The future of work - iPolitics · rolling on a basic income, with Y-Combinator launching a large-scale test project last year in two U.S. states. About 3,000 individuals are being

QUARTERLY MAGAZINE MARCH 2018

The future of work

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CONTENTSMARCH 2018 | THE FUTURE OF WORK

Looking at a world without jobs 01

03

06

Interest grows in a guaranteed income

The jobs of tomorrowLiberals pour billions into innovation in effort to prepare youth for the future of work

Diversity must be at core of any digital skills plankAn iPolitics Q&A with Jennifer Flanagan, Actua President and CEO

An iPolitics Q&A with Niki AshtonShortage? What labour shortage? 19This time they mean it

Driving digital transformation of government 29

EDITOR & PUBLISHERJames Baxter

EDITORSCatharine FultonEmily Kennedy

Holly LakePeter Robb

WRITERSBeatrice BritneffJanice DicksonKyle Duggan

Kelsey JohnsonLeslie MacKinnon

Kathryn MayKady O’MalleyKirsten Smith

Sarah TurnbullMarieke Walsh

CONTRIBUTORSPaul Adams

Ann-Louise DavidsonSusan DelacourtRachel Gilmore

PHOTOGRAPHERMatthew Usherwood

DIGITAL & DESIGNSarah West

BUSINESS TEAMJohn Butterfield

Sally DouglasEmily EmbersonCallie Sanderson Yamina Tsalamlal

IPOLITICSINTELDanelia B. Bolivar (Executive Editor)Marguerite Marlin (Deputy Editor)

Kirby BuccieroIrina CristescuFelixe Denson

James Gragg-ReillyCodie MitchellSarah Nixon

Charlie PinkertonCurtis Rafter

Vincent RocheleauOlivia da SilvaKevin Smith

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iPolitics is Canada’s top digital source for independent, up-to-the-minute coverage of Canadian politics and the business of

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CONTENTS

25Cartoon Gallery

Rural robots 13Automation gets a warm welcome on the farm

16The Patent problemCan we solve the mystery of stagnant intellectual property applications in Canada?

11Time is now to press aheadon health innovationAn iPolitics Q&A with Senator Art Eggleton

Investing in the Indigenous workforce a potential boon for Canada’s economy

Job: Engaging Canada’sFirst Nations 22

Anti-socialTwitter @journalism #badnews 33

Drawn by human hand

MARCH 2018 IPOLITICS MAGAZINE 1

What if the future of work means no work at all — at least in the traditional sense?

An employment-free future means lots of time for leisure and shopping, but it also means no paycheque. And that has futurists — in the private and public sector — thinking anew of a basic, guaranteed income.

The idea has been gathering force among the giants of the tech industry in the United States, such as Tesla founder Elon Musk and Sam Altman, the president of the Y-Combinator firm that launched Reddit, Dropbox and Airbnb.

“I think we’ll end up doing universal basic income,” Musk said at the 2017 World Government Summit in Dubai. “It’s going to be necessary.”

Musk sees basic income as necessary simply because jobs are going to be lost to robots, artificial intelligence and other forms of automation. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, perhaps more optimistically, sees basic income as a way to give future workers the “freedom to fail.”

“Now it’s our time to define a new social contract for our generation,” Zuckerberg said in his commencement address at Harvard last year. “We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things.”

Altman, for his part, is even doing his bit to get the ball rolling on a basic income, with Y-Combinator launching a large-scale test project last year in two U.S. states. About 3,000 individuals are being randomly selected to take part: 1,000 receiving $1,000 per month for up to five years, while 2,000 are receiving $50 per month.

Altman has been casting this plan as one that unites liberals and conservatives — progressive policy dressed up as a capitalist proposition. “What I would propose is a model like a company where you get a share in U.S. Inc.,” Altman said in an interview late last year. “And then, instead of getting a fixed fee, you get a percentage of the GDP every year.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, though a businessman and a staunch capitalist, would probably take some persuading

to see things that way. Clearly, in the United States, the tech industry is ahead of the government on studying basic income.

Here in Canada, the idea of a basic income is also gaining some momentum at the provincial level — notably a major pilot project in Ontario. Launched last year, the program is rolling out in Hamilton, Brantford, Brant County, Lindsay and Thunder Bay, with participants receiving up to about $17,000 for individuals and $24,000 for couples. Early indications are that the program is working well for participants — “from barely surviving to thriving,” as one Toronto Star story put it in a progress report in March.

Still, despite the many links between Liberals in Ottawa and Queen’s Park, this is not one of the ideas being shared by federal and provincial Grits. No one would say it’s on the radar of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government and there was absolutely no mention of it in the federal budget.

But it is alive at the provincial level. In addition to Ontario’s advances down the road, British Columbia has set aside $4 million to pursue the idea and Quebec has an advisory committee studying basic income too.

And, interestingly, the policy is will land on the floor of the Liberals’ biennial convention in Halifax in April. In fact, it’s a return engagement in that venue. The last time the federal Liberals gathered for a policy convention — in Winnipeg, two years ago — a majority of grassroots attendees voted in favour of the Trudeau government pursuing the idea.

The 2016 resolution stated: “That the Liberal Party of Canada, in consultation with the provinces, develop a poverty reduction strategy aimed at providing a minimum guaranteed income.”

This year’s resolution for the Halifax is slightly less ambitious, talking generally about directing the government to review progress and work toward eventual implementation of basic income at the federal level.

So far, Jean-Yves Duclos, the federal minister of Families, Children and Social Services, has taken an approach to basic income that amounts to little more than benign curiosity.

Looking at a world without jobs

BY SUSAN DELACOURT

Interest grows in a guaranteed income

2 IPOLITICS MAGAZINE MARCH 2018

Isn’t it time for a review of our tax system?

cpacanada.ca/federalbudget

Ask CPA Canada.

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Emilie Gauduchon, Duclos’ press secretary, said her boss is more preoccupied with fulfilling commitments in the Liberals’ 2015 election platform and his own mandate letter.

“Minister Duclos mentioned on a few occasions that he is following the development of basic income initiatives in different provinces. Right now, his priorities are in his mandate letter and basic income is not in it,” Gauduchon said in an emailed response to my queries.

“Minister Duclos said that if provinces need some data from the government of Canada to implement these pilots, we could help them, but there is no plan to establish a federal pilot program.”

Neither the government nor the minister feel any duty to act on resolutions from Winnipeg or Halifax, she added.

“As you know, party policies are taken in consideration by the government but they are not automatically governmental policies. ... The basic income wasn’t part of the party platform during the last election and the next election platform isn’t decided yet.”

The operative word in that last sentence may be “yet.” What’s been going on in Ontario, with various policy innovations from Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government,

could turn out to be beta testing for the federal Liberals — in policy and political terms.

Wynne’s experiment in a limited form of pharmacare, for instance — free drugs for Ontarians under 25 — has been picked up for study by the Trudeau government, with Wynne’s health minister, Eric Hoskins, leaving his provincial job to lead the federal study. Could the same thing happen with basic income?

Like Altman, many advocates of basic income see the idea as a cross-partisan one — neither right nor left. The Ontario Liberal government, we’ll remember, launched its program largely on the advice of a long-time Progressive Conservative, Hugh Segal.

So maybe this is an idea whose time will come, and maybe soon. With provinces such as Ontario blazing a trail, grassroots federal Liberals putting the idea into policy resolutions at conventions and tech giants embracing basic income, the Trudeau Liberals could be feeling enough momentum to put it in an election platform.

And if the future of work includes less work, that could be a powerful argument to make basic income a future election issue too.

LOOKING AT A WORLD WITHOUT JOBS, INTEREST GROWS IN A GUARANTEED INCOME


Isn’t it time for a review of our tax system?

cpacanada.ca/federalbudget

Ask CPA Canada.

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THE JOBS OF TOMORROWLiberals pour billions into innovation in effort to prepare youth for the future of workBY SARAH TURNBULL

Photo: Actua


The way we work in Canada is being disputed daily, sometimes hourly. But if you that was going to slow down soon. Think again.

“The speed of current breakthroughs has no historical precedent,” wrote Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. “When compared with previous industrial revolutions, the Fourth is evolving at an exponential rather than a linear pace. Moreover, it is disrupting almost every industry in every country. And the breadth and depth of these changes herald the transformation of entire systems of production, management, and governance.”

That didn’t grab your attention? Perhaps this will: According to a June 2016 report by the Brookfield Institute for Innovation + Entrepreneurship, 42 per cent of Canada’s workforce is at high-risk of being wiped out over the next two decades by advancements in automation.

It’s pressure like this that has prompted Canada’s top government officials to invest heavily into programs that foster innovation and prepare the next generation of workers for what’s to come.

The federal budget was a demonstration of this financial commitment. The Liberal government says it will inject $6.6 billion into the science and innovation community, with an

emphasis on increasing the resources and infrastructure needed to support students in this field.

