What began as a chance to have a more affordable and bigger home outside Toronto could soon become a test of how far commuters are willing to travel as return-to-office rules tighten.
This week, new data from Environics Analytics found that nearly 250,000 GTA households changed addresses between early 2024 and early 2025 — with more than half of the 68,173 households who moved to another region left the GTA entirely.
Many of those households relocated to communities far outside the city limits, a shift now colliding with new return-to-office mandates.
Transit agencies, meanwhile, are ramping up service in anticipation of heavier rush-hour volumes.
A trend among the public sector
In August, the provincial government announced that all 60,000 Ontario Public Service workers will be required to be in the office full time starting in January.
Federal employees in core public service roles were ordered last year to attend the office at least three days a week.
Meanwhile, Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown has directed staff to return to the office full time beginning in January.
Employers across Toronto are adopting similar policies, tightening hybrid schedules that became commonplace during the pandemic and pushing more workers back onto highways and transit lines.
Toronto has ‘longest commute’ in the country
Statistics Canada recently reported that Toronto still has the longest average commute time in the country — 34.9 minutes in May, up 1.6 minutes from a year earlier and well above the national average of 26.7 minutes.
The agency noted that commute times are rising in step with the amount of time workers are required to be physically present in their workplaces.
This week, CTV News Toronto heard from a few former GTA residents who left the city for hybrid work but now worry what a shift back to full-time in-office will look like in 2026.
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