Ottawa's federal government plans to close its GCcoworking sites in Ottawa, Gatineau and across Canada on Sept. 30, converting the shared workspaces back into general office space for individual departments.
What's closing and why
GCcoworking sites were set up so federal employees without an assigned desk in their home department's building could still badge into a government workspace near where they live, rather than commute downtown or work from home. That flexibility is being wound down. The closures will provide 266 workstations to federal departments to meet their space requirements, as the government scrambles to seat more staff in permanent offices.
A spokesperson for Public Services and Procurement Canada (PSPC) said the spaces have been allocated based on operational needs and organizational demand.
Which Ottawa-area sites are affected
- 55 Legget Dr. in Kanata goes to the Department of National Defence
- 335 River Rd. goes to Environment and Climate Change Canada
- Place d'Orléans goes to Public Services and Procurement Canada
- L'Esplanade Laurier on Bank Street goes to Public Services and Procurement Canada
Across the river, the GCcoworking site at Place du Portage in Gatineau is being reassigned to Employment and Social Development Canada. The wind-down isn't limited to the capital: Laval's GCcoworking site is going to the Canada Revenue Agency, part of a broader national reshuffle of federal office space.
Why now: the four-day RTO crunch
The timing lines up with Ottawa's ongoing struggle to get federal workers back into the office four days a week. Right now, 10 per cent of federal public servants cannot be accommodated in the office four days a week this fall, a shortfall that has kept the mandated return-to-office push from fully landing across the public service. The department hopes to accommodate 95 per cent of federal public servants in the office four days a week by March 31, 2027.
That gap is exactly what these closures are meant to close. Rather than lease or maintain flexible drop-in space, the government is folding those coworking desks directly into departments that are short on room, including Defence at the Kanata site and PSPC at two of the four Ottawa-area locations.
The Ottawa angle
Ottawa is the epicentre of this shift, both because the city hosts the bulk of the federal public service and because it's already been dealing with a documented desk shortage. ottown's earlier report found that roughly 10 per cent of unionized public servants in the capital were still being kept off the four-day schedule by a lack of workstations. Turning coworking hubs like the Bank Street and Kanata locations into dedicated departmental space is a direct response to that crunch, even as it removes a flexible option for employees who used the drop-in desks to avoid a longer commute into the core.
For federal workers in Kanata, Orléans and downtown Ottawa who've relied on GCcoworking, Sept. 30 marks the end of that option, with their desks going to colleagues in Defence, Environment and PSPC instead.
Sources: CP24 (Bell Media), BNN Bloomberg
