In 2021, Cecilia started working for the Ontario Public Service (OPS). That’s when she says she “went back in the closet.”
Though she socially transitioned in the mid 2010s, during her twenties, in 2021 she was a recent graduate trying to build her career in the male-dominated field of applied sciences. Suddenly, the transphobia she’d shouldered in university had much higher stakes.
“It’s different when you’re in your workplace, because it’s your livelihood,” she says. “Now, it’s the way you make money, it’s the way you keep a roof over your head.” (Cecilia’s name has been changed to protect her job, as the Ontario government instructs its employees not to speak to the media except through official channels.)
Being hired during COVID-19 restrictions in Ontario meant Cecilia worked remotely five days a week. She met her colleagues in person for the first time a year into her job. She says starting her job while working from home made it easier to come out to her coworkers later on, once she began a hybrid schedule. It allowed her to slowly get to know coworkers on her own terms and scout out “how the dynamics were.”
Similar experiences have been shared by others. While COVID-19 forced isolation and, research shows, limited access to healthcare for some, it also gave people space to explore their identity and live as their true selves without fearing the scrutiny of colleagues.
“Isolation and physical distancing are miserable, but they also relieve one of the keenest transition anxieties: our bodies, and how we present them to the world, become less urgent when no one is looking,” Jude Ellison S. Doyle wrote for Xtra in a 2021 column.
Cecilia is among those worried that an Ontario mandate requiring all OPS workers to return to the office full-time as of Jan. 5, 2026, will limit or even discourage gender exploration.
“It’s going to make it very hard for people who are considering transitioning or at the point where they want to try different things,” she says.
Greater risk for harassment in the workplace
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ontario Premier Doug Ford declared a state of emergency, halting regular work practices. Public servants worked remotely or in a hybrid model until April 2022, when the OPS began requiring them to come into the office one to two days a week. This increased to a minimum of three days in May 2022.
Ford’s August 2025 announcement that workers would be required to return full-time in January was met with outcry from unions and workers alike. Unions have been key players in the fight against transphobic and queerphobic discrimination for decades.
In 2016, Lisa (whose name has also been changed) applied for a job in data analytics in the OPS. Though she wasn’t out as trans at the time, she thought that if she got hired, the job would have protections in place when she did decide to come out.
“Government jobs are legendary for it being difficult to fire people [based on discrimination],” says Lisa. “If someone has a problem with trans people at work,” she says she thought, “it’s going to be their problem, not my problem.”
The perceived safety gave her confidence to wear a dress to a work event for the first time in 2017. Though her manager expressed support, after that event she still felt “stared at every day” in the office.
For Lisa, relief from this intense scrutiny came in 2022, when she was approved for a disability accommodation that allowed her to work three days a week from home. Though the accommodation was not primarily related to the scrutiny she faced as a trans woman, Lisa says this setup lifted the stress of facing her colleagues in person.
“It was a lot easier to get to the desk here [at home] than it is to get to the office. A million times easier,” she says. “I can wear whatever I have.”
Since 2025, she’s been working from home two days a week. Speaking to Xtra in December, she was worried that the Ontario government would force her to work in the office full-time, ignoring her disability accommodation. In January, she said that she had been cleared to keep working from home two days a week.
“It’s by law that they have to accommodate me if it’s reasonable,” Lisa explains. Her disability accommodations apply under the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, while other work-from-home arrangements are at the discretion of the OPS. “It’s a different process, and it goes through different organizations,” she says.
Both Lisa and Cecilia continue to work from home a few days a week because of their disability accommodations. But both say they realize that not everyone can easily access accommodations to work from home. An internal email obtained by the Toronto Star in December revealed that one in six Ontario government workers—over 10,000 people—have applied to work from home for at least one day a week since Ford announced the back-to-office mandates.
AMAPCEO, OPSEU and other unions representing Ontario’s public servants have loudly opposed the back-to-work mandate for months, arguing that workers have fared well in a hybrid environment. AMAPCEO has filed many disputes against the OPS on account of its failure to provide the required advance notice about the mandate and delays processing the thousands of requests for remote work.
“After five years of highly productive remote and hybrid work, public service professionals are being forced back to offices that are simply inconducive to work. They’re coming in to find broken desks, missing chairs and unsafe workplaces—and in some instances to find no workspace at all,” AMAPCEO president Dave Bulmer told Xtra by email.
Jason Wagar, a senior staff member for the union, said in an email that AMAPCEO’s Equity Caucus wrote of the “disproportionate impact” of the mandate on “equity-denied employees” in a letter addressed to Ontario’s Secretary of Cabinet. In October, the union also held its twice-annual Activists and Leaders Forum where LGBTQ2S+ workers made their concerns heard.
“We have heard from queer and trans members that, despite all the advances towards a more inclusive workplace, a full-time return to the office puts them at greater risk for harassment in the workplace,” Wagar says.
Kristine Bunker, a media relations assistant director for the OPS’s cabinet office, told Xtra in an email that in the past few months the OPS has met twice with its employee groups—including its LGBTQ group—about the implementation of the return-to-office mandate. She says their feedback “continues to guide our ongoing, collaborative dialogue on the Return to the Office approach.”
Bunker added that the OPS has introduced initiatives over the years to reduce workplace discrimination, including releasing a guide for LGBTQ2S+ inclusion.
Opposing the return to office
Finn (also a pseudonym), is a nonbinary project coordinator who has worked for the OPS for the last five years. Though they always worked from home, they were told an office space would open up for them eventually.
But by the time they were finally offered an office, a few years into their job, a pile-up of constant ignorance and microaggressions related to their gender meant the prospect of working in person filled them with dread. They took a mental health-related medical leave.
“I tried to push back on [going back to the office] in different ways, but, ultimately, I decided to take time out,” they say.
When they returned to the job in 2025, Ford’s mandate had been set in motion, and it seemed like Finn would be forced back into the office full-time at the beginning of 2026. But by January, their working situation stayed the same because of a lack of available space in any of the government buildings nearby.
Still, Finn hasn’t relaxed. They plan to fight any pushes to get them into the office in the future.
“If I’m in an office space, I don’t have that protection to do the self-care or take the time out that I need to recover from microaggressions, aggressions, misgendering or lack of inclusive language that is sort of the norm in my team,” they say.
Like the other public service workers Xtra spoke to, Finn initially applied to the OPS after hearing about the benefits and “appealing” workplace culture from a friend that worked there. But the way their managers handled their gender transition pushed them to take a mental health-related leave prior to the mandates. Finn says they were burnt out from constant ignorance, microaggressions and self-advocacy.
“It’s been a very constraining factor to decisions that I make around my appearance or what I’m going to do next in my transition journey,” they say, describing their office’s work culture.
Finn describes their initial impression of an inclusive OPS as “deeply misleading.” “As a trans person who is regularly misgendered, I do not feel safe or respected. The OPS has been one of the worst environments I’ve worked in,” they say.
It’s not just Ontario demanding public service workers return to the office. Alberta has followed suit this month, and the federal government is now eyeing its own mandate. A September survey from the Angus Reid Institute revealed that 53 percent of federal public service workers were against a return-to-office mandate.
Finn says the back-to-office mandate could pose an unnecessary risk to trans workers’ mental health. “A gender transition is not a [work] project,” they add. “It’s an ongoing life that someone has.”
This story is published with support from the 2025-26 Ken Popert Media Fellowship program.
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