Brave New Work

The prospect of losing our jobs to automation may keep us up at night and change our politics, but there are other factors at play, too. Here are five key challenges and some smart policy responses that emerged at the inaugural Brave New Work Conference.

Who is fearful of automation and what do they want politicians to do about it? This paper finds a correlation between Canadians’ fear of job losses from automation and populist and nativist views—but also that Canadians favour traditional government policy approaches to job disruption, such as retraining, more than radical measures such as reducing immigration.

In an upcoming report for PPF’s Brave New Work project, Peter Loewen and Benjamin Allen Stevens find a correlation between Canadians’ fear of job losses from automation and populist and nativist views—but also that they favour traditional government policy approaches to job disruption, such as retraining, more than radical measures such as reducing immigration.

Today’s technological revolution holds out tremendous promise to improve our lives and work, writes PPF's President and CEO Edward Greenspon, but we must ensure its opportunity is available to all, and that policy softens the downsides of the disruption it causes. Join our Brave New Work project to be part of the solution.

Past Event

And why are jobs changing? Join the Indigenomics Institute's Carol Ann Hilton and Microsoft's Edoardo de Martin for a dialogue facilitated by SFU's Mark Winston on June 14 in Vancouver.

Job displacement could disproportionately push women out of the workforce in Canada's jobs future. Women fill many of the lower-paid, often precarious jobs and if contingent work becomes more common it will entirely disrupt the notion of a career ladder - and leadership positions are already dominated by men.

In this second newsletter: New report on big gaps in Employment Insurance, emerging leaders share principles for inclusion that we should all follow, and we learn how disrupting the career ladder creates challenges to gender equity.

Emerging leaders from the Banff Forum gathered to discuss: Who is missing from Canadians' dialogue about our brave new world of work? They came up with a clear set of guiding principles and recommendations for policymakers.

Gaps in Canada’s Employment Insurance program are already leaving too many workers behind as gig work, part-time jobs and self-employment grow. EI needs to be modernized now to support Canadians as they transition to an economy and labour market disrupted by technology and automation.

In this first edition of our Brave New Work Newsletter: A new report on the strengths and weaknesses of Canada's training systems, what Canada’s associations see trending in the future of work, and students imagine how Canadians would learn if universities and colleges no longer existed.

From new ways of approaching lifelong learning to recognizing that technology is not the only driver of workplace change, representatives of Canadian associations shared their perspectives on the changing nature of work and how workers and employers are affected.

What happens when university students imagine how they would learn if universities and colleges no longer existed? As part of PPF’s Brave New Work project, we invited students from the Arthur Kroeger College of Public Affairs at Carleton University to do a foresight exercise on the future of learning, skills and access. They had some fascinating ideas.

Training for working Canadians is scarce, and the people who most need it are the least able to get it. As global competition and technological change increase, Canada needs to create effective and inclusive systems of training, which are essential for innovation, growth, employment and good incomes. In this report, Daniel Munro looks at Canada's strengths and weaknesses, training models from around the world, and suggests improvements to lifelong learning systems.

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Technology, demographics and other factors are transforming the world of work – and quickly. Push aside the dystopian scenarios and watch this discussion that helped shape policy pathways to enable Canadians to thrive in the jobs of the future.

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Invite-only roundtable discussion