Today, Prime Minister Mark Carney released Canada's long-awaited national AI strategy. Titled AI for All, it is an ambitious five-year plan targeting $200 billion in economic growth, 250,000 new AI-related jobs, and a jump in national AI adoption from 12% to 60% by 2034.
The ESGAI Initiative wants to be clear: the government has identified the right organizing principles. Trust. Opportunity. Sovereignty. These are not empty words — and the political will required to publish a national strategy of this scope, built on 11,000 public submissions and a 28-member expert task force, deserves acknowledgment.
Strengthening privacy protections against deepfakes and surveillance pricing, expanding AI literacy to one million post-secondary students, asserting Canadian digital sovereignty through a national AI supercomputer — these are meaningful commitments. They reflect a genuine understanding of what is at stake in the global AI race.
However.
AI for All is fundamentally an adoption and competitiveness strategy. What Canada has not yet built — and what this strategy does not provide — is a displacement response. These are not the same thing. Accelerating AI adoption without a parallel mechanism to support the workers whose livelihoods that adoption displaces is not a complete strategy. It is half of one.
Key finding: When reporters asked senior government officials how many Canadian jobs AI is projected to eliminate, they did not provide an estimate. You cannot design an adequate transition system for a problem you refuse to measure.
Here are the seven gaps the ESGAI Initiative has identified between AI for All and what a comprehensive national AI framework requires.
No Dedicated Displacement Fund
AI for All contains no levy, no ring-fenced fund, and no mechanism that obligates corporations benefiting from AI automation to contribute to worker transition costs. The companies capturing productivity gains from AI deployment bear zero financial obligation to the workers those deployments displace.
No Income Stabilization for Displaced Workers
The strategy references upskilling and employer-led training. It does not provide bridge income for workers who lose their jobs today. There is no equivalent of a graduated income support pathway that covers workers from the first month of displacement through to full re-employment.
Upskilling Is Not Structural Retraining
The National AI Literacy Initiative and 90,000 youth placements are entry-level, forward-looking programs. They train Canadians entering the workforce for an AI-enabled economy. They do nothing for the mid-career administrative worker, the logistics driver, the call centre employee, or the retail worker facing structural displacement today.
No Mental Health Support
Work is not only a source of income. For most Canadians, it is also a source of identity, daily structure, social connection, and purpose. When AI eliminates a job, it eliminates all of that simultaneously. AI for All contains nothing comparable to dedicated displacement mental health support.
This is not a social afterthought. Untreated depression and anxiety among displaced workers cost the Canadian economy an estimated $50 billion annually in lost productivity. Mental health support during transition is an economic investment, not a charity expenditure.
No Entrepreneur Acceleration for Displaced Workers
AI for All's SME support is designed to help existing businesses adopt AI — a legitimate goal. It is not designed to help a 52-year-old manufacturing worker or a former call centre supervisor become a founder.
No Corporate Accountability Mechanism
AI for All asks corporations to adopt AI faster and offers government support to do so. It does not ask them to bear any proportionate responsibility for the displacement that adoption causes.
A strategy that accelerates adoption without accountability creates a system where private gains are captured and social costs are externalized onto workers and the public purse. The companies that profit most from AI automation must bear a proportionate share of the social cost of that automation. This is not punitive — it is equitable.
No Displacement Measurement Framework
Most fundamentally: the government has not committed to measuring the problem. AI for All has no equivalent of an independent federal body with authority to audit corporate AI deployments, verify displacement attributions, and produce the labour market intelligence that a genuine transition system requires.
Without measurement, there is no accountability, no funding trigger, and no early warning. The silence on projected job losses is not a minor omission — it is a structural gap in the strategy's foundation.
What This Means
The ESGAI Initiative is not arguing against AI for All. We are arguing for its completion.
The government has written a serious adoption strategy. It now needs an equally serious displacement response to sit alongside it. Trust, Opportunity, and Sovereignty mean very little to a 48-year-old customer service worker whose role was automated last quarter and who has no income bridge, no retraining pathway, and no mental health support.
Notably, NDP MP Don Davies criticized AI for All on the day of its release, saying it "leaves Canadians dangerously exposed" and calling for a "humans-first AI strategy." The political space for a displacement response mechanism is not only present — it is being articulated in Parliament today.
The AWTF framework — fourteen versions in development, with independent funding analysis, six integrated program streams, and a phased implementation roadmap — is designed to be exactly that response. It is not a competing vision. It is the missing half.
Our call to action
The ESGAI Initiative calls on the Government of Canada to commission a formal working group to integrate a displacement response mechanism into the AI for All implementation plan, beginning with AWTF enabling legislation in the current Parliamentary session. We are ready to contribute.