Last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had what was billed as his first "face-to-face" bilateral meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden.
True, the faces in question were on video screens, but in the new pandemic reality, even world leaders need to make sacrifices. In this case, it meant no glowing, statesmanlike photo-ops or flattering footage showcasing smiles, backslaps and handshakes — remember handshakes? — all to be clipped for flogging in future election campaign ads.
There's something else that we don't get when meetings go virtual: big bills for taxpayers. There are no big official dinners or receptions. No battalions of bureaucrats and advisors tagging along to hobnob. No hotel bookings and no added security costs. Just a Zoom or Google Meet chat that doesn't cost taxpayers a dime (well, maybe a few bucks for the premium version.) Contrast this with the $257,000 bill for Trudeau's 2016 visit to Washington, or the $1.6 million spent on his infamous 2018 trip to India.
And there's a larger lesson to be learned here: if a government can do the same work virtually at much lower cost to taxpayers, it should.
Since the pandemic struck, the whole world has been forced to pivot to remote work wherever that has been a feasible substitute for pre-COVID practice. That includes much of the work governments do, from entry-level bureaucrats right up to official chats between world leaders. Necessity has overcome what years of inertia (at best) and obstructionism (at worst) had kept at bay: most of the work that can be done by banging away on a keyboard in front of a screen is now done from home offices and kitchen tables rather than office buildings in city centres.
There are drawbacks, of course: many people enjoy being in an office. Ideas can be generated when you are in constant contact with more people — something that is more likely to happen when you can bump into them spontaneously rather than only through scheduled video calls. There is also something to be said for the camaraderie and team building that occur when people are physically in the same room.
But on the other side of the ledger, the benefits of remote work go well beyond saving money. Video chats don't spew carbon emissions. Countless hours are saved on commuting. Beleaguered parents have more flexibility to shuttle kids to and from school or daycare or sports.
One hundred per cent remote work won't last for everyone, of course. But it will almost certainly be more common after the pandemic than it was before, with many jobs becoming a mix of in-office and work-from-home. Many businesses have already started shrinking their offices to adjust to this new reality.
For taxpayers, a big question will be what it means for governments. In Ottawa alone, the federal government occupies 68 office buildings and occupies 40 per cent of the city's commercial office space. If even 20 per cent of the 120,000 federal employees in the region stick with remote work, that could leave eight per cent of the office space in downtown Ottawa vacant.
With a deficit closing in on $400 billion, the federal government will have to figure out how to do more with less. It needs to develop effective ways to evaluate employee performance. Until the pandemic hit, performance measures were primarily based on hours put in sitting at a desk. Obviously, better accountability is necessary when people are working from home. But now there's a strong case for selling off buildings and vacating office space the government simply doesn't need anymore.
Governments should take heed. When the pandemic finally ends, they cannot simply revert to previous patterns of spending on offices and travel. Governments everywhere need to save money. They can start by picking the low-hanging cost-saving fruit: getting rid of empty government buildings and travelling less.
(This column originally appeared in the Financial Post)
