Employment

The CEO of Peace by Chocolate is on a mission to spread hope—and to be a major player in Canada’s candy market

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 the fourth edition of our Atlantic Immigration & Revitalization Newsletter, PPF and research associate Kelly Toughill explore the challenges that rural areas face when attracting and retaining newcomers and the barriers that newcomers face when living in small communities.

A small influx of foreign workers has sparked sharp reactions in Chipman, New Brunswick. Many see the newcomers as potential saviours of a town headed toward extinction. Others see them as competitors for local jobs. In between, a handful of immigrant families are trying to figure out how to feel at home. The challenges of immigration in small communities are different than in cities, both for newcomers and for local residents. Solving them may be key to the future prosperity of rural Atlantic Canada.

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.

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.

Why don’t a quality education, strong language skills and an open work permit guarantee success in Atlantic Canada? Fewer international graduates stay in this region after graduation than any other. Students and their advocates tell KELLY TOUGHILL what can be done to counter the trend.

Canada is becoming dependent on the economic stimulus of international students, writes KELLY TOUGHILL, but are we promising more than we can deliver? Many international students will face difficulties adjusting to Canadian academic systems, finding work, making friends and securing permanent resident status.

The rise of the intangible economy requires us to re-evaluate, refine and reorient how we think about economic policy and aim to position Canada to compete in a new market dynamic. The stakes are high. We need to make the right choices today if we want to thrive in an era of intangibles. And some of these decisions challenge decades of conventional wisdom.

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.

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.

Past Event

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.

Canada’s public service has charted an ambitious information management and technology strategy, and talent is one of its pillars. Finding innovative approaches to attracting, developing, and retaining the best and brightest requires rethinking many traditional assumptions and harnessing new approaches. What can be done to attract a skilled and diverse workforce?

Our Task Force conducted a preliminary study of the feasibility of an Arctic Food Innovation Cluster in Canada. The intent of such a cluster is to advance increased access to affordable, culturally informed, healthy food across northern regions. The cluster’s secondary objective is to foster further innovations within the North’s commercial food production industry via new food production methods (e.g., full utilization of harvested fish), value chains, and/or governance models. This would, in turn, boost local economic development opportunities within these northern communities.