The majority of Canadian government workers are doing their jobs from home, according to Blacklock’s Reporter. .“Some public servants are back in the workplace at least two days a week,” Treasury Board President Mona Fortier told reporters. .“We will continue to work on encouraging public servants to work in the workplace.”.One reporter asked Fortier if she had a plan. Fortier said she knows businesses and downtown cores across Canada are hurting, and the Canadian government is working on returning public servants. .She said the government has “to look at how we can better deliver services to Canadians.”.The Canadian Chamber of Commerce (CCC) said in a petition endorsed by 32 business groups cabinet should suspend remote work for government workers due to “inadequate public services regularly failing individual Canadians and businesses alike.” The CCC did not elaborate..“Governments are significantly lagging in the development and implementation of their plans to bring public sector employees back to their places of work,” said the CCC. .“We call upon all governments that have not implemented plans to bring their employees back to do so as rapidly as possible.”.Public Services and Procurement Canada estimated in 2021 250,000 Canadian government workers did remote work. The federal IT department counted 240,000 remote internet hookups with employees at home..“To give a sense of the magnitude of this or the scale prior to the pandemic, there was an average of 20,000 simultaneous remote connections,” said former public works minister Filomena Tassi. .No cost to date has been totalled for having 240,000 employees work from home. Public Services and Procurement Canada said in 2020 $36.3 million was spent supplying desks, chairs, floor mats, computers, printers, headphones, paper, and other materials..Canadian government workers said in August they do not want to return to in-person work after being at home for two years..READ MORE: Federal government workers don't want to head back to the office.Online forums for government employees showed there has been talk about returning to the office, comparing the plans each department is developing..“We have done studies of our membership that show 60% of our members would prefer to stay in a work-from-home situation, 25% would like to do a hybrid, and 10% would like to come back to the office full time,” said Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada President Jennifer Carr.
