'It's a long-term process for the downtown cores of cities to diversify away from office traffic'
Foot traffic in the downtown cores of Canada’s largest cities remains well below pre-pandemic levels, even as an increasing number of employers require staff to be present in the office more frequently, according to a report.
As of April 2025, downtown Toronto’s core still has 43 per cent less foot traffic than in January 2020, reports The Globe and Mail, citing data from Environics Analytics.
Meanwhile, Montreal and Vancouver remain about 50 per cent below their pre-pandemic averages.
After pandemic restrictions began easing in 2022, downtown activity initially increased but has largely plateaued since early 2024, according to the report.
“It’s a long-term process for the downtown cores of cities to diversify away from office traffic. But my hunch is that the recent return-to-office mandates will push cities to get back to how they used to be before,” Karen Chapple, director of the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, tells The Globe and Mail.
Employers push for return to office
Numerous employers—including the Bank of Montreal (BMO), Scotiabank and the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)—have called on employees to report to the office more often.
Some signs of renewed downtown activity have emerged, notes The Globe and Mail. Citing research from the University of Toronto’s Downtown Recovery Project, the publication notes that from February 2024 to February 2025, overall foot traffic—incorporating retail and residential visits—rose by 10 per cent in Toronto and Vancouver, 15 per cent in Montreal, and 19 per cent in Ottawa.
The spike in Ottawa is likely linked to the federal government’s three-day in-office mandate for civil servants, according to The Globe and Mail.
The full implementation of the federal government’s RTO mandate for workers = officially took effect in September 2024.
Hybrid schedules still popular in Canada
Despite these gains, most office workers continue to follow hybrid schedules. Some organisations, such as Sun Life Financial, continue to offer flexible arrangements. Sun Life’s chief people and culture officer, Helena Pagano, credits their approach for improved retention and notes that the company is not losing staff to firms with stricter in-office mandates.
“From the perspective of poaching talent, we actually see these return-to-office announcements as a bonus to us,” she says, according to the report.
While some departments at Sun Life require employees to come in on a specific day of the week, the company provides workers with the flexibility to “work where it makes sense.”
Pagano says that Sun Life intends to stick to its current workplace strategy because it has led to greater employee retention.
“We are certainly not losing people to the companies who have the four- or five-day in-office mandate,” she says, according to the report.
Employers’ RTO mandates come with pros, cons and legal hurdles, according to J. Geoffrey Howard, founder of Howard Employment Law in Vancouver.
