Legislative Assembly of Alberta
Statement by Jon Lord

Part 1: John (Jon) Lord to Alberta legislative assembly - Mar 25/04

Mr. Speaker, the Industrial revolution changed our world two centuries ago. Among other things, massive numbers of peoples in rural areas, moved to cities to obtain higher paying city jobs, and rural life was completely altered as a result.

But now, a new revolution is taking place, creating an enormous economic opportunity to re-invigorate rural areas again, providing city jobs and paycheques, to people living in and enjoying a country lifestyle - and that is not all. It also the greatest opportunity to enable disabled people to earn a good living, with dignity- and in fact, this new revolution, has a plethora of other benefits for everyone in society today.

It's called teleworking - working from home, on your computers, and it is rapidly sweeping the employment world. Because we have the SuperNet , Alberta is uniquely positioned to lead the way in Canada, which is good because Canada is actually falling way behind. According to Bob Fortier, one of Canada's foremost telework pioneers, Canada has finally reached an estimated 1 million teleworkers nationally today - but compare that with the US now at 28 million, up 17% just in the last year alone. Obviously, Teleworking is soon going to be having major impacts on employee recruitment and retention even here in Alberta, very quickly, if we aren't offering similar opportunities. People don't even have to move anymore - the Great Canadian Brain Drain, is rapidly becoming virtual.

We do have some success stories:

• In Calgary, we have people working full time at jobs in Toronto, working out of their house in Calgary
• we have e-campus Alberta and teachers who teach virtual classrooms with dozens of students right across the country.
• we have real-estate agents who don't go into offices anymore, thus avoiding two hour commutes each day, reducing traffic, saving office rent
• we have doctors diagnosing people on the far side of the planet
• Maritimers are leading in distributed call centers — farm wives, working out of their own homes, answering calls for utility companies from around the world.

The opportunities are endless, the benefits profound — but Canada is falling behind.

www.ivc.ca - is the website of the Canadian Telework Association, and InnoVisions Canada - and it will tell you a lot, about what we need to do in Canada and Alberta today. I urge all employers, to take a look at it. Your businesses might depend on it.

Thank you Mr. Speaker, Jon Lord, MLA Calgary Currie, March 25, 2004
(Actual Parliamentary record of this text is on page 709 of Alberta Hansard (PDF)

Part 2: John (Jon) Lord to Alberta legislative assembly - Apr 19/04

Mr. Lord: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Teleworking represents one of the most important new employment and societal directions in our world today. Teleworking employment could revitalize struggling rural areas, reduce infrastructure demand and downtown traffic congestion, create employment for the disabled, improve the environment, but it could also steal our brainpower away if we don’t provide competitive opportunities for employees here. My first question is for the Minister of Human Resources and Employment. Given that productivity gains of 20 per cent average and as high as 50 per cent have been reported amongst large organizations that have introduced major teleworking opportunities, what sort of initiatives is your department involved in that will promote teleworking within Alberta and specifically within the government workforce?

Mr. Dunford, Minister of Innovation and Science: Well, thank you for the question, Mr. Speaker. As far as the initiatives go, this is the kind of thing that we would look to for leadership from the private sector. As a government we are aware of the concept and, of course, always want to look at it and stay abreast of current thinking.

I agree with the preamble of the question in the sense of infrastructure, what it can do, and again for quality of life. What I haven’t seen addressed in any of the research that I’ve been able to read to this point is: what is the impact or the downward pressure on wages by allowing people to stay at home? We haven’t really had much discussion around those issues to this point but clearly less transportation expense required to get to work, perhaps wardrobe situations. Also, how is the issue of governance handled?

So there are many issues to this, and what looks on the surface of it always as a nice opportunity to provide another means of working – and I do recognize the member’s concern about the disabled working at home. This is clearly important. But it’s more complex than just a couple of articles out of a paper.

Mr. Lord: My second question for the same minister: given that an EKOS Research survey indicated that 55 per cent of 3,500 Canadian respondents wanted telework options, 43 per cent would switch employers to get telework options, and 33 per cent would choose telework opportunities over even a 10 per cent raise in pay, are there teleworking opportunities on the table in our labour negotiations with our provincial employees now?

Mr. Dunford: Again, as specific as the member would like me to be on this particular issue, the negotiations are going to be coming up later this fall. The demands that the employer will want at the next set of negotiations have not been established as yet, and of course we have no way of knowing at this particular point in time what the demands from the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees will be.

Mr. Lord: My third question is for the Minister of Innovation and Science. Given that the rollout of the SuperNet infrastructure could enable Alberta to become a world leader in teleworking opportunities, what initiatives is your department involved in to promote telework technology and telework opportunities to Alberta employers?

Mr. Doerksen (Minister of Innovation and Science): Mr. Speaker, the Alberta government is committed to a competitive global marketplace. Knowledge, skills, and innovation are important elements in a knowledge economy. What the Alberta SuperNet provides is the infrastructure to enable the opportunity for all Albertans to acquire the knowledge and skills to compete in the knowledge economy, and more importantly this infrastructure provides the opportunity for innovation that talks about the kind of initiative the hon. member is raising with respect to how we do work, from where it’s delivered, because connected communities are all the same size.

(Actual Parliamentary record of this text can be seen on pg 861 of Alberta Hansard (PDF)