Minister Navdeep Bains Shares his Views on Jobs of the Future
May 25, 2018
Minister Navdeep Bains and IEBN Director, Luis Cisneros.
The Minister of Innovation, Science and Economic Development, Navdeep Singh Bains, was visiting on May 24 to take part in a discussion with the HEC Montréal community on jobs of the future.
The discussion with Minister Bains took the form of an interview and was led by Luis Cisneros, Director of the Institute for Entrepreneurship National Bank-HEC Montréal. After the discussion, the audience was invited to ask questions.
The Minister set out the course of action to be taken by the Canadian government to face the technological innovations of the past few years. Education and access to continuing education are the core priorities of the federal government’s Innovation and Skills Plan.
The Minister spoke lengthily on Canadian expertise in Artificial Intelligence (AI), and more specifically, on Montréal AI expertise. He underlined the importance of, not only encouraging research in the field, but also supporting the growth of an industry which creates jobs in AI. He said he hopes to continue to work with the industry and the university community to create structures like SCALE.AI, the intelligent supply chain supercluster, on which HEC Montréal is a partner.
“It must be acknowledged that we have gotten this far largely due to talent. We therefore have to remain open to local talent, but also open up to international talent,” reiterated Mr. Bains concerning Canadian AI expertise and alluding to recent changes in immigration rules aiming to speed up admission procedures for researchers in cutting-edge sectors.
To conclude, the Minister was asked about what he plans to do to encourage entrepreneurship for women, immigrants and minorities. He mentioned the investments announced in the 2018 federal budget granting financial assistance to women entrepreneurs, and he reiterated his support for business incubator programs and access to language classes for newcomers.