Good morning. Companies want employees back at their desks, but one powerful Canadian institution has yet to fully return in-person – more on that below, along with the Taliban’s appeal for international aid and the new editor of American Vogue. But first:
Today’s headlines
- Alberta pauses its ban on school library books with sexually explicit content
- Trump vows to take his fight for tariffs to the U.S. Supreme Court
- With a grand display of force, China’s Xi flaunts his country’s military and diplomatic might
The Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa.Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press
Office politics
Stuck on Zoom
Pretty much every organization seems desperate to get its employees back into the building. Four days a week, the rule at most of Canada’s Big Five banks starting Sept. 15, is practically table stakes at this point – plenty of other places have dispensed with remote work altogether. Amazon, Dell and JPMorgan rolled out their full-time in-office mandates for staff earlier this year. Rogers, the City of Ottawa and the province of Ontario will follow suit in the first months of 2026.
You know the spiel by now: Managers contend that work just isn’t the same when it’s done remotely. Ottawa city manager Wendy Stephanson said last week that a full return to the office is necessary to “increase culture, innovation and relationship-building.” Ontario Premier Doug Ford, applauding her decision, insisted that “it’s a lot easier looking someone in the eye than sitting over a telephone or computer screen.”
But that argument hasn’t gained a ton of traction with employees, many of whom have ignored the ramp-up in office time. (Canada’s downtown foot traffic remains roughly half what it was before the pandemic.) They maintain that they’re every bit as successful at their jobs when they log on rather than commute in. And these happy-with-hybrid workers have a powerful advocate for their cause: the Supreme Court of Canada.
Resting their cases
When COVID-19 hit, the Supreme Court sent lawyers home – and it still hasn’t let them all back in. Only counsel for the primary parties are allowed to enter the courtroom. Everyone else, including outside groups known as interveners, continues to be stuck on Zoom.
Interveners would love to get in here.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Although interveners don’t play a direct legal role in a case, they do have a vested interest in its outcome. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Assembly of First Nations and Egale Canada are all long-time interveners; often, they’re the only ones speaking on behalf of marginalized communities in a legal dispute. But they do have to speak quickly. As David Ebner, The Globe’s justice reporter, points out in his new piece, main lawyers typically get an hour each in front of the Supreme Court justices. Interveners have just five minutes by laptop to argue the broad issues at stake.
Unsurprisingly, they hate this arrangement. Over the summer, the Canadian Labour Congress and the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund dispatched letters to the court requesting the option to appear in person. Their reasoning would be awfully persuasive to the CEOs leading the return-to-office charge: Justices are less engaged and interveners less effective, the letters claim, when everyone’s trapped behind a screen. But the Supreme Court is disinclined to do away with Zoom, and not just because it reduces travel costs for interveners. In a statement to The Globe, the court insisted that for the justices, “there is no difference in how submissions are received between in-person and virtual appearances.”
The five-minute rule
Remote work isn’t the only hot-button issue grabbing the court’s attention. After an unusually long deliberation, the justices agreed to hear a landmark case on Quebec’s secularism law, Bill 21, which bans public-sector workers from wearing religious symbols – and which Quebec shielded from legal challenges by using the notwithstanding clause to override Charter rights. The hearing could come as early as this winter and has already attracted a record number of interveners. More than 40 groups, including the Canadian Council of Muslim Women, the Ontario Human Rights Commission and five provincial attorneys-general, have received standing to present their arguments at the Supreme Court.
They’ll each get their five minutes, and those minutes will add up: Chief Justice Richard Wagner has said the Bill 21 hearing could take three days, a rare length for a case at the top court. (Most are tackled in a single day.) Maybe the court will have a sudden change of heart at the prospect of so much Zoom time. More likely, the justices will spend hours upon hours staring at a screen – all without the chance to get a jump on dinner or chuck in a load of laundry.
The Shot
‘The White House simply does not want to hear us.’
Ilya Yashin, Yulia Navalnaya and Vladimir Kara-Murza at a demonstration in Berlin last year.Markus Schreiber/The Associated Press
Three prominent Russian dissidents, including Alexey Navalny’s widow, are asking Prime Minister Mark Carney to grant asylum to hundreds of their colleagues at risk of deportation back to Russia by the Trump administration. Read more about their request to Canada here.
The Wrap
What else we’re following
At home: Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne announced a 100-day plan to reduce delays and improve service at the Canada Revenue Agency.
Abroad: An Israeli missile struck a house just metres away from journalist Hasan Jaber’s home in Gaza, killing his relatives Yousef, 28; Heba, 25; and their one-year-old daughter, Yumna.
On the ground: Ottawa is looking at ways to assist Afghanistan after its deadly earthquake, even though Canadian law prohibits funding to terrorist organizations such as the Taliban.
On the water: Art conservators warn that the 1,000-year-old Bayeux Tapestry is far too fragile to be shipped across the English Channel to the British Museum from France.
On the screen: Canadian comedian and actor Veronika Slowikowska will be one of five new featured players on Saturday Night Live this season.
On the page: Chloe Malle – former head of Vogue.com, and daughter of Candice Bergen and Louis Malle – has replaced Anna Wintour at the helm of American Vogue.