“Budget 2018 represents the single largest investment in investigator-led fundamental research in Canadian history,” boasted Finance Minister Bill Morneau in his budget speech on Feb. 27.

Just weeks before, there was an almost $1 billion announcement by the department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED) to build five superclusters across the country, in sectors from agriculture to oceans and fisheries.

“This is one of those defining moments where industry, academia, and government realize that we have to step up our game,” said ISED Minister, Navdeep Bains in an interview. “We’re in a global innovation race and we have a unique opportunity to work together and create enormous economic benefits.”

Despite some initial concerns from stakeholders about the execution of the superclusters, Bains is guaranteeing a significant boost to the economy and thousands of new jobs.

“Somebody asked me, ‘what’s your number one criteria (for the superclusters)’, I said ‘jobs, jobs, jobs,’” said Bains.

THE JOBS OF TOMORROW

Navdeep Bains, Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development announces proposals under the $950-million Innovation Superclusters Initiative in Ottawa, Thursday, February 15, 2018.THE CANADIAN PRESS/Fred Chartrand


“We think technology will solve problems, create more jobs, and provide a better living standard for our children and grandchildren.”

It’s a reassuring message, compared to some of the frightening statistics floating around the Internet warning workers of an inevitable robot takeover.

“With the emergence of new technology, there’s going to be major shifts in certain sectors, in certain parts of our economy, and that will have an impact on jobs,” said Bains. “I think we as a government need to be very mindful of what we can do to equip people to deal with these anxieties that they’re facing about themselves and the prospects of their kids.”

That’s why his department forked over another chunk of their budget to invest in youth specifically. In June 2017, Bain, alongside Science Minister, Kirsty Duncan, followed up to spend $50 million to help children code at school.

Through CanCode, funding will be dispersed over two years to 21 not-for-profit organizations promoting digital skills in youth. Bains said it will reach up to 500,000 students from Kindergarten to Grade 12.

“This program is really a reflection of our government’s overall commitment to promoting innovation and skills,” said Bains. “We’re making a significant investment in young people and we’re saying we want them to succeed for the jobs in the long-term.”

Actua – a national charity providing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) training to youth with a focus on girls and other minorities – was one of the recipients of the funding.

The organization’s President and CEO, Jennifer Flanagan, said she’s pleased to see government support after decades of work stressing the importance of equipping children with digital skills.

“The tone needed to be set from the top, to say ‘we cannot wait for 15 years on this, until the school system catches up,” said Flanagan. “We’re already playing catch up but we can’t do it any further.”

While the typical innovation engagement model starts with post-secondary students, she said it’s critical to start the conversation as soon as kids enter the school system.

“The skills and aptitudes for innovation – the problem solving, the risk taking, the learning from failure – those things need to be developed early. You can’t start developing that at university, it doesn’t work.”

Flanagan insists that the ultimate goal of these programs is not for kids to become coders per se, but rather to help them understand the process of how technology is built.

“It’s called computational thinking – which is really solving problems,” said Flanagan. “Instead of just consuming technology, like ‘I need to find an app to do X’, they could say ‘I’m going to design an app to do X.’”

Teaching a mindset, not a skill, is something that prominent American futurist and best-selling author, David Houle, says is vital in the digital age.

The ability to code is a nice-to-have, he said, but it by no means should be the focus of government funding.

“It’s well intentioned, but it’s not forward-thinking,” said Houle. “Teaching kids to code is like saying ‘oh, the landscape in 2025 is going to be the same that’s been for the last 10 years; guys in hoodies coding.”

Houle said policymakers should reconsider their approach to education to promote careers that amplify uniquely human qualities as they interact with intelligent machines.

“At the bottom of the list, should be teaching (youth) specific career skills. At the top of the list, should be teaching them how to think creatively, how to think with a design construct, and how to be able to assimilate, understand, and present data.”

Under that same line of thinking, Houle says education systems need to move from STEM towards STEAM training, with the addition of A for Art.

“AI will end up doing a lot of the jobs that come from STEM education, while it will have far less effect on jobs that demand creative human thinking,” said Houle. “If a country truly wants to prepare children for the next few decades, an art and design curricula is essential.”

Both parties agree that rather than isolating specific career paths that may or may not survive this technological wave, it’s most essential to teach students how to adapt to change and instill a sense of lifelong learning.

As the futurist Alvin Toffler put it, “the illiterate of the 21st Century are not those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”

Minister of Innovation, Navdeep Bains sits alongside representatives of Canada’s new superclusters at the Canadian Museum of Science and Technology.

THE JOBS OF TOMORROW



Diversity must be at core of any digital skills plan

An iPolitics Q&A with Jennifer Flanagan, Actua President and CEO

BY SARAH TURNBULL

Actua President and CEO Jennifer Flanagan sits down with iPolitics’ journalist Sarah Turnbull for an interview in Ottawa on Wednesday, February 14, 2018. iPolitics/Matthew Usherwood

Actua represents 35 organizations across the country that deliver coding and digital skills training in more than 500 communities, in and out of schools. With the government’s two-year CanCode investment, they’re ramping up their co-ed services while seeking to reach more minority youth. iPolitics talked with Actua CEO Jennifer Flanagan. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.


What are the economic and social benefits of including minority groups in this type of education

and training?

It doesn’t make sense not to engage half of our workforce in an area that is incredibly important

for the country and in an area where there have been massive gaps identified. Those gaps are going to continue in the future.

If we’re concerned about increasing the overall economic strength and prosperity of Canadians, getting more women involved in science could be a solution to this. Jobs in these fields are really well paid and if you think of the kind of wage gaps that exist – this is definitely an area we can improve.

Also, when you think about the fact that we live in a world that is driven by technology and you think about the fact that 90 per cent of computer scientists are men, then we’re living in a world that is designed by men from their perspective. This has real consequences. The diversity of perspective is not just a nice-to-have, it’s not just a social justice issue, it’s a product design issue.

Is there a nature vs. nurture debate here?

There’s no problem in girls’ interest or aptitude in science and math. Our research shows girls are good

at it, they love it, they have no initial confidence issues. Go into any kindergarten class and girls will be participating as actively as boys. A lack of female representation in these areas is systemic, contextual, it’s based off the experiences that they have, and the feedback they receive.

We need to stop asking: How do women need to change to fit into science? What do girls need to do differently so that they like science?” and How do we set things up so that this can suit girls? The narrative needs to ask How does the environment and the culture need to change?

It has never been about the girl, it’s always been about the context. We’ve gotten that confused.

Is there a certain age that girls turn away from these subject areas?

It’s around middle school, Grade six, seven, and eight. This is when we see that big drop start to happen.

Experts in the field will say girls genuinely don’t think

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that coding, for example, is something that women do. They think it’s something that weird boys do. That’s the perception.

How will your organization make use of the CanCode investment?

We’re ramping our services way up, and specifically the programs we’re doing with girls, Indigenous youth, and

at-risk youth. Our network delivers programming in 500 communities in every province and territory.

CanCode puts focus in the right area because improving programs for those audiences is going to improve programs for everyone.

What are your thoughts on STEM vs. STEAM?

For Actua, the arts side of things has always been very much a part of how we approach teaching because we

look at it holistically. We have always taken that approach without needing to include the word arts. So, we won’t move to saying STEAM anytime soon.

What I think is interesting is that kids have eliminated the line between tech innovation and social innovation. For the most part, they all want to improve something either in their community or in the world and so that naturally drives what they do. If they need arts incorporated into their solution they’re just going to use it.

Is the end goal to produce a group of youth that will become coders?

When we do activities around artificial intelligence or a specific programming language, it isn’t about that

technology it’s about the mindset that we’re developing. Because they’ve understood the process that goes into how technology is built, and the coding process specifically, they can then acquire new skills that are more current and relevant. That’s the narrative that needs to be out there so that parents are understanding that this isn’t just a flash in the pan thing.

You have kids, what career would you advise your children to enter into?

We don’t talk about jobs anymore really, nor do we talk about careers. Because it’s so hard to predict what’s

going to happen 10 years from now, we talk more about what problem they want to solve and how can science and technology help them to do that. It’s a different way of thinking.

If we want to produce people who are innovative, we need to have that innovation reflected in our universities and our K to 12 system. My kids are still young, but I’ll make sure they’re digitally literate so they’re not just consuming technology – that they actually understand how it works and that they’ve been given opportunities to build their own technology.

Is the current government receptive to your organizational objectives?

Yes, in a big way but for a couple of different reasons. From day one this government has been extremely

aware of the importance of youth engagement in this area. In the past, no government has ever stood up and said not only do we agree with it, but we’re going to invest a significant amount of money here. So, forget about the money, the fact that they have announced this as a critical part of innovation, of advancing research in the country, of the next gen. workforce, is transformational. Just the credibility and the leadership from the top matters a lot. I think the commitment is very authentic from the people that I’ve worked with and I believe that they want to make change in a really significant way.

