{"id":332760,"date":"2025-12-08T17:09:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T17:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/332760\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T17:09:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T17:09:12","slug":"carney-says-return-to-office-plan-for-public-servants-coming-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/332760\/","title":{"rendered":"Carney says return-to-office plan for public servants coming soon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"display:block\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/resizer\/v2\/YFYVZN4OVNGDBKDSNQ736TMWPQ.jpg?auth=257ecec489d5cc510031253014bba48ea5e8d25ac8960da03c25a968ba38d4ea&amp;width=600&amp;height=400&amp;quality=80&amp;smart=true\" aria-haspopup=\"true\" data-photo-viewer-index=\"0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"figcap-text\">Pedestrians make their way along Sparks Street mall in Ottawa in November, 2021. Prime Minister Mark Carney says the government is in talks with the unions about a plan to get more public servants back into the office.Sean Kilpatrick\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">Prime Minister <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/topics\/mark-carney\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/topics\/mark-carney\/\">Mark Carney<\/a> says his government\u2019s plan for federal public servants to work from the office more often is weeks away from coming into \u201csharper view.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">Mr. Carney told the Ottawa Board of Trade on Monday that his government is talking to public-sector unions about the issue. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">The Prime Minister said that the return of workers will depend on such factors as seniority and workplace capacity but did not elaborate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">The issue came up during a conversation onstage with Ottawa Mayor Mark Sutcliffe. It has been a point of interest to the municipal government in the nation\u2019s capital, given the economic impact of the absence of the workers in the downtown core.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">The government\u2019s current hybrid work policy requires employees to work on-site at lest three days a week. Executives are required to be on-site a minimum of four days a week.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text mv-16 l-inset text-pb-8\" data-sophi-feature=\"interstitial\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theglobeandmail.com\/business\/article-return-to-office-traffic-congestion-toronto-public-transit\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Return-to-office mandates likely to worsen Toronto traffic, experts say<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">In recent weeks, public service unions have asked the government to respond to rumours that on-site requirements will be increased.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">Unions are also concerned about the government\u2019s plan, first announced in the Nov. 4 budget, to reduce the size of the public service by about 30,000 people over five years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">Mr. Carney said the growth in the size of the public service over the past decade is not sustainable and needs to be addressed. Most of that reduction would be through attrition and retirements, he said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">On return to office, he said the government would be talking to the unions about the mandate.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">\u201cWe will come to a sharper view on it over the course of the next several weeks. And there will likely be different levels of return, depending on seniority, depending on the role and obviously depending on capacity,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__text text-pr-5\">He also said the government needs to ensure that public servants have the offices and workspaces that will make their jobs as \u201cinteresting and impactful as possible.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Pedestrians make their way along Sparks Street mall in Ottawa in November, 2021.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":332761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44,714],"class_list":{"0":"post-332760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=332760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/332760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/332761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=332760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=332760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=332760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}