[CplKlinger]

It isn't fair for the tax paying store owner to be forced out of business because their tax dollars are allowing government employees to work from home. All of you that work from home took the poison pill and are now infected with hoarding hermititus. It is no surprise that you will do anything to keep your habit. No need to pay for clothes and deodorant etc., have everything delivered to you, hoard up your money to spend on vacations in Mexico.

Is it fair to the regular tax paying citizen to pay more in taxes just to indirectly subsidize business owners, when they can hardly afford groceries as it is?

And why do you frame saving money as such an evil thing to do? The average Canadian is more than $70,000 in debt, excluding mortgages. It's no surprise that people wouldn't want to pay more to commute every week. You know what changed since 2019? Inflation over the past five years combined was around 30%.

 

[itom987]

People still spend money while paying down debt, that has never changed. My worry is that the work from home setup will dissolve cities into a sea of acreages. There is no need to live close to work, adding density to cities will no longer be a priority. Services like LRT will become a white elephant. You all talk the talk but refuse to walk the walk.

 

[trevorhayden]

Studies have shown people are more supportive of working in an office or more people actually return to the office by choice if their commute is short, cheap, reliable, and comfortable. What are all of those things? Good active and mass transportation networks that connect high density housing to mixed use hubs!

 

[CplKlinger]

You all talk the talk but refuse to walk the walk.

Just to clarify, I choose to work in the office five days per week, and use the LRT to get there! And I do want downtown to have more workers, I just think it needs to be done in a smart manner: through better transit connections (like Trevor mentioned), a greater diversity in employers (ie more startups and private firms like was mentioned before), and more residents. Altogether, this would mean more bodies in downtown during business hours and also evenings and weekends, a more stable customer base for businesses that isn't completely subject to the whims of government budgets, and perhaps even more spending per worker since they're working near the businesses by choice and not constrained by lingering feelings of resentment.

Pinning all our hopes and dreams on return-to-office mandates *at best* means returning to a downtown that dies after 4:30, doesn't come to life on weekends or holidays unless there's an event going on, and has few, if any, independent businesses open outside of weekday business hours since they can't survive on the remaining customer base that does exist during the periods.

And that's the best case scenario. I think our downtown can be so much more than that, it is worthy of achieving more than that, and we deserve more than that.