The Canadian head of the world’s largest flexible workplace provider agrees that the

return to office

is a growing trend, but one that may not be limited to the downtown core of your city.

Terri Pozniak, country manager for Canada with International Workplace Group PLC (IWG), said that across the country, the issue is less about coming into the office and more about the time it takes to get there.

“It’s true that larger companies are coming back,” Pozniak told the Financial Post. “The larger workplace requirements are coming back, but slowly. Are they clamouring or running out of space? I challenge that.”

Avison Young reported this month that in the second quarter of 2025, downtown Toronto had the most leasing activity since the fourth quarter of 2018.

The banks have driven part of that activity, but the real estate company says construction of so-called trophy assets, or the most elite office space, has declined in downtown Toronto from a peak of nearly 8.6 million square feet under construction in 2020 to almost nothing new, except for CIBC Square. Space is tight.

But as people reduce their work-from-home hours, Pozniak says the model is evolving.

“Traditional banks look at everybody as having to come to the office. And the office is one space, one headquarters,” said Pozniak. “What we are (seeing) now is that companies need to be in Markham, be in Mississauga. We need to have something in all of the suburbs. What it means is that the office downtown needs to be smaller than it typically was, because some employees are returning to the office but not in the traditional location.”

IWG, through its Regus, Spaces and HQ brands, has 23 locations in downtown Toronto but 46 locations in surrounding municipalities.

“We are opening up a branch in Bracebridge. Who would have thought we would be in Bracebridge?” said Pozniak, about a town of about 20,000 people, 200 kilometres north of Toronto. “The demand is there, and people live up there and need a professional workplace.”

It isn’t the office that people don’t like: It’s the commute.

Statistics Canada reported in 2024 that the average commute time in Toronto was 33.3 minutes, the highest in the country. Vancouver was 30.5 minutes.

The federal agency said that the “era of shorter commuting times had come to an end” in May 2024, as times started to rise above the previous highs set in May 2016.

However, the real sticking point is those longer commutes, which are increasing and are particularly challenging in

Toronto

.

In May 2024, 9.2 per cent of all commuters had a long commute or more than 60 minutes, up from 8.7 per cent in May 2023 and 8.1 per cent in May 2022. In Oshawa, outside Toronto, 20 per cent of commuters face a long commute.

“I call this the commute tolerance,” said Pozniak, adding that people had to increase what they could tolerate because of housing costs. “The challenge of the commute is very different from what we faced years ago, and that is going to continue to grow.”

It’s not even just a Toronto factor. IWG just opened an office in Moncton, N.B., this week partly because companies are trying to encourage people to leave their homes for a human connection.

“Yes, you are still on a Teams meeting, but you are highly functional in a professional environment and connecting with humans. Maybe there are four people from your office or 10 people, but not five hundred,” said Pozniak, predicting mass gatherings may turn into a quarterly event for larger companies. “Realistically, if you go into your head office with 500 people, are you talking to 500 people? You are in your little divisional area.”

In places like Edmonton, the company has pivoted to maintain its presence in downtown spots while also expanding into the south end of Alberta’s capital.

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“What we traditionally thought about downtown Toronto, downtown Calgary, downtown Montreal, we are highly occupied, but our focus is also the suburbs that are closer to homes,” said Pozniak. “It doesn’t matter where you are in the country because someone’s commute tolerance is different. In

Calgary

, you can get from one end to the other in half an hour, and they think it’s crazy (to spend that much time in a car). They say the same thing. I’m not paying that for parking. I’m not driving all the way there.”

Go to Regina, and you can get somewhere in 15 minutes. People don’t want that commute either, so the Saskatchewan capital has a suburban IWG location to beat the

traffic

.

“It’s an industrial park with 50 offices and people love it,” said Pozniak.

Wherever, you go in Canada, the IWG Canadian head said people just can’t “wrap their head around driving downtown.”

It’s back to office, but will that office be downtown? IWG says sometimes, but not all the time.

• Email: gmarr@postmedia.com