They're trying to get you to quit.

The downtown business thing is such a stupid argument.

Perhaps those businesses should use the decreased revenue from office workers to renegotiate their insane commercial leases so they can afford to operate without relying on a non-consensual clientele to stay solvent.

Edit: some sort of a loosely organized downtown business association that no doubt lobbied this boneheaded move, could instead organize a lease strike that should be a sufficient bargaining chip

The workers shot themselves in the foot when they returned from strike early and folded during negotiations. The employer knows they have no teeth now and will walk over them how they see fit.

The RTO mandate is just to drive people to quit and workers are too scared to fight it with the union.

Always funny to hear the government talk about mitigating carbon emissions while forcing RTO.

I think the RTO is a major misstep being pushed by commercial real-estate lobbyists in Queen's Park, trying to avoid major impacts to the commercial real estate market. Personally, even my company (one of the largest alternative energy providers in North America) has been incredibly lax on their hybrid model, they've shuttered at least 2-3 office spaces in Canada in the last five years, and I don't expect that trajectory to change. Of course, this is personal experience, but personally I would say the cards show that Hybrid/Remote is going to win out eventually.