This funding will end in March 2019 so we want to see a continuation of this but I feel optimistic that we’ll be able to demonstrate good strong results.

What has been your biggest obstacle over the last few years at Actua?

Parents to a certain extent understand how digital skills will be important but I think there’s a concern

about online safety that is very valid. Especially with girls, that concern is heightened and that is causing parents to pull girls away from screen time or be a little bit more rigid in the way their kids are engaging with technology. So, there’s a fear mindset I think.

There are legitimate online safety concerns and that’s why we’re focusing so much on that topic right now. But, with parents it’s about saying empowering your kids with digital skills is the best way to keep them safe online versus pulling them offline or a top-down rules approach.

Of what are you most proud?

We’re transforming kids’ lives, we’re helping communities, but I’m most proud of the work we’re

doing to embed the value of diversity and inclusion in a generation of workers that is about to enter the workforce.

We have 1,000 undergraduate students that are employed by our network members. Those are students who will be leaders in engineering and science – they’ll be teachers, they’ll be parents. They’re superstars already. In their experience with Actua, they’ve had Indigenous cultural awareness training, they’ve had gender issues training, they’ve worked in cross-cultural contexts. They’re going out into the world with those world views, changed and I think that’s incredibly powerful.

DIVERSITY MUST BE AT CORE OF ANY DIGITAL SKILLS PLAN

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An iPolitics Q&A with Senator Art Eggleton

Time is now to press aheadon health innovationLate last year, the Senate Committee of Social Affairs, Science and Technology released its report of its study into the developing roles of robotics, 3D printing and artificial intelligence in the healthcare system, outlining issues from automation affecting jobs to dealing with complex new privacy concerns. iPolitics’ health writer Kyle Duggan caught up with Sen. Art Eggleton, the chair of the committee. The following is an edited transcript.

BY KYLE DUGGAN

Sen. Art Eggleton. Photo: Senate of Canada.


Is there one thing that surprised you the most when you were working on this study, one thing that struck

you looking at the future of healthcare ... that you hadn’t considered that was overwhelmingly surprising?

One of the things I found is there’s an inconsistency here: We’ve kept on the ball in terms of research, even

when some other countries were abandoning a lot of the basic research. On deep learning, for example, we kept going, which I thought was terrific. We’re putting ourselves in a position to be able to develop these products that can improve our healthcare system – robotics, AI and 3D printing.

But then we (heard) people who said they were having difficulty getting approval for products in this country. And I thought well that’s very inconsistent, how can that be? For example, you’ll see in the report a reference to a company called Kinova that produced a robotic arm called Jaco. Ninety per cent of their revenues were from outside Canada, they had a strong market for their product in the Netherlands, but they were having problems getting approval in Canada. There are two aspects to the approval process: to get Health Canada ... to accept the different products, and (then) there are the provinces which deliver the healthcare system — getting them on board to promote use in health-care institutions. So on the one hand, there’s a push forward, we’re in a lead role, there’s good possibilities, but on the other hand when we jump to commercialization or we come to putting these products into use, everything slows down.

So that inconsistency is most unfortunate. We’re going to put a lot of money into research, we can’t drag our feet when it comes to putting it on the market for people to be able to benefit from it.

If you were working on a federal budget, given what you’ve learned in the committee study, what would

you put in there?

We’re not experts on scientific matters of advancement. There’s a whole raft of issues that have to be

considered. That’s why we suggested experts be brought together at a national conference, and these things need to be part of that: ethical considerations, commercial considerations, health-care delivery renewal and so on. We need the people involved in this to tell us where the barriers are and where the needs for further investment and further modification on how we move forward including putting these automated products into use.

Is there any sense the government is taking the report recommendations seriously, for example creating a

national conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and 3D printing in healthcare?

We haven’t heard back from them yet. The Senate adopted our report on Nov. 28. The minister of health

has until late April to come back with a response. I’m hopeful they will say that they would favour that kind of direction. But so far no commitment.

When you look at some of the things on the horizon, things like AI prescribing, what issues confront its advancement?

Artificial Intelligence, for example, needs a lot of data. ... I think a very key factor in all of that is privacy. As

data moves from personal records into the system, I think while it’s an aggregate process, a lot of private information is involved. I think that’s a consideration. Another one is, you know, robots provide the physical whereas AI provides brains, and the more the two are moving down the line of things that they can accomplish, the more automation of systems, the more we have to look at human control. That’s a big ethical consideration. Just how far we go with diminishing human control, giving artificial control more prevalence in more aspects in health care. That’s an ethical consideration.

There’s an international group, by-and-large centred in the United States – the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers – digging deeply into the ethical questions, so I think we’re going to look to them and other entities and hear what they have to say. But we’re in the early stages of this. ... We’re just at the point in the process that needs a lot more attention, through this national conference. It would not be a convention in a traditional sense but a conference where the experts and stakeholders form working groups, with a secretariat provided by the government.

What made the committee want to look into automation and technology.

Health-care costs. We’ve dealt with healthcare issues for a number of years. We’re called the social affairs

and technology committee but we’re really also the health committee. Over the years in various studies we’ve done, looking at the health accord, pharmaceuticals, dementia, obesity and other chronic healthcare matters, we’ve gotten information from experts and we’ve got a feel for issues in health care, and we continue to see rising costs, taking a greater share of the tax dollars. We also saw greater opportunities for much more efficiency, much less cost and much more reliability, whether it’s in terms of assisted robots for people with chronic conditions or the elderly, or whether it’s 3D printing that helps operations and helps develop prosthetics and other devices like hearing aids. Or whether remote medicine provided through robots and AI products. So we said well, we have got to do something on this because it’s at hand. Technology will march (and) but we should embrace it. We need to embrace it with some caution because of the ethical considerations, the impact on jobs, the needs for training and education, all of those things will come into play. But we need to get on with it.

How urgent is it those concerns get addressed?

The technology is not waiting for us to develop regulations, guidelines, whatever you want to call them.

But I think we need to move as quick as possible. It shouldn’t take too long to draw all this expertise into a national conference and start to dig into the specifics. If we do that, and do it kindly, the lead we’ve had on research can evolve into a lead in the development of products and services not only for the benefit of our own people and beyond.

TIME IS NOW TO PRESS AHEAD ON HEALTH INNOVATION

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On the surface, an automated pressure washer may not sound like a revolutionary piece of farm equipment, but for Ontario hog producer Dave DeVries, it was a

game changer.

“I didn’t feel that, being the owner and operator, my time was best spent standing behind a pressure washer,” DeVries told iPolitics when reached on his farm near Drayton, Ont. “It was better off working with the pigs and doing animal husbandry.”

DeVries and his wife Lauren, who teaches two and half days a week, own and operate a 220 sow farrow-to-finish operation. They took over the family farm in 2002.

Before he bought the robot in March 2016, Devries said he would spend up to seven hours a week washing his barn. He spends half that time now – mostly doing touchups in corners where the robot can’t reach as well. “It doesn’t save all the time but does it allow me to do other jobs. It frees up some time.”

The learning curve, he said was “fairly easy.” The robot is not restricted to daytime. Once programmed, “it can work away on its own ... at night.” It operates three to four times a week.

The $60,000 machine, which the 35-year-old farmer imported from Sweden and financed over five-years, is the first of its kind in his area. It looks a bit like a land rover, with a long arm that can be operated by a joy stick, if required.

Automation gets a warm welcome on the farm

BY KELSEY JOHNSON

Photo left: Dave DeVries

Rural robots


For a smaller operation, extra human help isn’t really an option. “I’ve had part-time help in the past – and good part-time help – but it isn’t easy to find,” DeVries explained, adding “I guess I just got tired of training people.”

The robot also allowed his operation to go antibiotic free, he said – a trend that is popular with consumers.

While he knows of one other farm that has bought a robotic washer robot, DeVries says, “there have been some inquires and I think people are watching.”

He expects more farmers will make the investment, which costs about the same as a pickup truck, given the Ontario government’s decision to raise the minimum wage to $14 an hour. “Since the increase on January 1st, I think a lot of guys are taking a long, hard look at it.” It’s set to increase again, to $15 an hour next Jan. 1.

Canadian agriculture has been grappling with a serious labour shortage for years. A 2016 Conference Board of Canada report commissioned by the Canadian Agriculture Human Resource Council found the multi-billion dollar sector is short more than 59,000 farm workers. It’s hurting producers’ bottom lines and is expected to escalate to 114,000 job openings by 2025.

The lack of available help has cost Canadian farmers at least $1.5 billion in lost cash receipts, the report added, with 17 per cent of 1,037 people surveyed noting they had put off expansion plans because of the labour crunch. Automated equipment, farmers say, is one way producers can try to deal with the burgeoning worker shortfall.

