrangement.

Remote and hybrid work are especially relevant to the public sector. In February 2024, 47.4 per cent of workers in public administration worked from home at least........

© IRPP - Policy Options