Human Resources Committee on Nov. 1st, 2023

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

I'm running out of time. I have one quick question.

Do you have any data that scales up or gives us the scope and the scale of what we have in terms of businesses that have been successful in implementing artificial intelligence technologies? If you can't respond now, could you send us the information you have that gives us the size of what the industry looks like today so that could be a baseline of what we have and we could measure what we're doing going forward? What information could you provide us with, and would you provide that?

[Marc Frenette]

We would be more than happy to forward your question to the experts in that area at StatsCan, and then we will get back to you promptly.

[Tony Van Bynen, Liberal, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Okay.

I think I'm out of time, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Van Bynen.

For the benefit of committee, because we do have committee business, I'm going to go with three minutes to the opposition, three minutes to the government, two minutes to Madame Chabot and two minutes to Madam Zarrillo to conclude this portion of the meeting.

Mrs. Gray, you have three minutes.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

That's great. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to ask a couple of questions to the representative from Statistics Canada.

You put out a report in July of this year on the changing nature of work. It talked about acceleration in the last few years of a shift in the Canadian workforce trends from manual labour to less manual labour. Your report shows that the share of employees who worked in, for example, managerial, professional and technical occupations went from 23.7% in 1987 to 36% in 2022, while employees working in production, craft, repair and operative occupations fell from 29.5% to just 20%.

My two questions for you are, one, what effects do you think AI might have had on these workforce trends, if any, and two, do you see any trends emerging over the next decade that you might be able to speak to?

[Marc Frenette]

If we're talking about the entire period from 1987 to, basically, today, for the most part it's been automation. Think about robotics; think about the car manufacturing plants, basically technology that follows predetermined prescriptions. Do this in the event of that, right? That's automation.

AI is far more intelligent, if you will, to borrow that term. It's much more human-like. The sense is that this has not really permeated as much in the labour market, especially if you go back to the eighties, which is when the study began.

What's going to happen in the future, we don't know yet. We're always happy to report the trends up until now at Statistics Canada. We'll continue monitoring these things. AI is expected to, according to experts, start becoming more visible in the economy in the years to come. At least, its capability is expected to increase dramatically in the next few years according to a lot of experts who are out there.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

That's great.

My next question is this. Do you think there is anything you should start tracking now that maybe you're not that might involve this evolution of AI, or are there any discussions around that, where you should be maybe looking at different statistics going forward that you're not right now?

[Marc Frenette]

Again, specifically focusing on AI—and I think I responded to the previous MP about that—looking at the extent of AI adoption would be very useful. We might be looking at it right now, but I'm not a business-side expert. This is what I believe would be important. Adoption is one thing, but the extent—how much of AI is actually being used—can give you a better sense of where we might be going.

[Tracy Gray, Conservative, Kelowna—Lake Country, BC]

Thank you so much.

I will just ask one more quick question here, to the Council of Canadian Innovators.

We talked about looking potentially at other countries and what other countries are doing. Do you think AI is something that should be considered when we're looking at trade agreements? I know you talked about intellectual property in your opening statement. We have only a few seconds left. Do you have any comment on that?

Thank you.

[Laurent Carbonneau]

The short answer is absolutely yes. Certainly, if we're not doing it, others will.

I would point back to the renegotiation of NAFTA, which resulted in CUSMA. I think we will look back on the digital trade chapter as something that has unfortunately not been super good for Canadian innovators. I think we need to be quite sophisticated about these things, because others already are with regard to IP and other things. We need to get to where they are.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Gray.

Mr. Collins, you have three minutes.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair, and through you to Mr. Roberts.

Mr. Roberts, I want to talk about labour stability for a minute. We heard from Mr. Frenette and Ms. Lane about the incredible pace in terms of what AI is doing to the workforce. Changes that used to happen in decades are now happening in a couple of years. We're all interested in labour stability to ensure that there is no disruption to the economy and people continue to work.

I watched with interest what happened with the Hollywood writers' strike. AI was the focus there. The UAW has had many strikes now. AI is at the heart of some of those discussions and those new agreements. In those instances, the collective bargaining agreements take care of what happens with AI in the workforce. Conversely, in California they've had a push against autonomous vehicles and autonomous trucks on the road. That was driven by the union movement, asking government to legislate those changes.

I'm wondering where we draw the line between leaving unions and employers to their own devices to sort out some of these things through collective bargaining agreements versus governments taking a proactive stand and saying, “Do you know what? We're going to step in at the front of this process. We're going to set the ground rules.”

[Chris Roberts]

That's a terrific question. I think in all instances, unions would welcome a managed introduction of new technologies like AI. I think some of the explosions or confrontations that we see are often in reaction to the threat of not instantaneous but sudden introductions, in a very dramatic and disruptive fashion, of new technologies.

