December 4, 2025
Ottawa’s $2.14 Billion Problem: How the Federal Government Is Reshaping Downtown
The capital’s office market faces unprecedented uncertainty as the feds plan to shed millions of square feet—and nobody knows which buildings will survive December 4, 2025 Walk through downtown Ottawa on a Wednesday afternoon and you’ll see something unsettling: empty streets, darkened storefronts, and gleaming office towers filled with vacant floors. It’s not just a post-pandemic hangover. This is the new reality of a capital city wrestling with an identity crisis, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. The federal government, Ottawa’s economic anchor and largest employer with 154,000 workers in the National Capital Region, is planning to slash its office