“Our biggest problem is getting labour,” Canadian Federation of Agriculture President Ron Bonnett, a cow-calf producer from Ontario, said.

“A lot of the jobs that automation displaces are very labour intensive, more menial tasks – a repetitive task. Frankly, it’s very hard to find people to do those jobs.” Robots and other mechanized tools, he noted, are particularly useful in horticulture and the dairy industry.

“The dairy sector has really jumped on robotics, with the robotic milkers and such. A lot of them are going in on the mid-sized farms and once you get to larger dairy operations, they’re putting in really high capacity parlours that reduce the labour.”

The first piece of robotic milking equipment was installed on a Canadian dairy farm in 1999. By 2012, it was estimated that three per cent of Canada’s 273 dairy farms had invested in a robotic milker, according to Farm Credit Canada, with demand steadily increasing.

Those technologies, Bonnett said, provide a farmer with “a really good handle on the productivity of each

individual animal” because the milker also measures yields from each cow and regularly samples the milk to determine things such as protein levels and fat levels.

Greenhouses today, he said, are “mind-blowing” because they’re filled with equipment that can help move, water and fertilize the plants.

Automation on farms is also creating “jobs on the technical side,” Bonett said, with the new equipment requiring technicians and computer programmers to keep them running. Those tasks are often higher skilled compared to the more menial jobs the technology is replacing.

Robots aren’t the only piece of technology shaking up the farming world.

Travel to a farm show or agriculture conference these days, and it’s not uncommon to see folks gathered around a farmer demonstrating how his or her smart phone is monitoring the temperature in their livestock barn or grain bin. Mobile phones have become an essential piece of farm equipment, from weather apps to data collection, record and book-keeping, in-barn video monitoring and drone-based crop surveillance.

This reliance on cellphones and other online technologies means major companies – including Microsoft and the Canadian telecom giant Telus – have flagged the agriculture industry as a potential growth market. The United Nations expects the world’s population to reach nine billion in 2050 — growth that will require Canadian farmers and ranchers to increase production by 70 per cent to meet demand. Canada is the world’s fifth largest agriculture exporter.

“We know the technology that has been available has been somewhat complex, it’s been difficult to install, difficult to maintain and the raw connectivity that we’ve talked about hasn’t always been there,” Mike Dittrich, director for Telus’ Smart Agriculture and Business Future sections told iPolitics in a recent interview.

Photo: Dave DeVries

RURAL ROBOTS


But, Dittrich said, he thinks Telus can make a difference by working with the agriculture community to develop products that are cost-effective and user friendly as demand for Canadian agricultural products grows. The Trudeau government has challenged this country’s agriculture industry to grow their exports to $75 billion by 2025 in Budget 2017. Current Canadian agriculture exports range between $50 billion to $55 billion.

Telus and Microsoft recently backed an unsuccessful pan-Canadian bid for federal funding for data collection and other Smart Agriculture technologies during the Liberal government’s multi-million dollar Supercluster competition, which looked at improving on-farm networks and digital infrastructure in agriculture.

Budget 2018 included $100 million over five years to boost rural broad band internet – with a special focus on supporting projects that relate to low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites. Those satellites, the budget said, “have the potential to provide Canadians living in rural and remote areas with significantly improved access to Internet and wireless services at more affordable prices.”

It also included $572.5 million in promised funding over five years, with $52 million per year ongoing, for a Digital Research Infrastructure strategy that would find ways to help researchers access and work with big data.

Even tractors aren’t immune from the technological revolution. Self-driving tractors have been unveiled at several North American farm shows.

Internationally, researchers from Australia’s University of Southern Queensland have partnered with industry, including John Deere, to try and develop a driverless tractor that could help producers lower input costs and improve productivity by being more precise and efficient.

New technologies are also giving Canadian farmers a new-found freedom. Since purchasing the robot,” DeVries said he’s had “more family time” to spend with his boys, aged two and four.

There’s also likely an added health benefit. While not proven, DeVries said he believes the robot is “better for my health” because he spends less time “breathing in that air, with all the manure in it, and dirt, for long periods of time.”

Bonnett agrees, noting any tool that reduces a farmer’s stress is positive. “It becomes a lifestyle thing. I think farmers are looking to see if there is anything they can do – particularly in livestock trade – so that they’re not tied to the barns 18 hours a day.”

RURAL ROBOTS

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The patent problem

BY BEATRICE BRITNEFF

Fewer Canadians are filing for patent rights for their inventions here at home than 10 years ago. Nobody can, with certainty, say why – but a new, national strategy on intellectual property (IP) announced in the 2018 federal budget promises to implement measures to encourage more citizens to take the first step in protecting their homegrown innovations in Canada.

Can we solve the mystery of stagnant intellectual property applications in Canada?


The perpetuation of this downward domestic trend was recently confirmed by the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, which administers Canada’s IP system under

Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (ISED). The office has, over the years, compiled the numbers concluding it’s receiving fewer patent applications from Canadians than before – with no upswing on the horizon.

A 2017 evaluation report on the special agency’s patent services noted the overall demand took a dive after the 2008-2009 financial crisis and then plateaued. The number of patent filings from Canadians, specifically, also declined steadily over a decade – tanking nearly 18 per cent between 2005 and 2015 to “about 4,300 applications per year.”

The CIPO report in question was approved by the deputy minister of ISED last spring but was only posted on the universal government website for evaluations in early January.

In the document, the IP agency says the reasons for the decline are “unclear” and it’s undertaken work to figure out “why Canada has lagged behind other countries in the growth of patent applications.”

Patent applications – which inventors and companies file when they want to buy protection for their innovations so no one else can copy or steal them – and patent rights are time-limited and jurisdictionally based. This means a patent acquired in Canada doesn’t protect an invention beyond Canadian borders.

Any additional protection would require filing in another country or, alternatively, an applying through the Patent Co-operation Treaty – which allows one application to cover multiple jurisdictions at a time. Other types of IP applications include trademarks and industrial designs.

Without more data, CIPO and stakeholders can only hypothesize about why Canadians prefer to seek patent rights abroad. The IP agency doesn’t seem to think it’s an issue of quality, arguing in last year’s evaluation report that there is “some evidence” to suggest the quality of Canadian patents “compares well” with other jurisdictions.

Michael Geist, a law professor and Canada research chair in internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, said it’s “always hard” to figure out “why someone doesn’t do something.”

“It’s not like you have a ready body of organizations that are ready to explain why they didn’t file with you,” he said.

Still, Geist – who specializes in technology and digital law and policy and writes frequently on IP issues – ventured a few guesses in an interview with iPolitics. He said the patenting process can be costly and so Canadian inventors and companies might be filing for IP rights strategically.

“There’s a real expense for companies and organizations to engage in these filings and so there’s been a tendency to target jurisdictions where those patent rights would be viewed as most valuable and they’re most likely to seek to enforce,” he said.

Grant Lynds, president of the Intellectual Property Institute of Canada, pointed to a finding in the 2017 IP Report – also published by CIPO – which noted that research undertaken by the government agency shows a correlation in three trends: patent filings, manufacturing activity and spending on research and development.

“Canada has seen a decline in research and development expenditure as a share of GDP and in manufacturing output as a share of GDP since the early to mid-2000s,” the report reads. “We see a correlation between R&D spending and patent applications in the literature. We also see that the Canadian private sector invests less in R&D than similar countries.”

The CIPO evaluation report from last spring noted the lag in patent filings domestically may also be due, in part, to a lack of education – noting that Canadian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) may have “low awareness of the benefits of IP and of the services CIPO provides.” The agency proposed more outreach activities on its part to increase awareness among domestic companies.

Geist, too, cited awareness as a possible issue – one to which he thinks the government has already given some attention. He noted that another factor could be that “many of the so-called Canadian tech companies” are “branches of larger multinationals” based in the U.S.

At the end of the day, however, the decline in domestic patent filings by Canadian applicants since the mid-2000’s doesn’t mean Canadians are innovating less than before, according to the 2017 IP report. The numbers in the report show the amount of patent applications submitted by Canadians in foreign countries in fact grew by 21 per cent over the past decade.

In 2015, Canadians filed for 19,857 patents abroad, compared to 4,277 patents domestically, the report says – although “the same invention may be counted more than once” as Canadians can seek protection in more than one markets for each inventions.

A breakdown of the 2015 numbers demonstrate that the United States is Canada’s biggest competitor when it comes to patent filings. Out of the Canadian applications filed abroad that year, 66 per cent went to the U.S., compared to eight per cent to the European Patent Office.

This finding doesn’t come as a surprise to anyone, given the size of the American economy and Canada’s commercial ties to the United States.

“Any company that is looking to grow commercially and protect themselves by looking to patent protection – especially a Canadian company, given our geographically proximity – will be interested in ‘what do I need to do to protect myself in the United States,” Lynds said.

