'Divorced from reality': Why Canadians are losing patience with public servants (2024)

Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson talks to Brian Lee Crowley, the managing director of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, about the government’s return-to-office plan for public servants.

Although public service unions have reacted angrily to the plan, recent polling shows that Canadians generally support government employees spending more time in the office and less time at home.

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A poll by the Angus Reid Institute released on May 23 found that nearly 60 per cent of Canadians support federal workers spending more time in the office, while 28 per cent of Canadians opposed the plan.

During a press conference in early May, union heads from the Public Service Alliance of Canada (PSAC), the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CAPE), the Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada (PIPSC) and the Association of Canadian Financial Officers (ACFO) said the government should prepare for a “summer of discontent.”

“We will be using every recourse we have available to fight this mandate,” PSAC national president Chris Aylward said, arguing that the policy update was “anti-worker” and “fundamentally breaks the trust of workers and unions with the Trudeau government.”

Letter-writing campaigns organized by PSAC and CAPE have resulted in more than 70,000 letters being sent to members of Parliament and the Treasury Board president Anita Anand. As of May 23, 45,981 letters had been sent via an online PSAC campaign, and another 25,566 through the campaign sponsored by the CAPE.

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