By Barry Ellsworth
TRENTON, Ont. (AA) - Millions of Canadian jobs are threatened by technology that is changing so fast authorities and businesses cannot react quickly enough to the changes, Canadian media reported Thursday.
‘A new report, The Intelligence Revolution: Future Proofing Canada’s Workforce, was co-authored by the financial advisory firm Deloitte Canada and the Human Resources Professionals Association (HRPA). It says 35 - 42 percent of Canadian jobs are threatened but did not put a timetable on the losses.
The report said government and business leaders and teachers must act quickly to prepare Canadians for the disruption in traditional jobs.
“We need to get down to the urgent work of assessing not just how work will change in Canada but how Canadian workers should prepare,” said Scott Allinson, HRPA’s vice president, public affairs, in a statement on the report’s website.
His words echo those of Sunhil Johal, head of policy for the Mowat Centre, a University of Toronto think tank.
He told Anadolu Agency not even high-paying traditional jobs are immune.
“The pace of technological change in society is continuing to accelerate,” Johal said. “New advances in artificial intelligence and automation are poised to disrupt many sectors of the economy in the coming years and may threaten white-collar professions such as accounting, law and medicine.”
Driverless vehicles could threaten truck drivers, for example, and robots have already replaced many manufacturing jobs.
He said the current retraining and support of Canadians who have already lost jobs to technological advances are “woefully inadequate”.
Johal co-authored a report last year that said up to 7.5 million jobs could be lost to automation.
The assessment by Johal and the report raise concerns for not only the Canadian worker but for those in other economies as well.
“Globally, we can expect AI [artificial intelligence] and other technological advances to continue to concentrate wealth in the hands of a relatively small number of corporations and individuals, “Johal said. “We are also likely to see more opportunities present themselves for highly skilled workers from the developing world, while workers in the developed world may be faced with the prospect of prolonged wage stagnation.
So, what to do?
“Moving forward, policymakers need to start to think about how they can design social policies and programs that provide targeted, quick supports that can help workers re-train for new occupations and how to educate young people to be ready for a world of work that will be more uncertain and unpredictable than ever before,” Johal told Anadolu Agency.
“Governments that are successful in this pivot towards the digital (computing technologies) economy will be well-positioned to compete globally for talent and investment.”
The report said it can be accomplished by reforming education to concentrate on mental agility, critical thinking, and an emphasis on the capacity to learn – schools turning out graduates who have those capabilities rather than teaching individual subjects.
Other recommendations in the report include making any digital platform available around the clock to employees, modernizing provincial labor laws and a better social safety net that might feature a government-funded basic income for Canadians.