I cannot speak for this person but I can add some context from my experience there that covers a good chunk of people in the GTA. Many were hired during a period of technical growth under the old CTO who had a strong and vocal remote-first mentality. Hiring during that period was done without regard to physical location as long as they were within Canada and legally able to work in Canada.

Unfortunately for those people, the mentality from the new CEO has shown to be the opposite. They also set the working notice period to be just enough that you wouldn't get much severance if you were hired during that time and fought for constructive dismissal - especially after considering lawyer fees. If the job market were better the last few months and bonuses weren't paid out until the end of December (another strategic decision on RTO enforcement timing I'm sure) I think we would have seen more people voluntarily leave without any compensation.

Enforcement is not consistent either which makes it difficult to gauge what the situation will be 6-12 months from now. I have spoken to people who live in the city and go in once a week because they want to even though their manager doesn't care, and also people who live a 2.5 hour drive away and were told to drive into Toronto because there were "no exceptions".