Meanwhile, five per cent of the Canadian filings submitted abroad in 2015 went to China – but that number is in fact on the rise. The 2017 report notes that Canadian patent filings to China “have increased by 36 per cent since 2006.”

THE PATENT PROBLEM

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Building on these facts, Geist said he would caution anyone against drawing a “direct correlation” between the numbers of annual, domestic patent filings and the health of innovation in Canada.

“There is a lot of innovation that takes place outside the formal IP system and the decreasing reliance or the static reliance right now in terms of Canadian filings might support that,” he said. “Part of the problem may be that we’re using the wrong metric to identify innovation.”

Meanwhile, Lynds said it’s still a “concern” to see low numbers of patent filings domestically and worries about what impact it might have on Canada’s commercial activity.

“Manufacturing, R&D and then patent protection … nobody likes to see a decline in all of those types of activities, as a country where you want to keep your economy going and moving in the right direction,” he said.

While Budget 2018 – released February 27 – didn’t include the “full details” of the government’s promised new IP strategy for Canada, it included snapshots of three initiatives that are expected, among other things, to contribute to the growth of domestic patent filings in the long term.

The government has proposed the creation of a ‘patent collective’, which it describes as “a way for firms to share,

generate, and license or purchase intellectual property.”

“This collective will work with Canada’s entrepreneurs to pool patents so that small and medium-sized firms have better access to the critical IP they need to grow their businesses,” the budget reads.

The financial plan also pledged millions to improve Canadian entrepreneurs’ access to IP legal clinics at universities and to the creation of an ‘IP marketplace,’ which Ottawa envisions as “a one-stop online listing of public sector-owned IP available for licensing or sale to reduce transaction costs for business and researchers.”

The budget stated that the Minister of ISED, Navdeep Bains, would publish the full strategy “in the coming months” and that he would “also consider further measures, including through legislation, in support of the new intellectual property strategy.”

The proposed investment into the national IP strategy is $85.3 million over a five-year period, plus a $2 million injection over three years to Statistics Canada to conduct an IP survey to “help identify how Canadians understand and use intellectual property, including groups that have traditional been less likely to use intellectual property, such as women and Indigenous entrepreneurs.”


The Canadian economy may have lost 88,000 jobs in 2017, but there is still a significant labour shortage in Canada where skilled workers are

needed to fill positions in sectors that struggle to maintain staff.

According to a report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB) from December, 2017, there are around 361,700 unfilled jobs in Canada. Ted Mallet, chief economist of CFIB and the author of the report ‘Help Wanted,’ said in most job sectors there is an upward trend toward higher vacancy rates.

The Vacancy Rate is an indicator of pressures in the labour market, Mallet explained, and it shows that there is less slack, and so when unemployment rates go down, vacancy rates go up.

An iPolitics Q&A with Niki Ashton

Shortage? What labour shortage?BY JANICE DICKSON

NDP Leadership candidate Niki Ashton meet with iPolitics’ journalist Janice Dickson in Ottawa on Tuesday, August 15, 2017. iPolitics/Matthew Usherwood


“The only thing the government can really do is ensure we have a good functioning mobile labour force so when opportunities do come up and businesses are able to offer positions then you don’t end up with pockets of unemployment in one part of the economy and pockets of vacancies in others,” said Mallet.

The report showed that the sectors experiencing the biggest labour shortages are retail (50,000), hospitality (45,900) and construction (38,000). British Columbia has the highest job vacancy rate, followed by Quebec and Ontario.

NDP MP and labour critic Niki Ashton said the government needs to invest in jobs training and be a partner for provinces as they invest in education.

Ashton is well versed in labour issues. The Manitoba MP travelled across the country in 2016 and stopped in 14 cities to meet with millennials to hear their stories about precarious work. In an emailed interview she talked about the state of work in Canada today. What follows is an edited version of that exchange.

There are over 300,000 unfilled jobs in Canada. What do you see as the largest factor contributing to the

labour shortage in Canada?

It is our understanding that further study and data collection regarding labour shortages is needed in

order to properly assess the situation. Some regions may be more affected than others and there have been reports regarding certain industries, where labour scarcity seems more widespread. As many workers enter retirement, it will be important for the government to invest resources in skills training to make sure that unemployed workers may find work where it is available.

On the other hand, Statistics Canada said the economy lost 88,000 jobs in January. How do you

reconcile the labour shortage with the number of jobs lost?

The broader trend that we have seen in Canada’s job market remains that jobs that are full-time, well-paying

and with benefits are harder to find. This is where the government needs to draw its attention, and make sure that the economy works for everyone.

Why do you think positions in certain sectors like transportation, agriculture, and also small businesses

have a difficult time maintaining staff?

It can be difficult in many parts of the country to retain workers in industries that are seasonal in

nature. Employment insurance can be a part of that solution, but it often does not last long enough to bridge workers in between seasons. In other sectors, labour shortages may cause increased costs for companies who wish to retain their workers and cause serious strain. A balance of incentives through enhanced benefits and wages and communicating the economic opportunities in such industries to unemployed workers seeking new opportunities can be considered.

How do you see the Temporary Foreign Worker program helping the labour shortage?

Such programs leave workers in a state of vulnerability and cannot act as a permanent replacement for

Canadian workers, which is a growing and worrying trend. The closed work permits that exist for some migrant workers within the Temporary Foreign Worker Program sometimes lead to abuse and the program is ripe for a serious review. Canada is more open to temporary migrant workers than it is to permanent immigration, which is a source of injustice. Migrant workers deserve a path to citizenship and to the freedom every other worker in Canada has. To limit the abuses that can occur within the program, the government needs to do more in terms of job training, and needs to further assess if there are labour shortages in low-skilled sectors of the workforce.

What action should the government take to fill job vacancies? Why?

Canada not being at full-employment, training for jobs and making sure that unemployed workers can access

available jobs has to be the priority. Frontline services must be available for job-seekers and they need to have access to skills training when they need it.

How do you see Ontario’s minimum wage hike impacting the labour market?

Increasing the minimum wage will in the long run help the economy, as workers receive more disposable

income that will be spent rather than saved. This will ultimately help many small businesses in the service and retail industries, among others.

Do you think the criticism of Ontario’s decision to raise minimum wage is fair?

No, as it does not take into account the long-term impacts of offering workers a living income. The

minimum-wage also needs to keep track with inflation, and must not remain static.

What would you propose as a solution to the labour shortage?

As long as Canada falls below full employment, more can be done to match unemployed workers with

available jobs in their area.

How do you plan for the future when the job market is changing so quickly?

Access to post-secondary education and skilled trades training has been increasingly important, and the trend

is there to stay. The government needs to keep investing in training workers and make sure that they are being supported and that their skills are transferable, whether through training programs or encouraging businesses in maintaining training programs.

Tackling student debt, the high price of post-secondary education and making sure that no student is prevented from accessing the level of education they aspire to for economic reasons should be the government’s priority. Eliminating the barriers to higher education will ultimately benefit the economy, as the jobs they open to are less likely to disappear.

SHORTAGE? WHAT LABOUR SHORTAGE?

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There is a cohort in Canada with the potential to inject billions into the economy and give GDP a 0.3 per cent boost.

Canada’s untapped Indigenous workforce is that group and their economic potential is a subject of much interest because they form the youngest and fastest growing demographic a country with an otherwise aging population. Yet they don’t participate in the economy at the same rate as non-Indigenous Canadians. In 2011, Statistics Canada found the employment rate for working-age Indigenous people was 62.5 per cent. Their non-Indigenous counterparts boasted a 75.8 per cent employment rate.

Working-age First Nations had a 57.1 per cent employment rate and Inuit sat at 58.6 per cent. Métis had the highest rate, 71.2 per cent, still below the non-Indigenous employment rate. And once they find work, Indigenous people are also often paid less than their non-Indigenous colleagues.

Investing in the Indigenous workforce a potential boon for Canada’s economy

BY RACHEL GILMORE

Job: Engaging Canada’s First Nations

Gustav Semigak was born in Hebron, Nunatsiavut, Labrador in 1956 and forced out with everyone else in 1959 when the community was resettled. Since 2003, he’s returned every summer to work on restoring the Mission building. Photo by Holly Lake.


More than 1.67 million people in Canada identify themselves as an Aboriginal person, according to the 2016 Census. The Indigenous population in Canada grew by 42.5 per cent between 2006 and 2016 with 44 per cent under age of 25 in 2016

In 2016, there were 1,673,785 Aboriginal people in Canada, 4.9 per cent of the total population.

If shortfalls in employment and income were rectified, Indigenous workers could add about $7 billion into Canada’s economy.

This is especially important now.

“We have a huge aging problem in Canada and so the productivity challenge from that is going to be significant for us over the next 50 years,” said Dominic Barton, Chair of the Advisory Council on Economic Growth.

