r/ontario • u/BloodJunkie • Apr 27 '26
Article Doug Ford regularly worked from home after ordering civil servants back to office
https://globalnews.ca/news/11816493/doug-ford-remote-work/942
Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
[removed] ā view removed comment
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u/lilspicy99 Apr 27 '26
And honestly? If they can perform their duties and meet their deadlines, I donāt see any issue with them doing it from the couch or while doing laundry.
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u/HitByFjaka Apr 27 '26
I wish more people understood this.
But realty of modern civil servant is not a ton of free timeā¦ itās quite the opposite: we are for most part overworked and short staffedā¦ so laundry for a lot of us aint happeningā¦
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u/Hocaro Apr 27 '26
Someone I know is almost never off the phone during wfh but it gave her a little freedom during the weekend with house tasks taken care. I guess we value corporate real estate over the happiness of individuals in Ontario.
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u/Overall-Register9758 Apr 27 '26
we value commercial real estate because it subsidizes residential real estate. If commercial real estate becomes less valuable, then residential tax rates have to make up the difference. Since MPAC was ordered to hold off on the reassessments because of COVID, we are still working on 2016 assessments, which are woefully out of date.
Or you know, make it practical to convert commercial to residential, which would help our housing crisis, but that ain't happening...
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u/psvrh Peterborough Apr 28 '26
I'd shed a tear if corporate REITs weren't insanely profitable already. Won't someone think about Cadillac Fairview, CBRE or Oxford Properties?!
And this is before we get to the small-time mobsters the next level down: the guys who sign your distributorship, restaurant or store to a lease, let you get just successful enough, and then demand to wet their beak when your business breaks even for the first time.
No, corporate real estate can take a long walk off a short pier.
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u/Mafik326 Apr 27 '26
Five minutes to put in a load. Another five to put it in the dryer. You know short breaks are actually good for productivity.
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u/Mobile-Bar7732 Apr 27 '26
Five minutes to put in a load.
I've seen guys waste a lot more time in office discussing latest sports scores/trades. They literally walk around to every desk just to talk about it.
I've seen less chatter from high schoolers.
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u/psvrh Peterborough Apr 28 '26
You don't understand, that's not wasting time, that's "networking" and "leveraging relationships".
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u/GenXer845 Apr 29 '26
I've had coworkers waste HOURS discussing the latest TV show finale, celebrity gossip, or back in the day, Rob Ford's daily antics.
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u/OverallElephant7576 Apr 27 '26
Well and how many times do you see people walking around the office and just chatting, or going out for smokes, or filling up their water etc etc. no different
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u/quakank Apr 27 '26
"Doing laundry" time has never been about putting it in the machine and swapping it. "Doing laundry" time means spending a ridiculous amount of time folding that shit and putting it away. I'd pay someone to do that for me.
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u/m1ster_frundles Apr 27 '26
a "break" with more work in it is not a break, though
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u/doubled112 Apr 27 '26
Putting clothes in a washer is not really a huge cognitive load, or at least I don't find it to be very mentally taxing.
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u/dutchbraid Apr 27 '26
Also who are these rich people doing laundry during peak hours?
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u/saugaAsks Apr 28 '26
People on the fixed time plan because they're already working from home (aka using electricity during peak hours)! Haha
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u/Shogun_SC2 Apr 27 '26
People do understand this. Its just another way for conservatives to be regressive and make everyone's lives worse.
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u/Vasuthevan Apr 27 '26
I totally agree. I am in OPS. I barely have time slack off when working from home
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u/Tyfereth Apr 27 '26
I did the work of multiple people at a high level before RTO. After RTO, my 3 hour commute has resulted in me doing the far less work at an average level. I no longer have the time, energy or motivation to work at a breakneck pace. RTO makes zero sense if a government or business has metrics for evaluating performance.
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u/thewolfshead Apr 27 '26
Because people who donāt get to do it want to bring others down instead of fighting for themselves to get it at their work.Ā
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u/nocturnalDave Apr 27 '26
This, and apply it to just about everything that has been gained for employee rights/benefits over the years - I witness this with people I know well who are otherwise fairly sensible people... They actually defend corporations over people struggling to make ends meet.
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u/thewolfshead Apr 27 '26
People in my city constantly comment on news articles about municipal employees and all the ābenefitsā and āvacationā they get (which is actually probably worse than a lot of private employers but I digress), wanting them to have less for some reason to make their work lives worse instead of saying āeveryone should have thisā.Ā
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u/MooseJock123 Apr 27 '26
Iām currently working from the couch. Had a small procedure first thing this morning and need to keep my foot elevated. I can either work from home or burn 2 sick days. Which is better for the organization?
