Federal AI strategy fails to sufficiently address job-loss risk, unions contend

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Labour leaders are voicing concern over Ottawa’s new national artificial-intelligence strategy, saying that it fails to address the risks posed by AI and contains little detail on how the government would protect workers who lose their jobs because of the technology.

The federal government’s long-anticipated AI strategy document, released Thursday morning, lays out plans to accelerate business adoption of AI, provide free training and literacy skills to Canadians and boost funding options for start-ups.

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But while the strategy sets clear goals of increasing AI adoption in work forces to 60 per cent by 2034 from 12 per cent currently, it does not address the prospect of job losses across a variety of sectors or suggest ways in which the government can mitigate against the risk of layoffs.

“The strategy is sorely lacking in detail, especially measures to address the risks of AI harms to workers,” said Sarah Ryan, senior research officer at the Canadian Union of Public Employees, who was part of the government’s AI Strategy Task Force.

“There is a lot in the document about job creation, but nothing on legislative measures to address job loss, or increase income protections for workers who are impacted by AI,” Ms. Ryan said.

Mark Hancock, CUPE’s president, told The Globe and Mail that the AI consultations on the strategy “feel like they were just for appearances.”

“None of our major suggestions seem to have been taken into account,” he added.

Ottawa is targeting the creation of up to 90,000 AI-related jobs and work-placement opportunities for young Canadians by 2031, and anticipates 250,000 new jobs will be created by that year as businesses adopt AI more broadly.

“The gains of AI will come from putting it to work across the Canadian economy and developing pro-worker, industrial AI technologies,” the strategy document states, emphasizing that AI will augment human expertise, rather than displace it.

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But with no actual legislative propositions that either require employers to retrain workers who have lost their jobs due to AI or bar employers who receive public funding from cutting jobs (recommendations put forward by CUPE), the strategy effectively assumes that employers too will adopt a pro-worker AI approach.

“This feels like a strategy that businesses wanted to see,” said Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, an umbrella organization representing dozens of provincial and federal unions. “We are particularly concerned about who is regulating how employers make decisions about AI and workers, and how much information workers have about AI technology being used in their workplaces.”

Ms. Bruske added that the CLC and other unions are meeting with federal AI Minister Evan Solomon on June 8 to discuss the strategy. “We did expect to see much more detail, and we are hoping to reiterate our concerns to the minister next week,” she said.

The CLC’s position toward AI is that the technology can be used to improve job quality and economic insecurity, but it has to be developed with proper transparency and accountability.

“Deployed for the purpose of shedding workers, reducing costs and exploiting opportunities for profit at the cost of privacy and human rights, AI will only lead to greater inequality and dystopic outcomes,” the union argued in a 2023 submission to the House of Commons standing committee on industry and technology, which, at the time, was reviewing Bill C-27, the Artificial Intelligence and Data Act.

Unions, academics and AI companies themselves have warned that the technology could cause major disruption in the white-collar work force, either by changing job tasks or eliminating them entirely.

To date, however, there has been no clear evidence of widespread job losses because of AI in Canada.

In a recent speech, the Bank of Canada’s external deputy governor, Michelle Alexopoulos, suggested that AI could replace some jobs, and that the Bank was monitoring employment data closely for signs that AI was having a material impact on the labour market. If it does start having a sizable impact, the bank believes younger workers will be affected first.

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A research report by TD Economics released this week projected that in the near term, AI will reshape work by altering tasks within jobs rather than eliminating entire roles.

“AI adoption on its own is unlikely to catalyze a recession in Canada,” the report said. But it suggested that to help displaced workers, in the event of job losses, governments should offer “straightforward retraining paths that lead to the specific skills employers are hiring for.”

The AI strategy document mentions that the government will offer training and skills upgrades for mid-career workers and scale up employer-led training, but there are no concrete details on whom exactly the training will target and how it will be executed.

TD’s senior economist, Rannella Billy-Ochieng, author of the report, also noted that policies such as wage subsidies to employers or work-sharing (where the government subsidizes businesses to retain employees) risked increasing long-term unemployment. That’s because workers would have fewer incentives to equip themselves with new skills that enable them to find work in an economy that is structurally changing.

Tony Bonen, executive director of economics research at Ottawa-based think tank Signal49 (formerly The Conference Board of Canada), said that although the concerns around job losses were valid, the idea of placing restrictions in the form of regulations on how and why companies let people go – as suggested by unions such as CUPE – is unwise.

“Especially right now, it is difficult to identify why companies have laid off workers. Is it new technology? Is it uncertainty because of trade relations? It might be for all those reasons.”