By Nicolas Maltais 
It’s 2026. The calendar flipped, the speeches got made, and the employer is already acting like yesterday’s commitments don’t matter.
If there’s one lesson 2025 drilled into us, it’s this: progress is never “banked.” Every gain we’ve ever won exists because workers organized, pushed, and forced the employer to respect our rights. The minute we let our guard down, the employer comes back for the same things it always comes back for: flexibility for them, instability for us. “Modernization” that means fewer protections. “Efficiency” that means fewer jobs. “Collaboration” that somehow always looks like workers paying the bill.
And in 2025, we saw it in real time.
The employer didn’t just push. It acted first and explained later
Bargaining is supposed to mean something. Collective agreements are supposed to be binding. Workforce adjustment processes are supposed to include consultation and clear steps, not surprise announcements and rushed timelines.
But 2025 was full of moments where it felt like the employer either ignored the agreement, reinterpreted it until it fit their preferred outcome, or simply moved ahead and dared workers and unions to catch up. That’s not a partnership. That’s a power play.
When workers feel like “the rules only apply to us,” morale collapses. Trust collapses. And when trust collapses, service suffers, because public services are delivered by people, not mission statements.
So let’s talk about what 2025 actually looked like from a labour point of view, what we managed to win, and why 2026 is shaping up to be another year where we will need discipline, unity, and a willingness to fight.
2025: A year of frustration, but also a year of proof
The Canada Life mess showed what happens when workers are treated like an afterthought
When the Public Service Health Care Plan administration moved to Canada Life, workers across the country dealt with delayed claims, confusion, and real financial stress. When your benefits system fails, it’s not an inconvenience. It is rent money. It is medication. It is people deciding whether to pay the dentist or pay the power bill.
PSAC pursued grievances over those problems, and one important development late in 2025 was a decision allowing PSAC’s grievances about the transition to move forward at the Federal Public Sector Labour Relations and Employment Board.
That matters, not because it fixes everything overnight, but because it reinforces a principle the employer loves to forget: you don’t get to break systems that workers rely on, shrug, and move on. There has to be accountability.
Workforce Adjustment: the employer’s “restraint” habit, and the human cost
Workforce Adjustment is one of those phrases that sounds clean in a briefing note and brutal in real life. In 2025, PSAC filed a policy grievance connected to layoffs and WFA at IRCC, arguing that the employer should suspend WFA until required information and processes are respected.
And at Transport Canada, PSAC filed policy grievances over what it described as failures to follow WFA provisions, including failures tied to notification and consultation obligations in the collective agreement framework.
Here’s why this is so important going into 2026: WFA is not just about headcount. It’s about whether the employer follows a negotiated process that exists specifically to prevent arbitrary decisions, protect workers from being blindsided, and ensure the union can represent members properly.
When the employer cuts corners on WFA, it’s not “administrative.” It’s a direct attack on fairness and on the union’s ability to do its job.
Return-to-office became a political project, not an operational one
By September 9, 2024, the Treasury Board direction required most core public administration employees to be on-site at least three days per week, with executives at four. That policy was still a major point of tension through 2025, and the employer’s approach often felt like it was driven by optics rather than evidence.
Then, in late 2025, rumours escalated about further increases. Prime Minister Mark Carney publicly signalled that changes were coming and that the government would discuss “appropriate levels” of in-office work with unions, with different expectations depending on roles and seniority
Let’s be honest about what’s happening here. There’s pressure, especially in the National Capital Region, to re-fill downtown towers and revive foot traffic. Ottawa’s mayor, Mark Sutcliffe, has been explicit about wanting downtown to “thrive,” and this question keeps getting framed like the economy depends on public servants buying lunch downtown. Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford has also echoed calls along these lines in public commentary about getting people back in offices to boost local economies.
But here’s the part that drives me up the wall: even the government’s own long-term planning recognizes that hybrid work and modern space planning can reduce office space and operating costs. Public Services and Procurement Canada has a 10-year plan to reduce its office portfolio by 50%, and it has publicly stated current projections of about a 33% reduction based on updated assessments.
In a published Question Period note, PSPC projected operations and maintenance savings of about $2.45 billion over 10 years, plus roughly $514 million in annual recurring savings from office portfolio reductions. And the Auditor General has reported that the department estimated savings of about $3.9 billion over 10 years from reducing the federal office portfolio.
So when we talk about “lost opportunity,” we’re not guessing. There are real dollars on the table. The question is whether the government wants to take the harder path, the path that builds a smarter public service footprint over time, or the easier path, the path that produces quick political headlines.
And that brings me to the part nobody wants to say out loud.
Downtown Ottawa is not just an “office attendance” problem
I’ve been to downtown Ottawa. I’m not going to pretend it’s all doom and gloom, but I also won’t pretend the problems aren’t visible. You can see homelessness. You can see people struggling. You can feel the strain in public spaces.
