Quebec public service union says 93% of members oppose three days a week in office rule

Ontario and Alberta public servants ordered back to office full-time in 2026.

While the return to the office three days a week will become a reality on Monday for Quebec’s civil servants, some 93 per cent of members of the Quebec professional workers union group (SPGQ) oppose the idea.

The Syndicat des professionnels du gouvernement du Québec (SPGQ) is a large union independent of the central unions and it gauged the pulse of its members from Jan. 14 to 21 in response to this imminent return to the office three days a week.

A total of 82 per cent participated in the consultation, with 93 per cent rejecting the idea.

“We’re not really surprised by the result,” said SPGQ president Guillaume Bouvrette in an interview.

Currently, government employees work two days a week in the office.

The first framework policy on teleworking came into effect in April 2022.

At the beginning of December, Treasury Board president France-Élaine Duranceau announced that government employees would have to return to the office “at least three days a week” by the end of January.

She justified her decision by saying she wanted to “strengthen collaboration, cohesion and a sense of belonging, while promoting creativity, mentoring and employee integration into their teams.”

“This measure will also help make teamwork on complex issues more fluid, reduce decision-making delays and cultivate close ties between managers and employees,” she added.

Against the ‘one size fits all’ approach

SPGQ members would have liked more flexibility, “more latitude”, according to Bouvrette, rather than a “one size fits all” policy.

To supervise or train a new employee, for example, a manager could have temporarily asked certain employees to come to the office, the union leader explained.

In his view, the Treasury Board’s decision was made “without sufficient evidence” to weigh the pros and cons of this return to the office.

He notes that the Treasury Board did allow deputy ministers to grant a 30-day transition period, until Feb. 27, “to facilitate a smooth transition” and allow affected workers to reorganize their family or personal lives accordingly.

Bouvrette points out that the SPGQ had anticipated this possibility.

“We had a letter of agreement with the Quebec public service that required the Treasury Board to consult with us before making any changes to it. In this context, we filed a union grievance in December to challenge this consultation.”

“Essentially, they (the Treasury Board) announced publicly, at a press conference, the outcome and effective date of the changes, all before launching consultations. So we were consulted after the fact and, unsurprisingly, our arguments were not taken into account,” the SPGQ president said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Jan. 23, 2026.