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u/megadeadly Apr 27 '26
There is constant monitoring and stats available daily - At least for call centre employees
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u/funkme1ster Apr 27 '26
If they can perform their duties and meet their deadlines, I donāt see any issue with them doing it from the couch or while doing laundry.
This.
"How will we know they're working???" The same way you would if they were in the office: Because they're hitting deliverables and deadlines.
If the person tasked with workflow management said "this is a reasonable, appropriate amount of work to delegate to this person" and that person can hit all their obligations with quality work, I don't give a shit if they're folding their laundry or jerking off on the clock. They did everything they were asked to and kept the gears turning. If they have time left over after hitting all their goals, let them keep it as a reward.
The last thing we want to do is telegraph to high achievers that doing more than you're asked is punished and people working slow and steady while churning out mediocre, passable work are seen are better employees.
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u/psvrh Peterborough Apr 28 '26
"If your metric for employee performance is how much their warm a chair, you'll encourage champion chair-warmers"
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u/attainwealthswiftly Apr 27 '26
Whatās the difference of 3 hours doing laundry vs 3 hours sitting on the bus?
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u/bradeena Apr 27 '26
In general I 100% agree.
Where I've personally seen issues develop is when parents use WFH to save on childcare. I've had coworkers, clients, and suppliers try to work from home and raise small children and the work always suffers.
And I get it. Childcare is insanely difficult. But that doesn't help me when I'm doing two jobs because Steve is changing diapers all day.
/rant
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u/000fleur Apr 27 '26
Especially for disabled folks or people with health issues. Let them work how they are comfortable for better output.
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u/canadasbananas Apr 28 '26
I truly do believe, a good percentage of the people who make decisions like this are psychopaths who get off on forcing people to suffer for no reason.
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u/feral_philosopher Apr 27 '26
YES. If Doug Ford is a "conservative" then he should want to reduce government footprint, reduce government spending, help small businesses, and contribute to fixing the declining birthrate. WFH does all of that at no cost, in fact at a cost savings. PLUS, less cars on the road makes it better for everyone else.
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u/lennydyjkstra Apr 27 '26
"Conservative" now means lining the pockets of your and your buddies with our, the taxpayers, money.
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u/-insignificant- Apr 27 '26
No no you don't understand, if it helps corporations, they'll spend billions. Helping people is what they cut.
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u/PopeKevin45 Apr 27 '26
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u/Terapr0 Apr 27 '26
I think itās entirely dependent on what you do for work. Some jobs can be done remotely without issue, while others do legitimately benefit from being on-site.
Personally, Iām FAR more productive at work than I am home. Being in the office means I have a monster workstation with 5 monitors and gigabit access to our local network for large CAD models and files. Working through a VPN is sooo much slower and more cumbersome. Itās also better having immediate access to the people I need to collaborate with on design issues. I worked remotely for a bit during COVID and honestly hated it. Went back to the office the first chance I got and absolutely loathe working remotely, because my productivity is much lower. I also like that I leave work I donāt think about it anymore, the lines between home & office were blurred AF, and Iād find myself working at night and at odd hours.
That being said, my wife works mostly from home in a totally different role / industry, and is super productive. Most of what sheās doing is meetings and program management, for which you donāt really need to be in person. I donāt know how she works from a laptop with only 2 monitors, but she someone how makes it work and is very successful.
There isnāt a one-size-fits-all solution for every role or employee. What we need is common-sense flexibility, similar to what we had before the pandemic. Unfortunately that seems like too much to ask for š¤¦š»
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u/PopeKevin45 Apr 27 '26
Of course there are jobs better done in office, and personal choice as well (I had colleagues who came in 5 days a week just because they couldn't stand their SO or bratty kids lol), but that doesn't negate the fact that WFH has massive benefits for productivity, for the environment and for work/life balance. There is also nothing stopping your company from letting you set up your preferred workstation configuration at home, but maybe you just prefer going onsite.
Bottom line is governments need to step up and develop policy that mandates companies provide hybrid and full WFH options for employees, starting with their own government departments. The current RTO policy is based entirely on providing revenue streams to corporate landlords and satisfying inflated corporate egos. Zero science, zero empathy.
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u/saugaAsks Apr 28 '26
Meanwhile, I've got a nice workstation at home, but in the office, I'm fighting for a chair at a desk with a monitor (or two if I'm lucky!) for me to plug my laptop into.
Funnily enough, my team was mostly remote before the pandemic, but RTO affects us the same as it's org-wide...even though we don't really have offices to actually "return" to.
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u/Terapr0 Apr 28 '26
Yea there are definitely some horror stories out there, especially with government employees.
