When Laila, a government policy analyst and single mother of two, received the email announcing her mandatory return to the office, her stomach sank. For the past three years, she’d worked from her Ottawa kitchen table, orchestrating policy briefs between lunchboxes and school pickups. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked. “There’s this idea that being seen in a cubicle means you’re productive,” she says, “but for many of us, it just means longer commutes, higher anxiety, and less energy for the people we care about.”
Across Canada’s public service, this isn’t an isolated feeling—it’s a slow boil of discontent. Workers describe mounting fatigue, mental health struggles, and a fragile balance between care responsibilities and job expectations being shattered. “We’re not returning to normal,” says Marc, a payroll technician with aging parents at home. “We’re being asked to ignore everything we’ve adapted to, everything we’ve proven works.”
Unions are echoing these sentiments with growing urgency. The Public Service Alliance of Canada has called for flexible, hybrid options as a baseline—not a privilege. The idea is simple: autonomy breeds dignity. When employees can tailor their environments, they often work not less, but better. “Productivity never vanished—it just became invisible to managers used to measuring output by physical presence,” says union steward Clara Blais. She likens it to trust: “You either believe in your workers, or you don’t.”
These stories underline a larger truth playing out in office buildings and government departments nationwide. The push to ‘return’ is about control as much as it is about collaboration. “Surveillance was never a substitute for support,” notes Dr. Émilie Savoie, a researcher in workplace wellbeing. She points out that presenteeism may soothe managerial anxieties, but it often comes at the expense of burnout, especially for caregivers, disabled employees, and those living far from urban centers.
The question we’re left with, then, is not logistical but ethical: Whose comfort is prioritized in the rush back to desks? When flexibility is framed as defiance, and care is cast as inconvenience, the cost is borne by those already stretched thin. As Laila quietly puts it, “I just want my work to matter without losing myself in the process.” Her voice, and those of thousands of others, are not a threat to productivity—they’re a call to reimagine it.
