If our country is hedging its bets on the Artificial Intelligence (AI) boom, it should be of paramount priority for Canada’s elected representatives to strengthen our social safety net.
It’s no secret to politicians in Ottawa that Employment Insurance (EI) has long been in need of an overhaul. Many unemployed workers fail to qualify for benefits, many fail to secure work during the unemployment period, and many are legislated into a challenging financial position when benefits fail to provide enough to cover monthly expenses. The governing political party has promised meaningful action to enhance EI for over a decade, but has managed only minor tinkering within the program’s restrictive and existing parameters.
Universal Basic Income (UBI) is another intriguing concept that has long-deserved attention as well, but it has only been flirted with in Canada’s parliament through the years. UBI may very well be the approach of the future to ensure the dignity and well-being of citizens as we are left to navigate an increasingly hostile labour market that is challenging many of the “benefits” the Western world has reaped from capitalism over the last century.
And then there is AI. AI is showing the potential to disrupt, threaten and re-define humans’ longstanding relationship with work. If the need for human labour is significantly reduced, how will many of us survive without paycheques? What does the role of government look like in a world like this? How will humans claim social, creative, and economic agency?
Canada’s policymakers should have an eye to these questions and be discussing how to re-organize and re-imagine human productivity. They may need a push from workers to take their eyes off of immediate cost-savings benefits and focus on long term implications.
Workers’ rights and labour protections mustn’t trail behind as technology rapidly progresses and workplaces callously expedite the race to remove human resources from their expenditures spreadsheets.
Political leaders should feel a sense of urgency to plan for this existential threat. Work has long been the gravitational force under which we have anchored our lives and livelihoods. The “career” becomes synonymous with our position in society; it dictates how we assign ourselves value and self-worth. These capitalistic social constructs must be dismantled as we must begin to envision life outside of the 9 to 5, 40-hour work week. Embracing a future with bigger government, robust social programs and a stronger commitment to the collective good could present a major challenge to the neoliberal status quo – one I’m not convinced we’re ready for.
As far as government is concerned, my own view is that our public service should steer clear of AI and rely on citizens to provide service to fellow citizens. We need humans at the heart of our public service – at all levels of government. Empathy and compassion are sacred human qualities that we cannot entrust to be carried out in code and automation. That said, there may be no stopping the temptation to shed human labour in the pursuit of Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney’s efficiency-at-all-costs agenda. Carney’s current approach to hack and slash our public service shows the extent which the Prime Minister entrusts public servants to serve the public. His economist heart is convinced that efficiency and pragmatism are paramount.
My view is simple.
In the short-term, Canada’s politicians must act to:
- Protect human jobs from the intrusion of AI across the private and public sectors
- Enhance and expand our social safety net imminently by revamping EI and seriously considering UBI
In the long-term, politicians must:
- Uphold the public service as a continuous, worthy, and expansive project that is made for humans by humans
- Ensure that the public service is adequately staffed and can maximize its impact for the public good
- Acknowledge the decline of work as a core construct within human existence
If we fail to wrestle with these priorities now, we risk unemployment and increased rates of poverty beyond anything we have witnessed in recent memory.
Of course, organized labour has a role to play in pushing for better. While managers and executives hunger for leaner and more efficient teams, workers must stand united in calling this out. Workplaces no longer want to assume the cost of employing us. The government doesn’t want to catch us when we fall.
We either accept this as the new “normal”, or we organize and demand better.
Big solutions exist if we open our minds to new possibilities and push politicians to embrace spending public money for the public good.
Written By:
Progress Peterborough 
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