Orders of the Day - Relevance of Full Employment

Honourable senators, I would like to begin by thanking Senator Bellemare for inviting me to speak to the relevance of full employment in the 21st century in a globalized economy. When I adjourned debate in my name, I had no idea of the scope, diversity and depth of the concept’s many dimensions.

Last summer, to get ready for the fall session and to get a better sense of labour market issues in Canada and particularly in New Brunswick, I travelled around my province meeting with a large number of citizens, elected officials, unions, business people’s associations, and people heading up organizations and institutions in various sectors: post-secondary institutions, the business community, the arts and culture community, municipal government, and youth and political organizations.

These productive meetings and the materials I read during that time led me to reflect on issues involving the economic, social and cultural development of my home province in general, but more specifically the issues involving access to employment, working conditions, training needs and the evolving labour market in Canada in the context of globalization.

I must say that during my career as an artist and cultural worker, I was always interested and spent a great deal of time working with my former colleagues to develop public policy models that would ensure artists and cultural workers would be recognized as full participants in the labour force. After I was appointed to the Senate, I came to realize that many other Canadian workers also face similar issues.

In talking to my fellow Acadians, I came to realize that they saw the concept of full employment more as a long-term ideal for a community than as a short-term economic development strategy. Issues related to status and conditions of employment were foremost in people’s minds. That is why, in my speech, I will start with a macroscopic analysis of full employment and proceed to a microscopic analysis focused on workers whose world has been transformed by labour market laws. I will address issues related to the recognition, status, and working conditions of artists and cultural workers.

However, let’s work on better understanding what full employment means. At the risk of repeating some of the definitions that have already been stated in this chamber, allow me to share a few. According to the International Labour Organization, and I quote:

…full employment ensures that there is work for all persons who are willing to work and look for work.

The International Labour Organization also specifies that those persons must have the opportunity to choose employment where they can use the skills and qualifications that they possess.

Other people view full employment as an economic state where only two types of unemployment exist: transitional unemployment, involving the transition phase and the time it takes someone without a job to find work; and voluntary unemployment, where someone decides to remove themselves from the labour market in order to pursue other activities, for example, to start a family.

According to this definition of full employment, everyone who wants to work in a good job in their chosen field is able to do so without difficulty.

In public policy, the most common definition seems to define full employment as a situation where the unemployment rate is roughly 3 per cent.

The concept of full employment is multifaceted. There is the economic aspect, of course, but also the social aspect and that is the one that speaks to me most in this context. Full employment is a driver of social mobility and all the advantages that entails. Senator Bellemare’s statements in this chamber provide us with clarification on the matter. In October 2016, with the conviction she is known for, she said:

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. . . full employment is about individual economic independence, freedom and opportunity. It’s about economic security. It’s about professional and social mobility, and it’s about social inclusion. It is also about adaptation, flexibility and security.

In a free and peaceful world, individuals need to be gainfully employed so that they can participate in the creation of wealth . . . .

Full employment is above all a long-term objective that a society or government gives itself to support the economic, social, and cultural development of its people. It is a matter of economic prosperity and social justice. It is a call for dignified living conditions so that everyone, women, young people, immigrants, minorities, and all those who are far too often left out of our public policies, can earn a decent living.

My reflections on full employment were therefore intended to help better understand the challenges faced by certain categories of workers and how they relate to the rapidly changing labour market.

If the needs of the market are rapidly evolving, the demands on workers and the tools at their disposal are also changing at an increasingly rapid pace. The accelerating process of market transformation due in large part to new technologies, the need for creative workers, the mobility of the work force and some of the important social changes that occurred in the last decades, such as demographic decline in rural communities, the aging population and the appetite for more flexibility at work, have created a whole new category of workers — the autonomous worker.

Since autonomous work is becoming more and more ingrained in our economy, it is important that we address the current issues affecting this category of workers.

Autonomous work seems like a logical starting point for reflecting on the issue of full employment in the 21st century, which raises the following question: how can the macro-economic environment support and create favourable conditions for autonomous workers?

To answer this question, we must first better understand who these self-employed workers are. However, today there has not been an exhaustive study carried out on the subject in Canada, despite the fact that self-employed workers represent 16 per cent of the labour force in the country and almost 20 per cent of the labour force in rural areas.

People are self-employed in every sector of the economy, from agriculture to artificial intelligence, from arts and culture to the community sector and more.

