On the terrace of a café in Toronto, Ontario, April 13, 2023. MARTIN BERTRAND/HANS LUCAS
According to the Global Work-from-Home Experience Survey, which was conducted among 16,000 remote workers worldwide, employees in Canada work from home an average of 1.9 days per week. Now, remote work is being reconsidered. Canada's remote policy is significantly more generous than in France, where the average is just one day a week. The popularity of remote work was driven by Canadian management culture focused on flexibility, a high rate of unionization that enabled employee-friendly agreements and a strong emphasis on work-life balance. This extended to social policies such as extended parental leave, which in Canada can last more than 60 weeks.
According to Sarah Frion, a 33-year-old senior manager in public policy and asset management for the province of Ontario, this hybrid work balance has been abruptly broken. Since January 5, the government of Canada's most populous province has required all 60,000 of its employees to return to the office: "During the [Covid-19] pandemic, the government said remote work was working very well. And now, the same government is telling us it doesn't work," said Frion, who had previously been allowed to work from home three days a week.