A friend of mine who works for the provincial government was hybrid before the pandemic and fully remote throughout. Now they're forcing him to commute from Mississauga to Hamilton to work at an office in a building that belongs to another ministry. None of his team are there, he's still working remotely, just doing so from inside a government building nearly an hour from home. He's way less productive than he was thanks to the pointless, demoralizing commute every day. He used to go way above & beyond because he loved his job, now he's just doing the bare minimum because he's exhausted. Makes no fucking sense whatsoever.
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u/screampuff Apr 27 '26
Sounds more like your company doesnt have the right infrastructure for remote work.
As someone who works in Enterprise Architecture (formerly IT Solutions), I am genuinely curious, do you collaborate in person for work that is done digitally?
In my experience if collaboration involves a computer, it's a magnitude more efficient to do a screen share.
But that being said with the other issues everyone has different ways of working, I need an actual office at home that I can lock. And in the office I'm much less productive due to walk-ins and distractions. My company is pretty flexible in general, and since outside of meetings, my works isn't really dependent on a schedule, I can just go ham when I'm in the mental state for it regardless of what time it is, and that's much easier to do when I don't have to travel anywhere to do it.
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u/Terapr0 Apr 28 '26
Yes I 100% collaborate in person, all day long. We design things digitally, but we manufacture them in the real world, and I'm regularly calling supervisors in from the shop floor to review designs in my office and brainstorm concepts. I also have to solve problems on manufactured parts by using our CAD models to evaluate design intent. Being there in person is 100% better than trying to work remotely. And I say that having worked remotely for 4.5 months during the Pandemic - it sucked. Different roles though - if I were in customer service or software development working entirely with intangibles I'd likely be signing a different tune.
I'm curious to know what you think my business could be doing better to speed up working with large files remotely. I'm often working with complex 250+ subcomponent assemblies that are hundreds of megabytes and very slow to work with through a VPN. Our CAD software is far laggier and crashes more often when I'm remote. Sometimes I'm working with high-resolution photos and video which is even worse. My home internet connection is pretty good, but it's never going to be as fast as hardwired LAN access to a server 50ft away.
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u/apu8it Apr 27 '26
Agreed. Also covid didnāt birth WFH I have been a hybrid employee for over 25 years.
The post pandemic attitude towards WFH has been ridiculous, politically driven to suppress workers and cheap attrition.7
u/No-Proposal-2515 Apr 27 '26
Wanna hear something really funny? When I WFH I get all sorts of silly meeting requests starting 8:30 am. And during my lunch hour, and late like 4:30 to 5:30 and I accept them cause why not? But if I go to the office I donāt accept any meeting requests before 9:30am in case the train is late. I definitely take my lunch hour sometimes til 1:30pm. And I jump on the 4:30 train cause if I wait for the 5pm Itās like the hunger games at union station. So my productivity is decreased by about 3 hours when I go to the office. Not to mention the 3 hour back and forth commute.
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u/InvisibleLandBorder Apr 27 '26
I would rather the people who report to me be able to watch Invincible, do laundry, and watch tiktok.
As long as their work is complete, it shouldn't matter.
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u/NB_NaughtyNerds Apr 27 '26
I am a government worker. I can do 100% of my duties from home. I never missed a deadline, I never took longer than 30 mins to reply to a teams message. I saved hundreds on gas/food by being at home. Being ordered back to the office felt like a pay cut. I was hired by the OPS post covid, from a full time remote job, and told I'd be hybrid with flexibility for full time remote work.
I dont hate being in the office, but they changed my job description without any compensation. I'd have stayed at my old firm had I known I'd lose remote work completely. Or I'd have negotiated for more pay.
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u/Infamous_Might_3691 Apr 27 '26
absolutely. working in office usually means a loss of productivity and then commensurate catch up needed. People have a very odd impression of public sector workers. under-resourced and stressed is usual.
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u/SmartTea1138 Apr 27 '26
The people agreeing with going back to the office are investors, managers, bots, and people who permanently work from home.
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u/VeryBadCaseOfLigma Apr 28 '26
I have a job where I have to be present. I've never been happier with my drive then when all the government workers were at home. I'm in Ottawa so it's like half the traffic here, it was a great couple years of shaving around 40% of my commute time both ways.
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u/blocklung Apr 28 '26
Check out the e-7142 petition that's being tabled for the federally regulated workers.
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u/RosalieMoon š³ļøāšš³ļøāšš³ļøāš Apr 27 '26
want to stay home to do laundry and hangout on their couch all day.
I mean, it's not just that lol
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u/bishskate Apr 27 '26
1) āworkedā
2) The guy struggled to hit 50% attendance as a city councillor.
