While Doug Ford was insisting that Ontario’s civil servants return to the office five days a week, the premier himself was regularly conducting government business from the comfort of his Etobicoke home, according to records obtained by Global News.
Freedom of information requests revealed Ford’s official itinerary over a five-week stretch starting in early January and the picture it paints is a sharp contrast to the hard line he has taken on remote work for provincial employees.
The province’s full-time office mandate for civil servants kicked in on January 6. Within days, Ford was back on his couch or at least, back at his house.
Take January 14 as an example. The premier attended an event held by the Dairy Farmers of Ontario in downtown Toronto in the morning, then ducked into a Microsoft Teams call for his daily briefing before heading home by 11:30 a.m. The rest of the afternoon unfolded from his Etobicoke residence: a briefing on a new recycling contract, a virtual meeting with his housing minister, and a call with the Governor of Kansas. The remainder of the day was marked personal and private.
On January 23, Ford appeared to stay home entirely. Staff made the trip out to Etobicoke for face-to-face meetings, including sessions with Labour Minister David Piccini and several union representatives. His schedule wrapped up at noon.
By the time February rolled around, records showed that Prime Minister Mark Carney had visited Ford at his home, followed shortly after by Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada.
Between January 6 and February 5 the very period his government was demanding civil servants work in-person, full-time Ford held meetings from his home residence on at least nine separate days.
Dave Bulmer, president of AMAPCEO, the union representing thousands of Ontario public servants, did not mince words.
“I think he’s demonstrating exactly what my members did successfully for three and a half years, which was to work two out of five days from a remote location,” Bulmer told Global News.
He added that Ford’s schedule proves what unions have argued all along that flexibility in where you work is not a privilege reserved for front-line staff.
“Even when you’re at the senior-most levels, there’s always an opportunity where virtual work and its flexibility will be useful to you. That transcends right to the premier.”
Bulmer stopped short of condemning Ford’s remote days, saying instead that the premier’s choices underscore the case for extending the same flexibility to his employees.
“I think he has reasons to do it so do some of his employees. I guess he sees the need for the balance and we’re supportive of that because it applies to everybody who’s a civil servant.”
Ford’s office pushed back on the framing, arguing the premier’s home-based schedule was standard practice when the legislature is not in session.
“When the house isn’t sitting, the premier takes meetings in his home community, just like every other member of provincial parliament,” the office said in a statement.
It is worth noting, however, that the government itself delayed the legislature’s return at the start of the year and also cut more than a month from the fall sitting giving the premier considerably more time operating outside Queen’s Park.
Ford has been one of the most outspoken advocates for the return-to-office movement in Canada. Last August, he argued that remote work undermined the quality of mentorship and collaboration.
“I believe everyone’s more productive when they’re at work,” he said at the time. “How do you mentor someone over the phone? You can’t. You’ve got to look at them eye to eye or at the watercooler.”
Treasury Board President Caroline Mulroney echoed that view when the mandate was announced, saying a full five-day return to the office “represents the current workforce landscape” in Ontario.
But for many civil servants caught in the middle, the reality on the ground looks different from the policy on paper. Bulmer says a significant portion of his members still aren’t in the office full-time not out of defiance, but out of necessity.
“The reality for my members is that large portions of them are not back in the office four or five days a week because there’s not enough space,” he said. “They’ve been given what is referred to as ad hoc approval to continue to work remotely or in hybrid fashion.”
In other words, the government is enforcing a mandate it has quietly been unable to fully implement while the man who championed it fields calls from home.