The question, then, is how does Canada tap into this economic benefit waiting in the wings? This is something the council grappled with in their 2017 report, Tapping Economic Potential Through Broader Workforce Participation. Here’s a breakdown of what the council says needs to happen.

EducationThe advisory council says “high-quality primary and secondary education is critical for building the skills required for inclusion and success in the workforce.” However, schools in Indigenous communities are often under-resourced and under-funded. The cost of delivering education services on reserves exceeds the funding Indigenous communities receive. This leads to issues like crumbling, hazardous school facilities that force Indigenous children off-reserve and away from culturally sensitive learning.

The impact of this combination of inadequate education and poor facilities is reflected in the stats. Indigenous people have lower literacy and numeracy skills than non-Indigenous Canadians. On top of that, just 44 per cent of First Nations people living on reserve have graduated high school. The non-Indigenous national average is 88 per cent.

Some communities are grappling with this issue. In the summer of 2017, 23 Ontario First Nations struck a deal with the province to give the signatory Anishinabek communities full educational authority over Indigenous children from kindergarten to grade 12. While the impact of the agreement has yet to reveal itself, Crown-Indigenous relations minister Carolyn Bennett described the Anishinabek Education System to the Toronto Star as “the largest self-government agreement in Canada.”

The government dedicated funds to address this educational gap in the 2016 budget, but as the Senate Aboriginal Peoples’ committee heard at the end of 2017, it hasn’t made a huge difference – yet. During the meeting, Deputy Grand Chief Glen Hare of the Anishinabek Nation described how a high school dance in his community had a small incident. Unlike the usual disruptive things that might happen at a high school dance, Hare said the school dance ended when pipes fell from the ceiling.

The 2018 budget signalled a $2 billion investment over five years in a new Indigenous Skills and Employment Training Strategy. While this provides potential training for some kinds of work, it doesn’t address the existing issues facing educational institutions on reserves.

Long term financingThe funding Indigenous communities receive through federal transfers – for some communities their only source of revenue – often lasts only five years. The advisory council report notes that limits the ability of communities to plan for a medium term future. It can make it difficult for community leaders to obtain private-sector loans. It can also hurt Indigenous contractors, as they are prevented “from bidding on large contracts” because of “an inability to secure bonding for businesses based on-reserve,” the report says.

“Long-term commitments to (funding) will help the private sector in terms of hiring people for jobs and so forth,” said Barton.

Federal transfer agreements also generally only apply to social programs. That makes it tough for communities to use the funds for business investments.

Funding uncertainty is coupled with the mountains of paperwork in the reports that Indigenous communities must file to fulfill their funding obligations. Added up, it’s understandable why communities may struggle making job-creating business investments.

The Indigenous Services department says it will address this issue through long-term funding but this commitment has yet to work its way into Indigenous financing systems.

The 2018 budget takes a small step towards fixing financing issues. The government is investing $188.6 million over five years in Indigenous financial institutions to build capacity. They’re also investing $189.2 million in 2018-19 to begin implementing new fiscal policy reforms co-developed with self-governing Indigenous groups.

Only time will tell if these investments help to spur investment on reserves.

Better digital connectionsLots of people work online today. It allows for more scheduling flexibility and lets employers hire workers from down the street or on the other side of the world. While the internet would increase job opportunities in rural and remote communities, there’s a problem: broadband access is insufficient or non-existent in those areas.

“Four in 10 Indigenous businesses have no Internet connection or an unreliable one” said the advisory council’s report, urging action that it believes would invigorate the untapped Indigenous workforce. While the government has undertaken various initiatives over the years in an attempt to boost WiFi and phone signals in remote areas, the government still has a way to go to bridge the broadband gap that exists between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.

INVESTING IN INDIGENOUS WORKFORCE A POTENTIAL BOON FOR CANADA’S ECONOMY


Barton said expanded broadband services are “not going to happen overnight.”

The government took a baby step towards establishing better broadband access in the 2018 budget. They plan to invest in LEO satellite technologies through beefing up the Strategic Innovation Fund by $100 million over five years. Those satellites are situated closer to the earth, transmitting data with much quicker response times.

Public-private partnershipsThe fourth and final area that the council wants the government to help jump start is public-private partnerships between Indigenous communities and businesses. The advisory council report explains that these partnerships could help to build capacity and help communities and their private partners to “promote employment, skills development, and economic development” in communities, and also encourage private sector organizations to re-evaluate Indigenous hiring practices.

“We’ve seen some of the hydro companies in Manitoba, also in Quebec, doing things to help (Indigenous workers) in employment and skills development,” said Barton.

The council report says that Manitoba Hydro draws “over 18 per cent of its total workforce and 50 per cent of its Northern workforce from the Indigenous community.” It offers

pre-placement programs and training, which the report says are a “critical reason” for the company’s success in increasing Indigenous employment.

The budget’s boost to Indigenous financial institutions and its $189.2 million investment in co-developing and implementing new fiscal policy reforms with self-governing Indigenous groups could help to encourage public-private engagement. The proposed strengthening of the First Nations Land Management Act might also help communities to attract private partners.

If the government succeeds in incentivising the Indigenous workforce, Barton says the benefits will not only be felt in the GDP and GDP per capita.

“There’s a very strong linkage between people being able to have a job and other costs that come from the system,” Barton said. “When someone’s employed, there’s the multiplier effect for less … social security costs broadly, not just unemployment insurance but (things like) mental health.”

For Barton, the benefits make Indigenous workforce participation everyone’s business.

“It’s not an Indigenous issue – it’s a broader issue,” he said.

INVESTING IN INDIGENOUS WORKFORCE A POTENTIAL BOON FOR CANADA’S ECONOMY

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Gender inequality is alive and kicking in technology

BY ANN-LOUISE DAVIDSON

On International Women’s Day, it’s worth a harsh reminder: Women working in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers represent

a mere 20 per cent of the current job force in the field.

According to Statistics Canada, women in STEM are also underpaid compared to their male counterparts. What’s more, more women than men enrol in university, but men with lower academic marks are more likely to choose STEM careers than women with higher marks.

Bigger studies on large populations are unable to fully explain this phenomenon and point to other possible factors and influences.

There are a multitude of possible causes, such as differences in labour market expectations, family/work balance, differences in motivation, ambition, interests, self-esteem and self-confidence. But these purported causes only satisfy outsiders trying to explain the trend.

Any insider will tell you the real issue is that women are still victims of outdated stereotypes, even in the countries that pride themselves on gender equality.

This is true when accessing the STEM labour market, in school and in informal face-to-face and online communities.

Despite the advances women have made in the 20th century and the ongoing #MeToo movement, women working in fields of innovative and disruptive technologies continue to be targeted by gender discrimination and various forms of harassment, and they’re outnumbered.

In our respective roles as a researcher and a vlogger living at two opposing ends of the world, my co-author Naomi Wu and I share a common base of experience. We are both self-taught coders and makers, we have both been victims of online harassment and abusive behaviour, and we have both presented our work under male pseudonyms.

Let’s take the topic of 3D printing. If you want to develop expertise, building your own 3D printer is really the best

way to learn how the machine operates, how to adjust and optimize it and how to design 3D objects.

This knowledge allows learners to solve real-life problems and it also develops creativity.

A savvy maker can buy a DIY kit from China and build their own 3D printer, thus obtaining the means of production of prototyped objects in the comfort of their own home.

Many informal online groups exist to support the community of makers who wish to construct open-source 3D kits that are not always easy to build. Sometimes there are faulty instructions. Other times, the printer version changes between the moment of production and the moment the customer receives it. Other times, the printer is simply challenging to build.

For that reason, there are many groups on Facebook and Reddit dedicated to troubleshooting 3D printing projects.

Some have thousands of members all over the world responding to questions at all hours. Anyone who has questions on how to build the structure, connect the wires to the electronic circuit board or calibrate the printer can post their question, document problems with photos or videos when possible, and the community is there to help them.

If the person asking the question is male, they’ll receive helpful advice virtually 100 per cent of the time. Not so if you’re a woman.

In these 3D printing online communities, as in the 3D printing industry, women appear to be rare.

Women who post questions are often dismissed with comments such as:

“Your learning curve is quite steep. You should find a guy in your area with electronics knowledge who can help you. Lol!”

“C-nts should not build machines they don’t understand.”

“I don’t mean to be sexist, but this is not a place for stupid questions.”

Photo left: Faith Lennox, 7, right, smiles as she holds a plastic prosthetics part with her newly 3D printed hand at the Build it Workspace in Los Alamitos, Calif.,in 2015. Lennox helped design the limb using a 3D printer. AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes

Battle of the sexes


These are actual comments we have received.

To counter this, women create fake accounts with male pseudonyms, which spare them the abuse and allow them to solve their problems efficiently.

