InnoVisions Canada telework news - Ottawa telework laggard

Ottawa not up to `One Tonne Challenge'
See article on TO Star's site

BOB FORTIER

It's a bit rich of Ottawa to ask individual Canadians to get up for the "One Tonne Challenge" and reduce harmful pollutants that lead to climate change. That's because our federal government is an international laggard when it comes to perhaps the cheapest and easiest way to get cars off the road and dramatically cut emissions.

It's called telework, or telecommuting, and it entails working from a remote location instead of commuting to distant offices.

Telework is unequivocally great for the environment. The more cars off the road, the more reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

Take this one example: The average commuter from Barrie to Toronto spews some 14 tonnes of greenhouse gases out of his or her vehicle every year. And there are more than 30,000 of these commuters heading up and down Highway 400 every day. What if half of those people stopped commuting and started teleworking full-time?

More than 210,000 tonnes of GHG emissions would be eliminated every year.

Those savings would be the equivalent of 210,000 people meeting the "one tonne challenge" � a population the size of Markham.

That's one example: There are hundreds of thousands of commuters who could park their cars and telework right now. Even part-time, the impact on reducing emissions would be enormous. It makes one wonder why Ottawa isn't doing more to promote telework.

It's laughable how far behind our federal government is to those in every other industrial nation, especially the U.S., Japan and in Europe.

Sadly, Ottawa's tardiness is two-pronged: Almost nothing is being done to get Canada's 240,000 federal civil servants teleworking and Ottawa is ignoring its power of legislation and incentives to foster telework across the country.

Thankfully, there are leaders in the private sector promoting the concept and seeing the many benefits, from environmental to real estate cost reduction to worker satisfaction and effectiveness. Bell Canada, Sun Microsystems, IBM Canada, Nortel Networks and Royal Bank all come to mind. There are others, too.

There's even a new company called SuiteWorks that is building telework complexes where companies and governments can share resources so employees can work in professional and technologically-advanced offices near their homes.

For 15 years, Ottawa has talked a good game about telework, but has done nothing. As a former public servant, I wrote the first, now dusty plan for a federal civil service telework program.

What makes this inaction even more confounding is that others are proving the benefits. It's not like Ottawa has to blaze a trail.

Last month, for example, Japan launched a program to ensure 20 per cent of the nation's workforce is telecommuting by 2010.

In December, President George W. Bush signed a bill that withholds $5 million from every federal agency not making telework available to all eligible employees.

Today, 13 per cent of eligible U.S. federal workers are teleworking � more than 100,000 out of 750,000. In Canada, a few in the federal public service are teleworking, but the numbers aren't known. There is a policy, but its application is minimal and inconsistent.

There is no tracking of results. No leadership. No idea of the emission savings potential of telework.

Telework will not solve all our climate change problems, but it can help. There is great opportunity here and it would require little effort.

As comedian Rick Mercer might say: "C'mon, Mr. Prime Minister, get up for the challenge and show some leadership to help the environment."
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Bob Fortier is president of the Canadian Telework Association.