Worried artificial intelligence is coming for your job? So is the federal government — enough, at least, to set aside $50 million for skills retraining for workers.

One of the centrepiece promises in the federal budget released Tuesday was $2.3 billion in investments aiming to boost adoption of the technology and the artificial intelligence industry in Canada.

But tucked alongside that was a promise to invest $50 million over four years “to support workers who may be impacted by AI.” Workers in “potentially disrupted sectors and communities” will receive new skills training through the Sectoral Workforce Solutions Program.

“There is a significant transformation of the economy and society on the horizon around artificial intelligence,” said Joel Blit, an associate professor of economics at the University of Waterloo.

Some jobs will be lost, others will be created, “but there’s going to be a transition period that could be somewhat chaotic.”

While jokes about robots coming to take jobs predate the emergence of generative AI systems in late 2022, the widespread availability of systems like ChatGPT made those fears real for many, even as workers across industries began integrating the technology into their workday.

In June 2023, a briefing note for Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland warned the impact of generative AI “will be felt across all industries and around 40 per cent of all working hours could be impacted.”

“Banking, insurance and energy appear to have higher potential for automation compared to other sectors,” says the note, obtained through access to information and citing information from Accenture.

“This could have substantial impacts on jobs and skills requirements.”

The budget only singles out “creative industries” as an affected sector that will be covered by the program. In February, the Canadian TV, film, and music industries asked MPs for protection against AI, saying the tech threatens their livelihood and reputations.

Finance Canada did not respond to questions asking what other sectors or types of jobs would be covered under the program.

“The creative industries was used as an illustrative example, and not intended as an exclusion of other affected areas,” deputy Finance spokesperson Caroline Thériault said in a statement.

In an interview earlier this year, Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said unions representing actors and directors have been very worried about how their likenesses or their work could be used by AI systems. But the “reality is that we have to look at the implication of AI in all jobs,” she said.

Blit explained large language models and other generative AI can write, come up with new ideas and then test those ideas, analyze data, as well as generate computer programming code, music, images, and video.

Those set to be affected are individuals in white-collar professions, like people working in marketing, health care, law and accounting.

In the longer run, “it’s actually quite hard to predict who is going to be impacted,” he said. “What’s going to happen is that entire industries, entire processes are going to be reimagined around this new technology.”

AI is an issue “across sectors, but certainly clerical and customer service jobs are more vulnerable,” Hugh Pouliot, a spokesperson for the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said in an email.

The federal government has used AI in nearly 300 projects and initiatives, new research published earlier this month revealed.

According to Viet Vu, manager of economic research at Toronto Metropolitan University’s the Dais, the impact of AI on workers in a sector like the creative industry doesn’t have to be negative.

“That’s only the case if you adopt it irresponsibly,” he said, pointing out creative professionals have been adopting new digital tools in their work for years.

He noted only four per cent of Canadian businesses are using any kind of artificial intelligence or machine learning. “And so we’re really not there yet for these frontier models and frontier technologies” to be making an impact.

When it comes to the question of how AI will affect the labour market, it’s more useful to think about what types of tasks technology can do better, as opposed to whether it will replace entire jobs, Vu said.

“A job is composed of so many different tasks that sometimes even if a new technology comes along and 20, 30 per cent of your job can be done using AI, you still have that 60, 70 per cent left,” he said.

“So it’s rare that (an) entire occupation is actually sort of erased out of existence because of technology.”

Finance Canada also did not respond to questions about what new skills the workers would be learning.

Vu said there are two types of skills it makes sense to focus on in retraining — computational thinking, or understanding how computers operate and make decisions, and skills dealing with data.

There is no AI system in the world that does not use data, he said. “And so being able to actually understand how data is curated, how data is used, even some basic data analytics skills, will go a really long way.”

But given the scope of the change the AI technology is set to trigger, critics say a lot more than $50 million will be necessary.

Blit said the money is a good first step but won’t be “close to enough” when it comes to the scale of the coming transformation, which will be comparable to globalization or the adoption of computers.

Valerio De Stefano, Canada research chair in innovation law and society at York University, agreed more resources will be necessary.

“Jobs may be reduced to an extent that reskilling may be insufficient,” and the government should look at “forms of unconditional income support such as basic income,” he said.

The government should also consider demanding AI companies “contribute directly to pay for any social initiative that takes care of people who lose their jobs to technology” and asking “employers who reduce payrolls and increase profits thanks to AI to do the same.”

“Otherwise, society will end up subsidizing tech businesses and other companies as they increase profit without giving back enough for technology to benefit us all.”

Honda Canada is set to build an electric vehicle battery plant near its auto manufacturing facility in Alliston, Ont., where it also plans to produce fully electric vehicles, The Canadian Press has learned.

Senior sources with information on the project confirmed the federal and Ontario governments will make the announcement this week, but were not yet able to give any dollar figures.

However, comments Monday from Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli suggest it is a project worth around $14 billion or $15 billion.

Ford told a First Nations conference that there will be an announcement this week about a new deal he said will be double the size of a Volkswagen deal announced last year. That EV battery plant set to be built in St. Thomas, Ont., comes with a $7-billion capital price tag.

Fedeli would not confirm if Ford was referencing Honda, but spoke coyly after question period Monday about the amount of electric vehicle investment in the province.

“We went from zero to $28 billion in three years and if the premier, if his comments are correct, then next week, we’ll be announcing $43 billion … in and around there,” he said.

The Honda facility will be the third electric vehicle battery plant in Ontario, following in the footsteps of Volkswagen and a Stellantis LG plant in Windsor, and while those two deals involved billions of dollars in production subsidies as a way of competing with the United States’ Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, Honda’s is expected to involve capital commitments and tax credits.

Federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s recent budget announced a 10-per-cent Electric Vehicle Supply Chain investment tax credit on the cost of buildings related to EV production as long as the business invests in assembly, battery production and cathode active material production in Canada.

That’s on top of an existing 30-per-cent Clean Technology Manufacturing investment tax credit on the cost of investments in new machinery and equipment.

Honda’s deal also involves two key parts suppliers for their batteries — cathodes and separators — with the locations of those facilities elsewhere in Ontario set to be announced at a later date.

The deal comes after years of meetings and discussions between Honda executives and the Ontario government, the sources said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Premier Doug Ford and Honda executives were on hand in March 2022 in Alliston when the Japanese automaker announced hybrid production at the facility, with $131.6 million in assistance from each of the two levels of government.

Around the time of that announcement, conversations began about a larger potential investment into electric vehicles, the sources said, and negotiations began that summer.

Fedeli travelled to Japan that fall, the first of three visits to meet with Honda Motor executives about the project. Senior officials from the company in Japan also travelled to Toronto three times to meet with government officials, including twice with Ford.

During a trip by the Honda executives to Toronto in March 2023, Ontario officials including Fedeli pitched the province as a prime destination for electric vehicle and battery investments, part of a strong push from the government to make Ford’s vision of an end-to-end electric vehicle supply chain in the province a reality.

Negotiations took a major step forward that July, when Ontario sent a formal letter to Honda Canada, signalling its willingness to offer incentives for a battery plant and EV production. Honda Canada executives then met with Ford in November and December.

The latter meeting sealed the deal, the sources said.

Honda approached the federal government a few months ago, a senior government official said, and Freeland led her government’s negotiations with the company.

The project is expected to involve the construction of several plants, according to the source.

— With files from Nojoud Al Mallees in Ottawa.

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