Amy Hamm: Public servants can’t ride the work-from-home gravy train forever

Place Vanier Towers on River Road North in Vanier, which are government offices, on April 9, 2026. Photo by JULIE OLIVER/Postmedia

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A new petition aiming to enable thousands of federal employees to refuse to return to the office in our post COVID-19 era is gaining widespread support. It is indicative of the nauseating entitlement among Canada’s bloated public sector.

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The petition comes in the wake of a February 2026 federal government announcement that federal employees in Ottawa would be forced to return to the office four days a week starting in July. This followed similar announcements across Canada, including in Alberta and Ontario.

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The March 17 parliamentary petition, sponsored by Liberal MP James Maloney, demands that federal workers be entitled to a minimum of three work-from-home days per week. It would apply to “federally regulated employees, including (those in) banking, telecommunications, transportation, postal services, pipelines, and Crown corporations.” The only exceptions would be for persons whose work is not primarily computer-based, those who work in emergency, medical or caregiving roles, or those whose “physical presence is demonstrably essential.”

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It is just shy of 40,000 signatures as of Friday. The federal government will have to respond to this petition once certified and presented in the House, which could spark new legislation.

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This is a petition that calls on the federal government to “ensure modern workplace standards” by granting public servants “the right to perform their work remotely.” It also implies that a federal work-from-home law should be in place to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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“Without clear legal protections, employees remain vulnerable to arbitrary return-to-office mandates that undermine work-life balance, inclusion, and competitiveness,” reads the petition.

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It claims that “remote and hybrid work improves productivity, lowers absenteeism and turnover, and supports caregivers, people with disabilities, and rural workers.” It goes so far as to demand that employers must “provide written, evidence-based justification if they require more than two in-office days per week.”

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Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that the physical presence of workers in their workplace is “demonstrably essential” as a rule, and not as the exception. Nor is a worker’s presence in the office “arbitrary.” (And if it is, then perhaps it’s the job that’s arbitrary.)

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Such a petition would never succeed in the private sector, where entrepreneurs and employers must compete in the global marketplace to survive. If private-sector employees decided not to show up and do their jobs, or demanded their boss provide written justification for them to show up for work, they’d be fired. And for good reason. It reeks of entitlement for federal employees to demand a change to labour laws so that they can collect government paycheques in their pyjamas from home offices.