Work no longer provides stability for millions of Canadians. Rising unemployment, declining job quality and the growing risk of AI-driven displacement are changing everyday economic life. The labour market is becoming more fragile rather than more resilient.

This shift is not accidental. Worker insecurity reflects policy choices about how work is organized, how jobs are eliminated or restructured and who bears the risks of economic and technological change. As artificial intelligence and other digital technologies are introduced into workplaces, the absence of robust labour protections increasingly transfers adjustment costs to individual workers.

Canada’s experience is not unique. It reflects a broader international trend toward labour-market deregulation. Since the early 1990s, employment protections have been weakened in the name of flexibility and competitiveness, yet promised productivity and employment gains have not materialized.

Evidence from Canada and peer economies shows that reducing wages, job security and employment protections does not make for a more dynamic labour market. Instead, it reallocates risk from firms and governments that benefit from new technologies to workers, who are left to absorb the consequences of restructuring and permanent loss of jobs.

Technological change and labour in postwar Canada

Earlier periods of technological change in Canada were governed by markedly different policy logic. In the decades following the Second World War, job loss due to mechanization was treated as a shared social risk. Labour protections were actively expanded to ensure that workers were not left to absorb the costs of economic transformation alone.

The Unemployment Insurance Act of 1940 established the loss of jobs as a collective responsibility, while the Industrial Relations and Disputes Investigation Act of 1948 (p. 320) secured the right to........

© IRPP - Policy Options