"COVID-era" Policies and the End of Public Health
So long public health, we hardly knew ye
Back-to-back mandates from government bodies demanding that workers return to the office were announced in recent days. Starting January 1, 2026, City of Ottawa employees will be mandated to work in the office five days a week. This announcement came mere days after Ontario premier Doug Ford did similar, ordering public servants to work in the office five days a week starting on January 5, 2026.
"The collective return to a five-day office standard for all City employees will help strengthen the organizational culture," Ottawa City Manager Wendy Stephanson wrote in a memo to Mayor Mark Sutcliffe. Stephanson wrote the measure will "build confidence and trust in the City's ability to continue to provide responsive and reliable service to the public."
Unsurprisingly, this echoes drivel from Ford. "I believe everyone's more productive when they're at work," Ford said in Pickering on August 14. "Everyone needs to go back to work."
This push was preceded by many major corporations in the private sector mandating a return to the office. The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), Scotiabank and Amazon both announced they would be mandating more in-office hours for workers.
Ford's assertion that public servants aren't "at work" when doing hybrid work from home is ludicrous. Workers preferred the arrangement, and there were indications it was better for both them and their employers. One PSAC poll from late 2024 indicated that a vast majority of Canadians surveyed online believed that remote work was good for workers. Productivity in the federal public service also grew by 4.5% between 2019 and 2023, as Statistics Canada indicated. These were the years where it was most widely implemented, of course owing to the then-nascent COVID-19 pandemic.
More recent data confirms this view by workers. Angus Reid found that most Canadian workers preferred to work from home. Saving on a commute and improved mental health are the biggest reasons Canadians cited in favouring work from home.
For a more thorough breakdown of the benefits of work-from-home, as well as the reasons companies and governments are mandating its end, there's a great article in The Conversation by Dilara Baysal which I recommend. In short: productivity is not improved by a return to in-office and housing factors greatly into its efficacy. But what is left out of this discussion is the consequences these mandates have for the physical health of workers.
Whether the City of Ottawa took direct inspiration from Ford's announcement is unclear, but the dual announcements constitute the final nail in the coffin of public health. It has finally arrived... and news companies have all been willing collaborators.
Despite current beliefs, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep through the countries of the world. Moreover, long COVID, constituting long-term effects that arise from certain percentage of COVID infections, continues to be a threat. Studies show that across 14 countries, between 25-30 per cent of those who had symptomatic COVID reported long-COVID symptoms 180 days after infection. Symptoms include, but are not limited to: sleepign disorders, fatigue, joint pain and brain fog. These can be debilitating and devastating in their severity. In the midst of all these concerning reports, most communication communiated about COVID in the public health sense, at least as far as news organizations are concerned, is the occasional story reminding the viewer to get a COVID vaccine.
Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) recommends that those at higher risk should receive two vaccines per year, while all other adults should get one a year. Are these vaccines up to date with the latest strains? Early reports indicate that they are. It is noteworthy, however, that these reports are based in the USA, where the Trump administration and its Secretary of Health and Human Services are planning to ban the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.
But how many people will get the shots? Tracking seems to have been left to the wind. A huge reason is the idea that the pandemic is now long in the past. Our news media has adopted this framing and pushed it at every chance. Mostly, this takes its form by referring to COVID or the pandemic in terms that distance itself from today.
Isaac Callan and Colin D'Mello reporting in Global News call the current work-from-home situation "pandemic-era rules" in their headline. The piece sources Ford's side and the side of the civil servants, without actually citing statistics on work-from-home or COVID. CBC News reported on the City of Ottawa's mandate calling work-from-home a "COVID-era" arrangement. No mention of COVID or long COVID past this. An opinion column in the Toronto Star criticizing Ford's reasoning takes great pains to avoid talking about the pandemic in its current form. In the CBC News story on Ford's mandate, it doesn't mention COVID or the pandemic at all.
Now that Ford is calling on the federal government to do the same, the playbook repeats itself. CBC News does a "both sides" report from Ford and the unions, omitting the issue of COVID entirely. The same is true of The Canadian Press and CTV News.
Scott Martin
It's become clear as day that COVID is not considered to be worthy of mention in any context, except as an indication of the past. Now, on the rare occasion COVID is included in reports, it's in the context of conveying the most basic existence of long COVID. At best, you will receive the most basic warning against catching COVID in the first place. In a Toronto Star piece about the condition, it ends with a simple recommendation to get a vaccine. No masking. No filtration. No paid sick days. Nothing else.
Long COVID has no cure. Worse than that, effective treatment is far from prioritized. Indeed, the Canadian long COVID guidelines have been sharply criticized for pushing recommendations that could harm those with the condition.
Our news media had a flawed and incomplete understanding of COVID in the early days. While some of this may have been understandable at the time, with stronger familiarity with COVID-19, greater understanding of the risks and resources at the disposal of big news agencies, there is no excuse. Besides the obvious problems with viewing productivity as something requiring in-office presence, Ford and the City of Ottawa are putting workers into greater risk of catching COVID. With the limited and insulting supports supplied to disabled Canadians, it's clearer than ever that there is no consideration for people's health. Meanwhile, the news media has helped this deeply harmful attitude with a cold and solemn understanding that public health now means nothing. After all, they have been more than willing to undermine it by burying COVID as a pressing issue.
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