We need AI to reverse Canada’s economic slump
Canada faces an existential threat. If we fail to address our large and growing innovation, productivity and economic growth gap, we stand to lose the very things that we identify with most as Canadians: our public health care and education. Fortunately, artificial intelligence presents an opportunity to change our trajectory.
Canada’s labour productivity, the average Canadian’s output in an hour of work, has been steadily declining relative to our peers. A halfcentury ago, we proudly stood second among G7 countries; today we find ourselves second-last. This decline is mirrored in our per capita GDP growth, which has lagged behind all other G7 countries over the same time frame. Alarmingly, a recent report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) projects that over the coming decades Canada will see the lowest growth among all 38 countries that it studied.
Our gradual but steady economic decline not only means that our children will have fewer opportunities and a lower standard of living than children in peer countries, it also means that we will find it harder and harder to maintain our public services like health care and education. As the quality of these services declines, calls for their privatization will grow louder.
Luckily, we need not resign ourselves to a slow and steady undoing, for we find ourselves in a special moment in history. Before us stands a technology that is set to radically shake the economic foundations of the world, offering us a once in a generation — perhaps once in a lifetime — opportunity to change our trajectory.
Many are calling for increased investments to artificial intelligence clusters like Vector and Mila as a way to seize the opportunity. Such arguments fail to understand that most of the value generated by AI will flow to those who are using the technology, not those developing it. We need look no further than the last big disruptive technology, the internet, to realize that most of the value was captured by everyday people and firms that found better ways of doing things using the new technology, and by companies such as Amazon, Meta and Netflix that reimagined entire industries around the internet.
The same will hold true with AI. While we need to maintain existing AI expertise and infrastructure, our focus must be on helping each and every Canadian embrace the technology. Generative AI is a fundamentally democratic technology that is available and accessible to all. Much of its transformation will occur from the ground up. We need every worker, every student, every small business owner and every executive to experiment with the technology and share their experience with their friends and colleagues. Sadly, we are starting from a place of deficit, because surveys show that Canadian attitudes toward AI are among the most negative.
To drive mass adoption, we will need to address some of the real challenges around AI. We can build trust through appropriate regulation and by ensuring that no Canadian is left behind.
This will require, for example, retraining programs and financial supports for workers who see their jobs disrupted.
We will also need to engage in a national campaign of mass technological literacy, educating not only our students on the possibilities of AI, but the broader public as well. Perhaps most importantly, we will need to build a culture of openness to technological change. If Canada is to seize this opportunity, we will have to win the hearts and minds of Canadians.
There is still time. We find ourselves at the very beginning of the AI transformation, but we urgently need to change the narrative from one of fear to one of opportunity. Canada cannot be saved by a handful of research centres but rather by all Canadians experimenting with the new technology and tapping into their creativity. If we let a thousand flowers bloom not only will the benefits of AI be more broadly shared, we may even find that some of the Amazons, Metas and Googles of the AI age will be Canadian. Our kids and the future of our Canada depend on our urgent action.