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[Context] I am a Canadian living in a Toronto suburb, working remotely, 40 hours a week as a regular employee for an American company headquartered in Monterey, CA. I have been a full time employee there for almost 1.5 years, annual income approximately $42 000 (CAD).

Anyone who follows Canadian news, or is a resident of Toronto or Vancouver (or their respective suburbs) are aware of the sky-high rents and housing prices, to the point where is a family is to follow the guideline "you should not spend more than 30% of your gross income on rent" requires that their household income ranks 50th pcentile if they wish to live in a 750 square feet condo 30 km outside the downtown core--by definition excluding 50% of the population from being able to "afford housing". Having a large remote workforce means that people are able to find housing that is less expensive by being in less in-demand areas (where demand is driven by the large number of jobs). This saves employees large amounts of money in the form of reduced housing costs.

It is 2019, and climate change is becoming a big topic in Canadian (and perhaps global) politics. One thing is clear: if the patterns of climate change keep going as-is, planet Earth may become uninhabitable eventually. Having a large remote workforce drastically reduces gasoline usage because a lot of gas usage is really just commuting to work. More money is saved by the employees in the form of reduced gasoline, insurance rates and longer lasting vehicles.

The preceeding 2 paragraphs appear to contradict each other. But they do not necessarily--as a lot of people tend to live far away from downtown cores and are willing to commute 1 or even 2 hours to work (one way). If one assumes 240 workdays a year (260 weekdays - 10 statutory holidays - 10 vacation days), that is anywhere from 480 hours (20 days) to 960 hours (40 days) wasted on commute time alone--that could be used for more productive things. In paragraph 2, by "living away from expensive areas" do not necessarily mean "living in a ghost town therefore it is necessary to commute to buy groceries/send children to schools". It merely means that suburbs can be their own, functional cities with large white collar workers working remotely.

Continuing on, a remote workforce allows employers to eliminate the costs associated with renting office space and the utilities contained within. Reduced expenses = increased profits for the company.

So, at the end of the day, what is preventing a large number of office workers (call center agents, computer programmers/software engineers, accountants, and other largely computer, telephone or paperwork-based employees) from working remotely, as it seems to save costs for employers, employees, save time for employees and better for the environment?