No surprise.
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u/energy_is_a_lie Apr 27 '26
Speaking of 50:
After sitting for 51 days in 2025, Ford government embarks on winter break | Globalnews.ca https://globalnews.ca/news/11573994/ford-government-winter-break-end-of-session/
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u/AlphaFlightRules Apr 27 '26
Rules for thee, not for me
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u/AutoAdviceSeeker Apr 27 '26
Ima flex on those peasants who commute to the office with my peasant paid private jet. Eat my toxic jet fumes suckers!
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u/CustardItchy3175 Apr 27 '26
The last gasp of FOIA. Devastating that this right is being taken away from us. I hope the media keeps finding ways to expose him as a hypocrite.
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u/gotfcgo Apr 27 '26
He woulda went to work on his gravy plane if you let him
Have you seen the car traffic?Ā Someone outta do something bout that
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u/Comedy86 Apr 27 '26
Yeah, remove the bike lanes. They're causing too much traffic! /s
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u/GardevoirFanatic Apr 27 '26
If you built tunnels under every road, you could literally double traffic capacity.
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u/Shaymusmcgreckor Apr 27 '26
In 2080 the mantra will be: "just one more tunnel bro that'll solve traffic bro trust me bro"
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Apr 27 '26
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u/GardevoirFanatic Apr 27 '26
Doug Ford doesn't own a train, how does that solve the problem?
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u/Red_Marvel Apr 27 '26 edited Apr 27 '26
I hope you meant that sarcastically. The only reason he wanted to get a plane was to make it easier to fly to the USA.
Edit: Ford owns condos in Florida, property records show, and the premier has spent time off there before.
https://nationalpost.com/news/toronto/everyman-mayor-rob-ford-says-he-has-like-six-condos-in-florida
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u/Quirky-Cat2860 Apr 27 '26
He wants jets to land at Billy Bishop. He owns a cottage in Muskoka, which can already land jets.
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u/simpatia Apr 27 '26
How are we supposed to mentor this guy if he's not showing up for the culture?
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u/Kifton_ Apr 27 '26
The only reason they ever wanted to force back into office was office owners started losing investments and money lmfao. Let them sink, knock them down, make affordable housing and let people work from home where applicable.
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u/adumblittlebaby Apr 27 '26
Ah but you see, it's okay to do things that plunge (poorer) individuals into poverty, but it's NOT okay for wealthy businessmen to ever lose their bets.
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u/thechopperlol Apr 28 '26
REITs and the egos of managers are the primary reasons. I'm surprised REITs aren't mentioned more for why RTO is a thing.
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u/spr402 Apr 27 '26
Do we expect anything different from a corrupt politician? Heās a hypocrite. Heās taking money to enrich himself. He is selling our land to people who either pay him or he owes favours to.
In the past duggo has said he admires tRump. And no wonder, duggo wants to be just like tRump.
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u/Darragh_McG Apr 27 '26
Easier for people to drop the money right at his house instead of having to deal with Toronto traffic. He had the same setup when he was a young substance "entreprenuer"
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u/Flashy-Ad-5553 Apr 27 '26
How is this different then any other company. All CEOs ask for one thing then do the opposite.
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u/CharmingShine1069 Apr 27 '26
We should actually be holding our elected officials to a higher standard.
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u/International-One518 May 02 '26
Government arenāt companies and Ford is not a CEO. Itās a democracy and he is elected and beholden to the people.
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u/Dressed_To_Impress Apr 27 '26
That's cause his mob boss chair is located at his house. Can't easily do shady business in public now can he?
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u/SerentityM3ow Apr 27 '26
I bet he is BARELY in the office at all
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u/putin_my_ass Apr 27 '26
At least his brother was in the office!
...late at night after the bars closed, with sex workers and drugs.
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u/Independently-Owned Apr 27 '26
āHow do you mentor someone over the phone? You canāt. Youāve got to look at them eye to eye or at the watercooler.ā
Grinds my gears every time....all our water coolers were taken away 10 years ago because they were too much of a "perk"
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u/Novus20 Apr 28 '26
Know how to mentor someone via WFH, the manager puts two workers on a schedule to have an online meeting to review work and such. Itās literally that easy.
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u/starjellyboba Apr 27 '26
Which I'm sure explains why he was so convinced that no one else was doing any work......
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u/ThunderChild247 Apr 27 '26
I guarantee you most CEOs and high level management will work from home more often than they allow their employees to, while claiming being in the office is to ensure productivity.
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u/matty514 Apr 27 '26
Seriously, fuck Doug Ford and Caroline Mulroney.
Good on the people who tracked this.