Beyond being in all sectors of the economy, self-employed workers are also from every age category and walk of life.

I am using the term “self-employed worker” to mean a person who works for themselves. There is one challenge faced by all self-employed workers, whether they are contractors, owners of small or medium-sized businesses, artists, graphic designers, journalists, consultants, or other types of professionals. That challenge is the huge financial risk they take when they embrace autonomous status.

According to a study conducted by LaRochelle-Côté and Uppal on behalf of Statistics Canada, the self-employed can be divided into two main types: the incorporated self-employed, and the unincorporated self-employed. The incorporated self-employed tend to have paid employees and own small or medium-sized businesses. They have an average annual income of about $57,800 and a median annual income of $39,900, while paid employees earn an average of $52,400 a year, with a median salary of $43,100. These figures show that the incorporated self-employed are fairly well off. Their average net worth is about 2.7 times that of paid employees, and they are more confident in their financial preparations for retirement than paid employees are.

The reality is very different for unincorporated self-employed people who work for their own account, such as freelance workers, cultural workers and many others. Their average annual income is $38,900, with a median salary of $21,400. That means that half of the unincorporated self-employed are making less than $21,400 a year. Artists who are included in this category have an average salary of around $22,700 a year.

To put these figures in perspective, the low-income cut-off, commonly called the “poverty line,” in Canada is roughly $23,647. This means that over half of all unincorporated self-employed workers, which includes artists, are living below the poverty line in Canada.

Given that we need skilled, creative and innovative workers now more than ever, how is it, honourable senators, that one of the most creative categories of Canada’s workforce is made up of workers who are the least recognized, the lowest paid and the least protected? This raises some serious questions about the future of our economy and our capacity to fulfill the ambitions of the full employment project, when we are already failing to provide a large proportion of our workers with a decent income.

It must be said that the socio-economic situations and working conditions of artists in Canada are mostly unknown. Artists do what is referred to as “atypical work.” They do not occupy full-time positions for a single employer. Rather, they live in precarious situations linked to the absence of the conditions of their status as workers and to difficult living conditions. Many of them do not have social protections, and the nature of their atypical work is synonymous with important economic and social risk.

For instance, the economic risks they take include the following: fluctuating incomes, that is, alternating periods of too much work, so a surplus of income, and periods of work shortages; under-employment, so possibly not enough contracts; business risk, that is, the risk of working on developing a piece of work, product, or service without knowing whether it will sell or at what price; the risk of obsolescence of knowledge, that is, possibly seeing one’s employability diminish if skills or knowledge are not kept up to date.

In addition to these economic risks, there are also a number of social risks, such as possible loss of income because of a physical or mental incapacity to take on the usual workload as a result of sickness or partial or full disability; a possible loss of income related to pregnancy, child care, or caring for other dependents, or because of a workplace accident or professional illness; or finally, possible loss of revenue related to a diminished work capacity or professional income as a result of aging, and the need to face the transition from working career to retirement.

In light of these challenges, it is no surprise that the General Conference of UNESCO made this significant recommendation regarding the status of the artist in 1980, in Belgrade:

Endeavour to take the necessary steps to see that artists enjoy the same rights as are conferred on a comparable group of the active population by national and international legislation in respect of employment and living and working conditions, and see that self-employed artists enjoy, within reasonable limits, protection as regards income and social security.

As proposed in the Report on the Forum on the Professional Status of Artists in New Brunswick, organized by the Association acadienne des artistes professionnels du Nouveau-Brunswick, it is necessary to introduce legal measures and government measures, which include the reduction of economic risks and social risks for artists, most of whom are independent workers and are not covered by the majority of existing social programs.

The objective of full employment is for all Canadians to have access to decent, meaningful employment. This must start today with greater consideration of the status of self-employed workers, and particularly the status of unincorporated self-employed workers, which include many artists and cultural workers. These questions should also lead to reflection on other types of social economy measures, such as guaranteed basic income, which would also provide all Canadians with a life of dignity. This concept could be the subject of another inquiry.

Honourable colleagues, I am appealing to your imagination and to the depth of your knowledge, so that we can work together to address this issue. Canada has a category of workers who are real engines of innovation and creativity and who are in precarious financial situations. Would it not be relevant and timely to conduct a study on this important topic?

In conclusion, today I am urging you create more opportunities to reflect and do more on this topic in the coming years, since the precarious situations I discussed in my speech affect each of our regions, each of our communities and each of our professional groups. Thank you.