There are many who are thinking that the pandemic could lead to fewer businesses looking to operate out of a commercial space.

Former BC Green Party Leader, and now independent MLA for Oak Bay-Gordon Head, Andrew Weaver says there will be companies out there who will look to have more employees working at home.

“And it just builds to different business models, but again if you try to go back to exactly the same thing as before it happened, all we know is that these type of things will happen again. It’s a very significant change that I think we are going to see in terms of how we interact as humans as a direct consequence of COVID-19.”

Speaking on the NL Morning News, Weaver says there are positives that come with fewer people working out of office spaces.

“I haven’t done the cost benefit, but I can tell you if you have a ton of people living in say the Fraser Valley commuting to office towers in downtown Vancouver, there’s a lot of co-benefits to having less traffic, there’s more efficiency to having less people on the road, people can get from A to B faster and there are many examples that show people can be more productive.”

Weaver says if companies start to implement different business models that would see more people working out of a home office, it could lead to changes in how municipalities collect commercial taxes and there will need to be some creativity when it comes to finding new revenue sources.

“I’m not really worried about the tax base because again, things modify. I’m more worried about the economy continuing to chug along and I think this is an opportunity to be careful, but move forward and learn from this.”