The world has changed, why are public servants returning to the office? | Letters to the Editor

A return to office policy invoice was delivered to government officials as unions and supporters against return to office policies gathered in Ottawa, July 06, 2026. Photo by Jean Levac /POSTMEDIA

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What’s the point of return-to-office?

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If the government saves us money on office space, we save the environment from needless pollution, less stress for families, avoid gridlock in our terribly planned roads, why are we forcing back to work? To revive a dead downtown?

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Mistakes have been made to not put more jobs in the suburbs where people actually live. In particular, Orléans where there was massive missed opportunity to keep jobs in the neighbourhood.

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We need to stop catering to the 12 per cent that use public transportation and wake up to the fact that people need cars to get around. Use some of those funds to widen and improve our roads. The 174 and 417 were not built for the volume of traffic today. While we’re at it, will there ever be a ring road in Ottawa?

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Our cities infrastructure is well behind much smaller cities in North America. When you consider that we are the nation’s capital, it’s a national embarrassment.

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Lucie Masson, Orléans

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In need of a new direction

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Your columnist Randall Denley asks “Will Ottawa Go Mayor Hunting This October?” In my view Ottawa must. Mayor Mark Sutcliffe’s low tax strategy has perpetuated OC Transpo’s misery through cuts to service and further fare increases, adding insult to injury. His endorsement of how the Council should respond to the city’s aging facilities and infrastructure keeps that strategy in place, as the preferred solution is to close those old buildings, sell the land to raise money to spend on fixing facilities elsewhere. Never mind that taxes built those facilities in the first place.

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Who on Council is willing to say “pick mine in my ward to close!” when the pressure is to create more, not less, in our growing city. Forty buildings, say city staff, must close within 10 years but, hey, the mayor says your taxes are low.

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This is not a responsible way to govern our city.

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Alex Cullen, Ottawa

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Another way Doug Ford could go

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Re: When should Doug Ford exit the provincial political stage? 2026 July 7

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John Snobelen wrote that there are only three ways out for the premier of a province: Lose, die or quit. There is a fourth way, although it has not been used since the end of the nineteenth century, when both Sir Charles Tupper and Sir John Thompson, premiers of Nova Scotia, became prime minister of Canada.

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The current leader of the federal opposition lost his own seat in Ottawa in the last federal election. Is it possible that enough members of the Conservative Party of Canada are now ready to shift gears as our current economist-in-charge inevitably faces political head winds as time rolls by? In that case, there could be a provincial premier with the political know-how to do the job, who has also during the past year or so earned the reputation of standing up for Canada vis-à-vis the Tangerine Toddler? That might sell across the country, especially if Premier Doug Ford brushed up his français.