Maclean's March 2023

Canada is experiencing a troubling labour shortage. There are almost a million job openings right now across the country, the highest number on record. Boomers are exiting the workforce en masse, leaving behind vacancies in almost every sector. To address the problem, the federal government has committed to bring in 500,000 immigrants per year by 2025. Even with that influx of newcomers, the country will likely be dealing with a labour deficit for years to come. So you’d think that this moment presents a golden opportunity for young people launching their careers. Canadians graduating from school this spring, with their university degrees or college diplomas or trade certifications, can enter the workforce with few obstacles and begin to climb the professional ladder. Yet members of the new generation aren’t leaping…

TOMORROWLAND In our annual Year Ahead package (January 2023), we made more than 100 predictions about the people and ideas that will shape Canada over the next 12 months. Readers were particularly opinionated about lawyer Michael Geist’s essay on the drawbacks of Bill C-11, a piece of legislation that, among other things, will mandate CanCon on streaming platforms like YouTube and Netflix. Yes. Yes. Yes. The media has changed, and we have to change the rules. These algorithms are designed to make money, and if hatred makes money, they’ll give you hate and outrage as content. We do not own these algorithms, and they could very well skew anything we hear and read in Canada to create hatred between each other. We absolutely have to control this with Bill C-11.…

THE ROBOTS ARE COMING. Well, technically, they’re already here, but Martin Kon just arrived. Fresh off a stint as YouTube’s chief financial officer—where he and his team launched the platform’s TikTok-esque video Shorts—the Ontario-bred tech exec hopped back over the border and became president and COO of the mega-successful three-year-old AI startup Cohere, based in Toronto. Its mandate? Commercializing better human-computer conversations. Basically, they want a word. Cohere’s recent US$125-million funding boost, and Kon’s pivot, coincides with the recent popularization of natural-language processing, or NLP, the branch of AI that’s teaching computers to digest and produce speech and text with the sophistication of human beings. As everyday websurfers use NLP-based tools like ChatGPT to produce A-plus college essays, the founders of Cohere are hoping to revolutionize the way the world…

MY GRANDMOTHER LIVED in the same house in Cleveland for 50 years. After my grandfather died, she spent 11 of those years alone. Eventually, she developed dementia and had her driver’s licence taken away, which upset her. She soon went to live in Cape Cod with my aunt, who had offered to take care of her. Moving is hard enough, but imagine migrating to a different state in your 80s. Her health declined quickly after that. I knew there had to be a better way to support people at this stage of life. Right now, if you’re a senior living in Canada who can no longer live independently, there are two main paths. For those who require around-the-clock medical supervision, there are highly regulated, government-funded long-term care facilities. The other…

THE TOWN OF NAIN, on the rugged, mountainous Labrador coast, gives new meaning to the word “remote”: it’s inaccessible by road and overlooks the wild Labrador Sea, which freezes for six months of the year. It’s also a gateway to the jaw-dropping Torngat Mountains National Park and an important cultural centre for Labrador’s Inuit community, who make up the vast majority of the area’s population. (Nain was founded in the late 1700s by Moravian missionaries.) Until recently, the community had nowhere to showcase artifacts from its rich history. That’s why, in 2009, the self-governing Nunatsiavut government commissioned Newfoundland-born, Norway-based architect Todd Saunders to design the $19-million Illusuak Cultural Centre. Saunders is known for creating contemporary geometric structures that draw from the striking landscapes that surround them. He’s also the architect behind…

“Tell me about yourself.” Whenever I hear those four words, my brain flatlines. I scramble for an answer and wonder if there’s anything interesting to say at all. Without exception, my response is the same: every time I’m asked to describe my life, I describe my job. Work has always anchored my identity. It was the engine that propelled my family from China to Canada in 1998, two years before I was born, and tales of my father’s heroic work ethic and self-sacrifice have played for years like a movie montage in my mind. There he is, waiting at a bus stop in suburban Toronto, starting his 90-minute commute to an IT job downtown. There he is, hunched in a chair at the Chapters bookstore near our home, poring over…