Canada faces ‘skills emergency’ as AI disrupts labour market
Victoria Mancinelli, director of public relations, communications, marketing and strategic partnerships at LiUNA! Canada; Stephen Lucas, CEO, Mitacs and former deputy minister of Health Canada; Claudio Rojas, CEO of the National Angel Capital Organization spoke at a Coalition for a Better Future event moderated by CPAC PrimeTime Politics host Michael Serapio. / COALITION FOR A BETTER FUTURE PHOTO
Artificial intelligence is disrupting Canada's workforce "at all levels" and post-secondary institutions and employers must innovate urgently to keep pace, according to a panel of business, labour and innovation leaders at the Coalition for a Better Future’s Scorecard Reporting Event.
“We're seeing huge disruption in particular in software engineering and coding and kind of rapid replacement of what people were doing,” said Stephen Lucas, CEO, Mitacs and former deputy minister of Health Canada, at the March 26 event, held at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management.
“As it gets looked at more broadly, we're going to see it marrying with other areas, like in material science, in drug development, in human resource management, where there'll be significant human-computer or robot interaction.”
The Coalition’s annual Scorecard Report measures Canada’s progress on 21 economic indicators. The report, entitled Time to Execute: Canada’s Crucible Moment, notes that in order to remain competitive, “the priority must be leveraging our natural strengths — especially in agriculture, energy, and critical minerals — while rapidly adopting nascent technologies like AI.”
Future proof entry level jobs
Additionally, the report says Canada must prioritize investments that “future-proof entry level jobs for young Canadians.” The government must ensure youth “gain the skills and employment needed to remain resilient in the face of rapid advances in AI and automation.”
Lucas, who was on a panel discussion about the workforce of the future with Victoria Mancinelli, director of public relations, communications, marketing and strategic partnerships at LiUNA! Canada and Claudio Rojas, CEO of the National Angel Capital Organization, moderated by CPAC PrimeTime Politics host Michael Serapio.
"We're not going to see humans replaced, but we are going to have to evolve and either be good receptors or technical experts to look at the marriage of AI and other domains," Lucas said.
The concern about what AI means for young workers entering the job market was raised directly by students in the audience. One first-year University of Ottawa Telfer School of Management student, Jules, asked pointedly how the job market could be restructured to protect entry-level roles — the traditional stepping stones that give young people the foundational experience needed to advance in their careers.
Mancinelli, who represents 160,000 construction and trades workers, said her industry is already navigating the shift — and pushing back on the fear surrounding it.
“Labour unions are very scared of change. I'll admit it,” she said. “And when something comes in like AI, we're very scared of it saying it's going to replace our members. It's not.”
Human workers remain central to the process
Mancinelli described how robotics and AI are being deployed in the energy sector to handle land surveys — work previously done by people on foot — but emphasized that human workers remain central to the process. “There are still people who are operating that machinery, so they're now being retrained and upskilled to meet that demand,” she said. “If you don't adapt now, you will fall behind, and your members will start to lose some of those job opportunities.”
Nik Nanos, chief data scientist at Nanos Research, spoke in a keynote before the panel to present findings from the latest research on the issue. He said 80% of Canadians rate learning new skills as “urgent.”
“Not something that's nice to have, not something that is planned, but that there is a certain level of urgency,” he said. “When it comes to thinking about the skills that we think we're going to need in order to compete and create prosperity in the future, there is an extremely high level of urgency.”
He said 62% of Canadians are open to learning new skills, a number he said is “striking” given where the economy and the workforce needs to go. He noted that people are not as willing to move for opportunities and look for remote roles.
“We're living in an era of economic disruption, we're living in an era of rapid technological disruption, we 're living in an era of demographic disruption,” he said. “Moving to another city for a job might not have that same type of appeal as it had in the past. The impact of telework and people being able to do remote work I think could be a significant signal for employers and the workforce of the future.”
Breathing jobs into existence
Rojas situated AI within a broader economic argument. He described AI and quantum technology as “enabling technologies” that cut across all industries — both traditional and emerging — and said the real opportunity lies in empowering entrepreneurs to harness them.
“How do we empower these enabling technologies, AI, quantum and others that cut across all industries in order to drive greater efficiencies, greater economic growth across all industries, both traditional and those that are waiting for us in the future,” he said. “When we mobilize capital into companies at that startup phase, it's the entrepreneurs, it's the young people in this room that will create the jobs that we haven't conceived of yet. And that's what's very, very powerful about entrepreneurship — it enables people to breathe into existence jobs and economic opportunity that many would not have conceived.”
Lucas also flagged AI as part of a wider set of rapidly evolving technologies demanding both new talent pipelines and aggressive upskilling of existing workers — placing it alongside quantum computing as a force that requires long-term planning combined with the flexibility to respond quickly.
Mancinelli agreed, saying that data shows 21% of construction workers will retire by 2033 and the labour pool needs to be built up “not just for today” but to also meet future demand.
“In Ontario alone, there's a $200 billion infrastructure investment portfolio over the next 10 years, which means residential is now going to be competing with $61 billion in transit, $56 billion in healthcare infrastructure, $35 billion to build and improve schools and $30 billion to build highways and roads,” she said. “If government is not ensuring that labour and industry have a seat at the table when we're building out these massive infrastructure plans, we cannot possibly keep up the pace.”
Lucas said that while there is a skills emergency, he is still optimistic about the future. Education remains the key, he said, adding that Canada should also not be afraid to be ambitious about attracting global talent to Canada. “There is still opportunity,” he said. “You can help define the future by thinking about how you marry that education, tailor training, working with employers who want to give you that experience on creating those new types of entry level jobs and more advanced jobs that bring in those advanced skills.”
Rojas agreed, saying that he is hopeful for Canada’s entrepreneurship ecosystem that will create the jobs of the future. “You have to build at all stages,” he said, explaining that if we don’t have early-stage support, we can’t get to where we want to go. “I'm hopeful that we're headed in the right direction, and that we're going to see sophisticated policy and announcements and strategies that understand the full range of entrepreneurship and how small companies go on to become the juggernauts, the massive companies of the future.”