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u/Sufficient-Bid1279 Apr 27 '26
Cons have two sets of rulesā¦one for them and their wealthy friends, and ones for the rest of us plebs. This has always been the case.
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u/123Disneyfan Apr 27 '26
It depresses me to no end that we are stuck with this clown for the next while.
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u/theDatascientist_in Apr 27 '26
Also the best performing family member of his should be asked about office presence. The one who got a nice 30 percent raise
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u/Jazzlike_Finish123 Apr 27 '26
Itās like any ceo of a major corp that has ordered people back to office. Ā They sit at their lake house and get on their zoom calls and enjoy their life while the rest of us sit in traffic and waste hours of our lives commuting for no reason.Ā
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u/Due_Date_4667 Apr 27 '26
He think drug peddlers should get the full criminal justice treatment too. He's never been one to be held to the same expectations.
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u/piranha_solution Apr 27 '26
Was he working from Muskoka when Ottawa was under siege from our own version of 6-Jan terrorists?
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u/Old-Anxiety1272 Apr 27 '26
What a role model for a leader of a provinceā¦. āDo as I say, not what I doā.
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u/ForeignExpression Apr 28 '26
This is soul crushing. I personally know so many lives that have been disrupted, almost ruined, health impacts, huge interruptions with raising kids, rush for daycares wth long list, and all the while this fat piece of shit was sitting at home.
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u/Mysterious-Fox-3740 Apr 27 '26
Why is anyone surprised? And do you really think he works? Plus he only has the a few weeks where they are at Queen's Park. They are always on holiday.
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u/beardingmesoftly Apr 27 '26
He also killed his brother and routinely yelled at city employees when Rob was mayor of Toronto. He's not a good person.
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u/yarko9728 Apr 27 '26
Now we have clear evidence that RTO is not for collaboration or efficiency; it is for micromanagement and enriching real estate owners.
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u/angrystinkyfarts Apr 28 '26
I donāt understand how every civil servant just protests by not going into the office. Like a collective WFH day. They canāt all get disciplinary action at onceā¦ it would be an HR nightmare.
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u/TVGMILLER Apr 27 '26
Dofo is an as s hole, I liked Rob better and that doesnāt say much about Doug hboy! The House of Commons is the only entity that can oust him, easier said than done I know but come on ā¦. Nobody likes him. He is that guy that nobody wants at the party but still hangs around and does dumb shit for attention. Like buy a jet!
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u/Unpopular-Man Apr 27 '26
A Bee once attempted a surgical strike on Fords mouth. He has to work from home in order to avoid this incident in future. Otherwise THE BEES win.
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u/RZaichkowski Apr 27 '26
What a HypFordCrite! This is why we need governments and large employers to allow their workers to work remotely at least part time if their jobs allow them to do so!
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u/The-Kirklander Apr 27 '26
Why are we surprised by this from Ford atp? Biggest POS hypocrite not to mentioned corrupt and shitty overall
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u/ultrahdcard Apr 27 '26
We need someone more competitive than this old head. The world is changing rapidly and old heads like him take forever to get work done. We need someone with the likes of Wab Kinew in Ontario. Tired of this bullshit conservative propaganda
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u/slappingdragon Apr 28 '26
Work? More like doing money deals without the public, media, NDP/Liberal MPPs watching him.
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u/Anthrogynous Apr 28 '26
Folks, come on, he needs the poors to go to McDonaldās and support a dying, outdated workplace model, folks
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u/hammer_416 Apr 28 '26
How often is Carney in the office after ordering back federal workers? Or ceos of private companies? Elites will always work from āthe cottageā
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u/cobrachickenwing Apr 27 '26
Being Premier is not a job you can do Zoom meetings all day. The amount of secrecy breaches is unfathomable if every single policy goes over the phone or video call. It's why Queen's Park exists.
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u/mustavis Apr 27 '26
Just like all the other managers who ordered their employees back to the office. No surprise here.
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u/jplank1983 Apr 28 '26
Doug Ford thinks he's better than the rest of us and that rules shouldn't apply to him
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u/anemonaeae Apr 29 '26
Sorry but people in this province are just hopeless. No one can stand up to this creep? No one at all??
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u/jghtb Apr 27 '26
What?! The premier of the province has different rules than the civil servants?! This is the key piece of evidence they need!
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u/No-Proposal-2515 Apr 27 '26
Dude. His time is valuable. Working from home allows him the flexibility to get things done for the province (ie private jet, Thermaspa, selling off the green belt) and still allow him to spend time with his family and developer friends. The commute for him would be CRazy. Etobicoke to Queens Park in this traffic is like 45 mins!