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Chris Selley: Nobody wants to work in Ottawa, Ottawa unions say

'Instead of embracing the 21st century model of work, the government is taking the public service back to the 1950s,' says one union leader

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For years I have argued that 24 Sussex Drive, an unattractive and not-very-historic mansion that has only been home to 10 of our 24 prime ministers, should be knocked down, sold or otherwise removed from the government books. The National Capital Commission’s (NCC) stated budget for renovations is completely absurd: $37 million in 2021 dollars, or $44 million adjusted for today. That buys a lot of new house in Ottawa, though Rideau Cottage is clearly good enough for Prime Minister Mark Carney, as it was for Justin Trudeau. (Frankly, I’ve never understood why PMs don’t just live full-time at Harrington Lake, as Kim Campbell did. It’s a half-hour drive from Parliament Hill!)

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Now I’m thinking bigger.

Chris Selley: Nobody wants to work in Ottawa, Ottawa unions say Back to video

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What if we razed downtown Ottawa and returned it to nature, as Étienne Brûlé found it? Or just abandoned it to the elements? Maybe everything west of Elgin, east of Lyon and north of Gloucester? To hear union leaders talk, hardly anyone who works there seems interested in going, ever again. Shopify went to remote work “by default” during the pandemic, apparently permanently, and there aren’t a lot of other notable corporate headquarters in the area. Much of the rest is government real estate that the public-sector unions believe, on principle, must never be used again.

Speaking of the NCC, it’s spending at least $5 billion renovating Parliament’s Centre Block, and it won’t be done for years. Maybe it’s not too late to get some of our money back and just walk away. Virtual Parliament from now on. Twenty-something staffers can issue politicians their humiliating talking points in their pyjamas, never mind their short pants. Think of the savings on MPs’ airfare alone!

I kid, of course. But the arguments against civil servants returning to work four days a week, something several federal public sector unions are currently fighting and threatening to strike over, are no less ridiculous.

To Nancy Peckford, mayor of North Grenville, Ont. (pop. 18,000, about 60 kilometres from Parliament Hill), the feds’ decision to make federal workers to return to the office for several days a week “reveals the clear bias for employing people living in the city.”

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Perhaps someone can make a Charter challenge out of it. After all, we have freedom of mobility within Canada. You can’t even use the notwithstanding clause to override it. So why should someone in Yellowknife have less access to a government job that’s based in Ottawa? Or vice-versa? You and I and the vast majority of other Canadians know why, but do our judges?

And the Canadian Association of Professional Employees (CAPE) might very well have a court case in hand — about the equality of men and women.

“Losing the flexibility to work remotely means that many of our members will be forced to choose: their job or their family. And we know that this decision will ultimately impact women, who still face disproportionate responsibilities when it comes to child care and domestic labour,” CAPE president Nathan Prier told CTV News.

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“Instead of embracing the 21st century model of work, the government is taking the public service back to the 1950s.”

Now, the notion of dragooning women en masse into the workplace doesn’t quite align with my understanding of postwar Canadian history. “In the early 1950s, about one-quarter of women aged 25 to 54 participated in the labour market, that is, they had a job or were looking for one,” Statistics Canada reports. That number long ago crested 80 per cent.

Ottawa City Councillor Catherine Kitts, meanwhile, is very concerned “whether our city is physically prepared for a large, simultaneous increase in commuting.”

“I don’t believe our transportation network can handle it,” she wrote in a newsletter to constituents.

I’m not saying she’s wrong. But then, Ottawa’s transportation network has never exactly been a jewel in the city’s crown. I come back to the “abandon downtown Ottawa” plan. It would certainly make OC Transpo’s life an awful lot easier. After all, with fewer people riding the system, there would be fewer to point out how crummy it often is.

And there’s a key point you could easily miss amidst all these reports: Most federal employees already have to go to the office three days a week. It’s just one extra day!

Flexible work arrangements are good. Many private-sector companies seem to have been pleasantly surprised at the results over the course of the pandemic. And so there are plenty of other jobs out there for civil servants who consider it an unbearable, life-altering burden to return to the office four days a week, instead of three.

But let’s not assume all civil servants think this way. An Angus Reid Institute poll conducted in 2024, when the three-day-a-week rule was being rolled out, found more public-sector union members (47 per cent) supported it than opposed it (41 per cent). One can only imagine how appalled their unions were to see it.

National Post cselley@postmedia.com

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