When we look at the current situation, it’s barely evolved from the era when Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin wrote under the male pseudonym George Sand to gain credibility for her literary criticism and political texts in the 19th century.

The difference is that it’s 2018, and 3D printing is becoming one of the most important industries of the 21st century.

As we head towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution, workers wishing to tap into the high-tech industry will need strong analytical skills, including the ability to make sense of torrents of data emerging from technological disruptions, and social and collaboration skills, such as emotional intelligence and working with others who have different skill sets.

And of course they need programming (coding) skills and proficiency in operating complex equipment.

By 2020, there will be more than 200,000 new high-tech jobs in Canada, and not enough qualified people to fill them.

Women can and should enrol in college or university programs to develop many of these high-tech skills, but the truth is that with the rapid developments in emergent and disruptive technologies, including 3D printing, they also need to engage in self-directed learning just to stay on top of things.

Concretely, this means taking time to read articles, watch videos, and keep track of what’s new on top of their normal day-to-day workload.

Regardless of gender, becoming skilled in this industry requires spending time on task, sitting down and following step-by-step instructions to try things out, persisting in the face of errors, persevering and brushing up on math skills when necessary.

This can be done either by engaging in self-directed learning or by finding a way to get tutoring, because math skills are key to women pursuing STEM careers.

According to Statistics Canada, women who score higher at age 15 on the OECD’s Youth in Transition Survey and its Program for International Student Assessment tests are more likely to choose STEM careers.

Whether it’s in the context of professional STEM careers or trying to engage in do-it-yourself tinkering and innovating with open-source and disruptive technology, women are faced with gender discrimination, partly due to their under-representation in the field and partly due to outdated stereotypes.

Nonetheless, there are certainly many male makers who are supportive of women.

The best male makers in the community recognize women for their skills and accomplishments. They don’t get hung up on whether it’s a male, a female or a transgender person handling the tools or asking the questions.

Of course women who are in STEM can just develop thicker skins and simply ignore the haters. The downside to that strategy, however, is that it perpetuates the problems in the long run. It normalizes hate, creates tolerance of aggressive behaviours and encourages bystanders to remain silent when they see aggression.

It also erodes the personal ambition, income, careers and reputations of women in STEM fields.

These forms of aggression are part of the glass ceiling for high-tech jobs.

They prevent girls and young women, who may be less able to deal with the abuse when simply trying to practise a hobby or complete a school project, from developing an interest in STEM in the future. This is the greatest harm.

Are we still really wondering what are the “other” factors and influences that prevent women from entering male-dominated STEM careers?

Co-written with Naomi Wu, an engineer and video blogger in China and advocate for women in tech. Wu was named one of the most influential women in 3D printing on International Women’s Day 2017.

Ann-Louise Davidson, Concordia University Research Chair, Maker culture; Associate Professor, Educational Technology, Concordia University

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

GENDER INEQUALITY IS ALIVE AND KICKING IN TECHNOLOGY

Students attend the Girls Learning Code computer workshop in Toronto in 2014. Women continue to be woefully under-represented in STEM, and abuse and harassment in the male-dominated field play a major role. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young


BY KATHRYN MAY

Treasury Board President Scott Brison is driving a digital strategy he believes will improve the lives of Canadians and restore the trust and confidence they have lost in

all governments.

For months, Brison and the government’s brash Chief Information Officer Alex Benay have been giving speeches to tech and public service audiences, laying the groundwork for a digital vision, which if successful, could upend the way government works, buys, builds and uses technology.

The two are like a tag team with Benay explaining what government should do to go digital, and Brison preaching the why. Brison recently broadened his audience with a TEDxKanata talk on the “digital disruption” he is trying to bring to Canada’s public service, which is anchored on the Westminster parliamentary system.

“Today, more than ever, companies and governments need to understand their core purpose. Otherwise, they’ll be irrelevant before they know it. Government’s purpose is to improve the lives of citizens,” said Brison.

“Getting digital right means more than great government services. After more than 20 years in public service I believe digital has the potential to help restore people’s faith in government to serve them, listen to them, understand them and to respond to their needs.”

This call for a digital revolution in nothing new. Canada’s public service has been readying for a major digital reckoning since Blueprint 2020, launched by then Privy Council Clerk Wayne Wouters under the previous Conservative government.

This time they mean it

President of the Treasury Board Scott Brison tours the new Canadian Digital Service (CDS) sector in Ottawa on Monday, January 22, 2018. iPolitics/Matthew Usherwood

Driving digital transformation of government


But the Trudeau government argues the Conservatives only embraced technology as a way to cut costs and reduce the size of government. It points to the disastrous Phoenix pay system – with the price tag to repair the damage closing on $1 billion.

The Liberals, on the other hand, say they are harnessing digital technology to make government better, more efficient and relevant again.

The two-year Phoenix debacle has brought an urgency and focus to changing the way government does business and provides services to Canadians.

“If we don’t fix behaviours as a result of Phoenix, we never will,” said Benay in an interview. ”What more do we need as a reason on the technical front to change our behaviour?

Brison often uses Blockbuster as analogy of what’s in store for government if it doesn’t understand its core business. The now defunct video rental empire made it easier to pick up videos by putting stores in neighbourhoods across the country.

Netflix, however, realized people wanted entertainment at their fingertips. It delivered DVDs to their doors and then

became a video-streaming operation that left Blockbuster in the dust and upended the Hollywood business model.

“We can’t be a Blockbuster government serving a Netflix citizenry,” says Brison.

Brison wants public servants to “think digitally” and part of the plan is to instill in government some that “digital start-up mindset” which drove Netflix.

To do that, Canada borrowed from the U.S, which in the aftermath of the Obama administration’s catastrophic rollout of healthcare.gov, recruited top Silicon Valley talent and embedded its own start-up in government known as 18F and U.S Digital Government Services.

The model inspired the creation of the Canadian Digital Services, a swat team of tech geeks housed in Treasury Board, to tackle IT problems and harness digital to help departments design and build better services.

CDS is a small but growing team that aims to embody the principles the government is trying to bring to the public service. Focus on citizens; try new things; learn and adapt as you go – “what techies call agile or iteration,” says Brison. And “put it all out there – that’s what’s known as open data and open source. “

DRIVING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF GOVERNMENT

President of the Treasury Board Scott Brison tours the new Canadian Digital Service (CDS) sector in Ottawa on Monday, January 22, 2018. iPolitics/Matthew Usherwood


Critics have long argued government puts itself ahead of citizens when it delivers services. Respected digital blogger Gerry McGovern said: “digital is increasingly exposing government incompetence and how remote from the real life of people so many in government are, particularly at the senior level.”

McGovern was recently in Ottawa telling public servants they could change that by focusing on what Canadians want, not what government does.

And what do citizens want?

Canadians live digitally when they shop and work and expect the same when dealing with their governments, says Brison. They want single IDs, digitally issued permits, applications, approvals and information. And they want it fast, on their personal devices and 24/7.

They’re baffled that they can’t get the same service ordering a passport as they do when making a purchase from Amazon. Why can’t government track Canadians interactions with departments and use that information to improve or customize services?

“Think about it, why can’t you get the same quality of service when you renew your passport that you get when you buy something from Amazon,” said Brison.

“This is a way that digital adds value to the relationship. Done right, digital should help citizens shape their government services. Every time you interact with your government should be an opportunity for the government to learn how its services can better fit your needs.”

Brison wants to see the day when Canadians don’t have to apply for government services but they will “automatically appear.” Or people could file their taxes in minutes using their phones. No wait times. Information and data will be freely shared and used to create new businesses, and services.

And all services don’t have to be provided by government. By throwing open its information, government data is already being mined for weather apps, Google maps and building new services like Turbotax.

In Estonia, citizens have ID chips that connect them to everything. They are automatically enrolled in benefits and

services without having to apply. In Denmark and the UK, people don’t file taxes and receive an email explaining how their returns were calculated.

In Canada, funeral homes still send in faxes to government offices when someone dies.

“Digitizing death notifications is the type of thing that’s doable in the short term,” said Brison. “But … I think we can be even more ambitious and provide great digital services to citizens while they are still alive.”

The government is already sharing information and using artificial intelligence to help predict and prepare or the outbreak of infectious diseases; track weather patterns or detect risks in children’s toys before any complaints are even formally lodged.

The government is taking other steps towards a digital makeover.


Chief Information Officer Alex Benay


It has moved to cloud computing, allowing departments to lease computer capacity as it needs it from private sector firms like Amazon Web Services. It is using blockchain technology. It has drafted new IT standards and is working on a new IT strategic plan. It created a digital advisory board of CIOs, including CIOs from banks and insurance companies that have already tackled big digital transformations.

Canada is recognized as a world leader in open government; co-chairing this year’s Open Government Partnership. It’s getting international attention for its investments in superclusters and is ranked third in the world for its readiness for artificial intelligence. It recently joined the D7, an international forum of seven countries considered digital leaders.

