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UPFRONT
MACHINE LEARNING AND AI DEMAND
FUNDAMENTAL CHANGES TO THE
CANADIAN WORKFORCE
A pioneering report co-authored by the Human Resources
Professionals Association (HRPA) and Deloitte Canada calls on
Canadian policy makers and business leaders to prepare Canadian
workers now for the disruption that machine learning and artifi-cial
intelligence is having on our economy.
The report, titled The Intelligence Revolution: Future Proofing
Canada’s Workforce, employs eight archetypes to illustrate what
kinds of work Canadians will perform in the future and what
kinds of competencies they will need to do it. It concludes that a
national conversation on how jobs will change and the capabilities
needed to respond to that change is needed urgently.
“We need to get down to the urgent work of assessing not
just how work will change in Canada but how Canadian work-ers
should prepare,” said Scott Allinson, vice president, Public
Affairs at HRPA. “The changes we are seeing are nothing less than
historic and governments and educators need to take a skills-first,
not a job-first approach.”
How can Canadian workers survive the Intelligence Revolution?
Among the key recommendations in the report for governments
and business:
■■ Modernize provincial labour laws and the social safety net to
reflect the realities of the “gig economy”
■■ Rethink universal basic income
■■ Reimagine how we organize our schools, from physical setup
to the school year itself
■■ Empower Canadian workers to manage their careers and thrive
in the new world of work
“If we agree we are experiencing a so-called second industri-al
revolution – which is changing what a job means, affecting the
work we do and how we do it – then we have to anticipate that
amongst global jurisdictions there will be winners and losers," said
Stephen Harrington, national lead, Talent Strategy at Deloitte in
Canada and co-author of the report. “It is critical that as a nation,
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