Canada’s current unemployment rate stands at 6.6 per cent (Alberta’s rate is higher than any province west of the Maritimes at 8.3 per cent). Overall, Canada is not doing well when we compare it to the U.S. (4.6 per cent) or Great Britain (4.8 per cent). However, my focus is more long term, as I’m looking at what unemployment will be over the next twenty years. The Western world is investing heavily in advanced technology, and much of this focus is directed at eliminating employees. In fact, the effort seems to be based on eliminating lower paid, lower skilled positions, such as cashiers, taxi drivers, truck drivers, and similar jobs. We’ve already seen automated check-outs at most grocery stores, and self-driving trucks and taxis are just around the corner. When this automation occurs, the job losses will be in the millions. Now, I appreciate that the world is constantly changing, and new technology and new inventions continuously cause many jobs to vanish. However, in the past, the focus of progress was to produce better quality, more quality, and more features and options. The focus was on producing better products, and reducing the cost of these items, it was generally not on eliminating jobs.
Granted, this new technology and new systems will create some jobs that require high educational backgrounds and a multitude of skills. Because we are dealing with technology replacing people, we are also going to find that the number of new jobs that will be created will be very, very small. Years ago, I met an architect who was employed by the U.S. Army (the U.S. Army is the second biggest landlord on the planet and owns over 16,000 buildings!). He asked me a simple question: “what is the most expensive part of any building?” I answered with the traditional answers, such as “interest on the debt-financing,” or “cost of land, or steel, or concrete, or whatever.” Each time I answered, he shook his head. When I finally ran out of logical answers, he replied, “Brian, the biggest cost in any building is the salaries of all the people who will work in the building over the next 50 or 60 years, or however long the building lasts.” It’s not surprising that companies are looking at how to decrease this major cost.
For young children who can see the future, who are prepared to work hard, and who are determined to get an outstanding education (assuming their families can afford this education), the future is a very bright prospect. However, most children are faced with the reality of dealing with our public education system, an over-burdened, bureaucratic system that is run for the benefit of the administrators, a system where children are an after-thought. This is an old, tired system that still hasn’t figured out how to teach children to read and write, a system now mired in left wing politics, politically correct speech, and devoted to every hare-brained social justice cause that walks by the door. The children have absolutely no hope of ever gaining an outstanding education, and any child that does is testament to the strength of willpower against the walls of inflexibility and monotony. There is a day of reckoning coming for Canadian workers, and I fear it will be a very sad day, indeed.
Brian McLeod is a St. Albert resident.
