Can robots and AI replace immigrant labour in Quebec?

A robot unloads a pallet of cat food at a Walmart distribution centre in Calgary, Thursday, March 28, 2024. Walmart Canada is planning to bring robots to two Ontario distribution centres. (Jeff McIntosh / The Canadian Press)

How realistic is the suggestion of relying on artificial intelligence (AI) and robots rather than immigration to fill labour shortages in Quebec?

Part of the Parti Québécois' 97-page immigration plan announced on Monday was to implement a shift to automation and robotization in sectors were there are labour shortages.

“Countries facing a demographic reality similar to that of Quebec, such as South Korea and Japan, are banking on the robotization of their industry and the introduction of artificial intelligence to perform unskilled work,” the plan says. “Quebec, like the rest of Canada, is lagging far behind in the automation and robotization of its industrial processes… As long as cheap labour floods the job market, businesses will not invest sufficiently in automating their activities.”

A potential PQ government would invest in manufacturing, wholesale and retail trade and the accommodation and food services, but also is interested in looking at how robotics can be used in agriculture.

Experts in economics, business and artificial intelligence agree that robotics, AI and automation have potential to improve business in Quebec, but that the solution isn’t as simple as replacing immigrant workers with robots.

AI versus robotics

Professor Rob Glew teaches operations management, analytics and artificial intelligence at McGill University. He said when it comes to AI, knowledge-oriented, customer-facing jobs are being replaced, as opposed to the more repetitive manual labour tasks such as a factory assembly line.

For example, he said, most people have likely interacted with an AI chatbot online when ordering or seeking assistance on a website.

“The challenge I see with this proposal is that the jobs that I think everyone would agree we most need in Quebec, jobs in health care, in social care and in early years education, are also the jobs that are least amenable to being automated by either of these technologies,” said Glew.

He added that AI is more commonly being used to enhance or support workers and that the technology is changing quickly.

“That's not something that I think you can begin to write policy on or make policy assumptions on,” said Glew. “We are right at the beginning of a very steep curve in the development of these technologies.”

Concordia University economics professor Moshe Lander agreed that substituting immigrants for robots is too simplistic.

“To just lump it that robots are substitutes, full stop, for immigrants, is totally missing the point that, no, it's not one or the other,” he said. "Especially when Canada has tried to build its immigration system recently on a point system that's selecting the right immigrants or to fill key needs within the labour market. If you're not already seeing that that labour market is being filled by robotics and capital, then you're either forcing the trend in a way that it otherwise wouldn't have gone or you're making it more dangerous to fill those needs going forward.”

Lander added that replacing part of the labour force with robotics also has very real consequences in terms of government budgets.

“How are you going to pay for all of these pensions when people are living longer? You need existing taxpayers, and robots don't pay taxes,” he said. “At some point you're going to have a difficult time offering the already limited government services that we're getting if we're having problems finding doctors, nurses, teachers, trades people. It's not going to get any easier.”

Taxes and red tape

Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) Cice-President François Vincent agreed that it is too simple to just say that automation will fix everything.

He said that a CFIB study found that 33 per cent of businesses went through an automation process that resulted in an efficiency increase of 81 per cent.

However, he said that the fewer employees a business has, the more difficult the automation transition is.

“It's not magic, and it's not by just reducing the immigration level that all businesses will turn to automation, AI or robotization,” said Vincent.

He said Quebec needs to invest heavily and play the long game by providing training so small and medium-sized businesses can move towards automation. The main issue facing businesses, he added, are cost increases, special tech regulations and lower demand for products.

“Right now, there are a lot of constraints ... in Quebec with higher taxation, big red tape, and the first, number one constraint to put automation processes on, is the cost. For sure the government has to do more here," Vincent said.

“If we want to help our businesses to grow, we have to increase the number of people in the workforce, to help seniors to come back, if they want, to help you to find jobs that fix their needs, to be open to immigration, to reduce the cost of business, and also to help them robotize.”

Glew said he feels Quebec punches above its weight in terms of technology, but that some are at the leading edge of AI work.

However, he adds that just because the technology exists, doesn’t mean it can be implemented smoothly into any business.

“It always turns out to be so much harder than just asking, does the technology exist and can we afford it?” he said. “There's ethical codes of conduct that have to be written, and these things take time. There's a lot of pushback from existing employees. There can be pushback from clients. They can be social challenges. There's a lot of questions that aren't being addressed when you just say, 'Let's have the technology and let's put it in and if we can afford it, it must work.'”

Skynet on the way?

Talk of robots and AI replacing human labour always leads to questions about dystopian futures as envisaged by James Cameron’s Terminator films.

Glew said that concern about viral headlines such as “Temporary immigrants should be replaced by robots, automation” are far from science fiction.

“That's the trouble that we see inside organizations as well,” said Glew, who is also the program director of McGill’s masters program in management analytics.

“An organization says, ‘Oh, we were going to adopt AI to be the customer service interface on our website,’ and people are up in arms about it because they see it as the beginning of a slippery slope to being automated away. I think everyone in almost every field should be concerned to some degree.”