If politicians are serious about the health of downtown, the answer isn’t forcing a federal worker from Moncton, Wabush, Flin Flon, Toronto, Vancouver, or anywhere else to commute more often so they can buy a sandwich near a government tower. The answer is housing, services, mental health supports, and real investment. The answer is long-term planning.
And the bitter irony is that smart real property decisions could actually help unlock that long-term planning, including freeing up space and reducing costs, if governments are willing to do the work and stick with it.
But long-term planning is hard in politics. It doesn’t fit neatly into a single mandate. It requires patience. It requires coordination across departments and jurisdictions. It requires investing now for benefits that compound later.
A four-year election cycle doesn’t reward that.
So instead, we get the quick fix mentality: “Fill the towers.” “Boost the cafes.” “Prove we’re tough on the public service.” And workers are expected to absorb the cost.
Wins in 2025: yes, there were some, and we should name them
It’s easy to get swallowed by the frustration, but we should also be clear-eyed about what the labour movement did achieve.
Anti-scab protections became real in federal labour relations
Bill C-58 received Royal Assent in 2024, and the federal government set it to come into force on June 20, 2025, prohibiting the use of replacement workers in federally regulated workplaces during strikes and lockouts, with a new framework around maintenance of activities.
That is not a symbolic win. It is a structural shift that strengthens the right to strike where it applies.
Social programs that labour pushed for kept moving
The Canadian Dental Care Plan is real and continuing to roll out. Pharmacare legislation also passed, with the Pharmacare Act receiving Royal Assent on October 10, 2024. Implementation is still contested terrain, but the point remains: pressure works. When labour and allies push hard enough, governments do move.
Unions kept filing, organizing, and forcing the employer to answer
Policy grievances are not a “win” by themselves, but they are a refusal to accept quietly what should not be accepted. The Canada Life grievance moving forward is a reminder that persistence matters.
2026: what’s coming, and what we need to do about it
We’re dealing with a federal government that came out of the 2025 election without a formal majority, and Parliament has been volatile since. In that environment, governments obsess over positioning, polling, and wedge issues.
Public servants are an easy target. You’re a big workforce. You’re misunderstood by large parts of the media ecosystem. You’re constantly reduced to stereotypes. And when governments want to prove they’re “serious” about spending cuts, they love to start by squeezing the people who deliver the services.
Carney has already framed the public service as having grown to an “unsustainable size,” and he has been signalling changes tied to spending and in-office work expectations. That should tell us everything we need to know about 2026.
Here are the major pressure points I see ahead:
- More WFA, more restructuring, and more “do more with less.”
- A renewed push for more in-office days, with workers paying the costs in time, money, and family strain.
- Bargaining pressures to water down protections, either directly at the table or indirectly through employer practice.
- A political climate that treats public service spending like a headline problem instead of a service delivery reality.
So what can we do?
So what can we do? A labour plan for 2026
1) Get serious about internal solidarity
This sounds basic, but it is the foundation. Talk to your co-workers. Bring people into the union culture. Share information. Correct misinformation. Isolation is the employer’s best friend.
2) Enforce the agreement like it matters
When management ignores processes, document it. Use the union. File grievances where warranted. Push policy grievances where patterns exist. The employer relies on fatigue. It relies on people saying, “It’s not worth it.” We need to make it worth it.
3) Treat WFA as a collective fight, not an individual tragedy
WFA makes people feel alone, because it lands on you like a personal verdict. It isn’t. It’s a policy choice. We need to show up for workers facing WFA, make sure they know their rights, and pressure the employer to respect negotiated steps and timelines.
4) Refuse the fake choice on return-to-office
We are constantly told it’s either “full remote forever” or “five days in the office.” That’s nonsense.
A modern public service can have role-based flexibility, real accommodation, and real respect for workers’ time, while also managing office space intelligently and saving taxpayers money. The government’s own documents show the scale of savings possible when office space is reduced strategically.
If the government wants to talk about efficiency, let’s talk about efficiency for real.
5) Put political pressure where it belongs
Write MPs. Meet them. Show up at town halls. Bring stories, not just slogans. A worker explaining how RTO costs them hundreds a month, or how WFA chaos affects service delivery, is harder to dismiss than a talking point.
6) Build alliances outside our workplaces
Public service fights are not only “public service fights.” When public services get cut, communities feel it. When workers’ rights get weakened, employers everywhere take notes. Labour has to keep building coalitions with tenants’ groups, anti-poverty advocates, disability advocates, and anyone who understands that strong public services and strong worker rights are linked.
The point of all this
2025 was the reminder. 2026 is the test.
The employer will keep trying to chip away. Politicians will keep looking for quick fixes and easy scapegoats. And the media will keep hunting for simple narratives.
Our job is to stay organized, stay disciplined, and stay loud enough that they can’t do this quietly.
We don’t need panic. We need clarity.
We don’t need to “hope” they do the right thing. We need to make it costly not to.
In solidarity, we go into 2026 with our eyes open, our heads up, and our hands linked.
Rob Silver