The beginning of a debate, a societal debate or a public debate, that's inclusive and that brings in the various interests that you want to have involved in the conversation in order to have that social licence, I think, will help ameliorate the uncertainty and the lack of trust, and hopefully will diminish some of the confrontations we've seen around new technologies.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Very quickly, you mentioned the whole issue of transparency a couple of times, as did others. What should we be interested in with regard to legislating something that drives transparency to ensure that everyone who is dealing with this issue...either through a collective agreement process or legislators who are looking for new language to implement in terms of protecting the workforce or sectors? What recommendations do you have in terms of what role we play in terms of driving transparency through those processes?

[Chris Roberts]

That is a great question. I think the sky is the limit. The White House executive order, for instance, explores the idea of requiring AI systems developers to share their data and the results of their testing and their impact assessments with government and with regulators. I think that's important.

Analogously, there is now a right to be informed about the introduction of potentially hazardous chemicals and materials in the workplace when it comes to the health and safety of workers. I think you could think of AI analogously. If there is the potential to have the introduction of a system that will have very transformative and disruptive impacts in the workplace, we could think about a right for workers to be informed; to have an opportunity to ask questions and learn about the consequences for their work, etc.; to be consulted; and to then have basic protections around labour adjustment and the right to retrain, upskill and adjust.

[Chad Collins, Liberal, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Thank you, sir.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Ms. Chabot, you have two minutes.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Mr. Carbonneau, I'd like to chat with you.

If I understood you correctly, you see AI as an opportunity, not a threat to jobs. You said a lot about productivity. I don't know if we agree on the definition of productivity, but I see things from the workers' point of view.

We're seeing a lot of burnout in workplaces these days because of the workload. Take the health sector, for example. What about people working in home care and youth centres? Their productivity is measured in case numbers, but it should be evaluated in terms of quality too.

When it comes to AI, my takeaway from what you said is that it's supposed to eliminate tasks, not replace jobs. Some tasks may deserve to be eliminated, but not jobs. Employees are part of the business, not just new workers, but the ones who are already there.

How can we make sure that productivity is not merely about a company's profitability, but also about quality of work and the energy people get from their workplaces?

[Laurent Carbonneau]

Thank you for your question.

I'll answer in English.

What Mr. Roberts said, I think, is really applicable here. This is going to be a process that is going to be gradual and over time. I think there's going to be, as we've already seen, flare-ups around the use of AI in the workplace in various ways. I think that's healthy and productive. I think the more that happens, the more we will have broad discussions about how people's data is used in the workplace and about privacy, which was brought up earlier, and about standards of work and how productivity is measured just in the workplace, without regard to national statistics. These are all live questions, and I think many of them are for the bargaining table. Many of them are for regulation. I know the European Union's AI Act sort of has some of this built into it, defined as high-risk systems. Perhaps we'll follow suit with how we end up defining high-impact systems here.

All that is to say that I don't have hard answers. I don't think anyone does. I just think this will be a place where we're all going to have to figure it out together. If we don't, I think we will end up in a place where we're not particularly competitive with regard to AI adoption and deployment.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Chabot.

Ms. Zarillo, you have three minutes.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm just going to go back to my question for Mr. Frenette. When StatsCan was here last time, they said that 60% of open jobs right now needed grade 12 education or less. I'm just wondering if that's part of a trend.

As a research economist, do you think the expansion of AI into the economy will affect the needed education levels for workers?

[Marc Frenette]

I believe Mr. Dale was here last time with those trends.

Just to answer your second question, I think if technology is changing then the needs of the labour market might be changing, so the skills required to work with that technology could change accordingly. That's a bit of a general answer, but that would be a consensus view from economists.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

Thank you so much.

Mr. Dale, do you want to make any comment?

[Vincent Dale]

Yes. I have a couple of comments.

I would say first of all that the trend in job vacancies is at least superficially consistent with Dr. Frenette's research, which shows a shift in employment towards, say, higher-education jobs. We have to remember though, that there are multiple factors acting on the labour market at any time—including technology, business cycle, interest rates and all sorts of factors—that could explain that drop in job vacancies and higher-education jobs.

The one thing I'll highlight, though—and it's been said before—is that the uniqueness of AI is that it represents a risk or a threat to jobs involving a high level of cognition. It's not about replacing manual tasks; it's about replacing something like human intelligence. In that sense, as I've said, I wouldn't make a direct connection between the patterns in job vacancies and AI. I would just suggest that people think in those terms. There are multiple factors at any one time. If AI is affecting the higher-end distribution of jobs, that's a trend or an indicator to keep an eye on.

[Bonita Zarrillo, NDP, Port Moody—Coquitlam, BC]

We're still keeping data, though, on how incomes are going up and down. Can you just share with the committee what the trend is right now for incomes in Canada? Are they going up or down over the last 20 years?