CANADA AS A LEARNING ECONOMY: EDUCATION AND TRAINING IN AN AGE OF MACHINES:

BACKGROUND In the late 1990s the Federal Government of Canada initiated two public consultation processes that aimed to “examine the issues pertaining to the changing nature of work and the workplace” (HRDC 1997). [...] The report explores the question of how to balance the need for innovation to support the productivity and economic prosperity in the long-term with the short-term disruption that technological change often causes. [...] Indeed, quality of opportunity for lifelong learning is a priority highlighted in Canada a Learning Nation (2020) – the recent report by the federal Future Skills Council.1 Certainly, the employment impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how policies and programs developed to meet the needs of an industrial economy are failing to keep pace with the economic realities experienced by conte. [...] Denmark provides a 2 According to former Governor of the Bank of Canada, Stephen Poloz (2020), the concept of a ‘K-shaped recovery’ refers to the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic is having significant adverse economic effects on some parts of the economy (the bottom part of the K) and having very little effect on others (the top part of the K). [...] Results of this work identify the interaction of geography and automation to reveal the impacts of automation on the spatial organization of employment.7 It shows how uneven patterns of technology-induced disruption in local labour markets exacerbate the urban-rural divide in the United States.