The federal budget invested heavily in cyber security and pumped more than $2.2 billion in Shared Services, giving it the solid funding it needs to keep old legacy systems operating as government shifts to the cloud.

And it’s gearing up for a shift to ‘agile procurement’ when designing and buying technology, which is built on ‘starting small and scaling up.”

The days of what Brison calls the big “IT zombie projects” like Phoenix, built on detailed specifications with government telling vendors what they want, are ending. They don’t work and take so long the technology is often outdated by time they are completed.

Instead, projects will be being tackled in pieces. They will be short and small and industry and government will collaborate to work out solutions piece by piece. Benay calls it “relentless incrementalism instead of boiling the ocean.”

An example is a small change Immigration Refugee and Citizenship Canada made to improve its application process.

Last year, Canadians filed more than 100,000 requests under Canada’s Access to Information law and half came from people checking on their immigration applications, including whether they were even received.

A bar code on the application fixed that, notifying applicants by text or email when the forms are received. Brison said that step could be expanded to a secure app, allowing people to find immigration rules; complete immigration applications and track them online like an Amazon delivery.

“The bar code may seem like a small thing, but it’s a new way of doing business for government. … Startups know digital allows you to start small, build a prototype, put it in the hands users and then make changes based on their experiences.

At the centre of many of these these changes is an expanded role for Benay.

The budget signaled a more robust role for the CIO to ensure the government’s IT systems and data are protected

by a “stronger IT governance structure.” (Phoenix failed for many reasons but the lack of governance among the various players is singled out as a major downfall.)

Brison says the CIO should have the same authority or ‘line of sight’ into departments as the comptroller general has in financial standards in departments.

Many argue Benay’s biggest obstacle is an entrenched bureaucracy that resists interference.

Benay stepped into the CIO job nearly a year ago with marching orders from Brison to be a “disrupter.”

And Benay admits his biggest challenge is its culture, not technology.

“My role as CIO is to have that conversation with people on the program, service and policy side and say: ‘maybe we can do things differently.’ And to be frank, I am not sure that is a conversation we are used to having yet. “

“By being more open; doing more things with more people and releasing more data you end up with a very different business model for government. So, when we talk about digital government, it is 100 per cent culture change and not technology driven,” said Benay.

Brison rejects the “myths” that digital isn’t as secure as analog; that people prefer ‘bricks and mortar’ service centres and that low-income earners and seniors don’t enjoy the same online access.

Today, 84 per cent of Canadians file their taxes online and 68 per cent bank digitally. Canada has 24 million — and counting — smart phones and free WiFI everywhere from coffee shops to homeless shelters.

In fact, Brison even questions the relevance today of home addresses as the government’s main point of contact with citizens, especially for young Canadians or the precariously employed who are more likely to have a ‘digital address’, whether an email or cell number, they will keep for a lifetime.

He argues digital could help low-income families tap into the Canada Learning bond to help save for their children’s post-secondary education. About two-thirds of those eligible don’t get the benefit, leaving $1 billion unclaimed. Most, however, do receive the Canada Child Benefit and putting both on the same application could ‘nudge’ the take up.

A real obstacle, however, is that departments still can’t easily share information and the government would have to make several hundred legislative changes to open that door.

In all his speeches, Brison tells audiences that a company that fails at digital goes out of business, but a government that fails “is out of touch.”

“If citizens aren’t well-served by government, they lose trust in government – all government - because if they can’t trust government to do the basics really well, how can they trust it to do the big things right?”



With the important exception of the President of the United States, no one is more obsessed with Twitter than journalists are.

Facebook, with its two billion regular users worldwide is vastly larger than Twitter, with just over 300 million. But Twitter’s open structure, which allows journalists to follow whom they like and allows others to follow them, makes it the reporter’s darling.

Twitter is a customizable news feed, allowing journalists to get instant access to other journalists, academics, politicians and the public at lightning speed. It allows journalists to try out ideas and swap information, not to mention track what their competitors are doing. It allows them to sample a river of public opinion of every stripe and shade. They can chase sources for stories and get instant feedback from readers – grateful and disgruntled. It is a source and an outlet for snark and humour and fun.

But many journalists have begun to feel towards Twitter the way most of us feel about the cable company. We can’t quite bring ourselves to cut the cord because of all the benefits it brings; but we hate it nonetheless.

Twitter is a sewer, we increasingly hear, stewing with resentment, expressed in the coarsest of terms. The epigrams and irony that made it a pleasant place in the early years has given way to shrieking and sheer personal aggression few of us ever experience in our everyday lives. And now, Russian trolls have joined the horrid fun.

The columnist, Andrew Coyne, remarked to me that Twitter “brings out the worst in people, and brings out the worst people.”

Coyne, like the Maclean’s columnist Paul Wells, is one of many journalists, some with tens of thousands of followers, who have quit the platform. Wells described the experience as being “like slamming on a brake inside your head.”

After an interlude, Coyne and Wells both returned.

Daniel Kahneman, the Israeli psychologist who won the Nobel Economic Prize for his work in behavioural economics, talks about what he calls our brains’ System

1 and System 2. System 1 is the quick, intuitive, almost effortless way of interpreting the world, but it is prone to careless mistakes. System 2 is slower, more deliberative and analytical. It also requires more effort. Twitter is tailor made for System 1: the clever remark that may not have been thought through.

I’ve been active on Twitter since 2011 when the instant reports from people in Cairo’s Tahrir Square in the midst of the Arab Spring got me excited about the possibilities of unmediated access to events – unmediated by the media, that is. I needed to sift through rumours and misinformation, but of course that’s exactly what I would have been doing if I were a reporter right there in the square.

Since then, I have tweeted more than 45,000 times. That seems astounding to me except when I compare it with the Toronto Star’s Daniel Dale, at 78,000 and Paul Wells with 99,000.

Were every one of my 45,000 tweets wise, prudent, well-considered? As a matter of fact, no. I have inadvertently but too-quickly re-tweeted misinformation and I have offended people I did not intend to offend. On occasion, I’ve failed to maintain the standards of civility I would expect of others.

For news management, this is a problem. While reporters may direct traffic to the organization’s site through their large Twitter followings, they may also be tempted by System 1 and Twitter’s sassy, casual ambience to say things that conflict with the organization’s image and standards. Many of the most popular journalists on Twitter have been quietly reprimanded by management for slipping the leash. At the CBC, Steve Ladurantaye, himself a former executive at Twitter, was pushed out of his job as managing editor of The National after joining a Twitter gang-up on the issue of “cultural appropriation”.

Reporters who live-tweet news events attract followers, but followers to Twitter not the news organization that pays their salaries. A CBC executive told me that at one time the corporation had had to assign producers in Toronto to monitor their own reporters’ Twitter-feeds to get the news because when reporters are tweeting they are not filing.

Anti-socialBY PAUL ADAMS

Twitter @journalism #badnews


One of the most frustrating aspects of Twitter from management’s perspective is that reporters can get sucked into the Twitter-hole and neglect the work of reporting. Like Facebook, Twitter is engineered to deliver little pops of dopamine – and maybe the occasional rush of adrenaline. No one is more susceptible to the time-sucking allure of Twitter than reporters.

David Fahrenthold, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the Washington Post in part by his pioneering use of Twitter to crowd-source stories about Donald Trump’s charitable shenanigans now goes on the platform only when he has a story to promote or a question to ask his followers. His reason: Twitter sucks him into the daily White House circus and distracts him from his work on Trump’s business interests.

For all its many charms, nothing about Twitter is more repellent than its savagery. Journalists who write a story someone doesn’t like are accused of partisan bias at best; often they are accused of stupidity, laziness, or negligence. If they are women they are attacked in the vilest way. Same if they are Black. You don’t even need to be Jewish to be the subject of anti-Semitic tweets.

That’s not to say this is the preserve of the populist right. As one journalist said to me, being called an asshole by an obscure troll is unpleasant, but being called a racist or a

homophobe by a tenured professor or a fellow journalist can leave a permanent stain.

It is the nature of Twitter that the crassest of comments uncorks something among others and soon a mob may form – and that only reinforces the confidence of the person who made the original comment.

Some journalists say they are calloused to it all, but even a callous is evidence of injury. Twitter is approaching the point that email was in the early 2000s when spam promoting penis-enlargement were so numerous it was hard to find the morning email from your boss. If something isn’t done, the system will topple.

And all that is leaving aside the appearance of organized trolling as we have seen by Russians in the US, France, Finland and so on. I chased down some of the trollier comments sent to journalists over the weekend, and many of the accounts involved seemed suspicious. Often their bios were overloaded with flags and symbols and their own followers too seemed dominated by apparent bots and trolls.

Journalists are not likely to throw Twitter overboard tomorrow. But the platform has become ugly and clotted and is ripe for disruption.

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