Dignified Work in a Digital Age
Avi Lewis for NDP Leader

Among the crises we face today, few are as urgent as the loss of fair and secure work. Our campaign's five-point plan offers real solutions to the problems facing workers in Canada.

Among the crises we face today, few are as urgent as the loss of fair and secure work. We have seen the slow erosion of workers' rights over decades, and we've now reached the point where working full-time doesn't make you a living - and that's if you're lucky enough to have a job.

Full-time jobs with benefits and pensions are being replaced by temporary, contract, or part-time work. Thanks to legal loopholes, gig workers and migrant workers are being left without basic protections. Rapid technological change, especially generative AI, is reshaping industries faster than labour laws are adapting, leaving workers without the rights, training, or bargaining power they need. And our broken employment insurance system doesn't kick in fast enough, pay you enough or last long enough.

Our campaign's five-point plan for Dignified Work in a Digital Age offers real solutions to both the old and new problems facing workers—this is a roadmap to give workers more power, security and control over their lives:

1. Workplace Democracy & the Right to Strike
2. Our Humans-First AI Policy
3. Defend Workers' Rights
4. Employment Insurance that Works
5. Justice for Migrant Workers, Immigrants and Refugees

Our plan is about standing up to the bosses, and making sure that every worker, no matter their industry or immigration status, is treated with the respect and dignity they deserve.

Workplace Democracy & the Right to Strike

Extending democracy into the workplace means making it easier for workers to join unions, giving them a voice and protection on the job, and defending the right to strike that the current federal government has trampled on repeatedly in recent years.

It also means expanding worker ownership in Canada. We know this model works. The Mondragón Corporation is a Spanish federation of 90+ worker co-ops, employing over 80,000 people in manufacturing, finance, and retail in the Basque Country, and proving global competitiveness under worker ownership.

This is especially important given how workers are being left at the mercy of big corporations. At the CAMI Plant in Ingersoll in December 2025, General Motors stopped production of electric cargo vans and laid off 1,100 workers. And just before Christmas this year, Algoma Steel in Sault Ste Marie announced 1,000 layoffs, after receiving hundreds of millions in corporate welfare.

The federal government acts like they're powerless in the face of these layoffs and shutdowns, but they're not. We cannot allow workers, their families and entire communities to be thrown on to the scrap heap by CEOs who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Here's how an Avi-led NDP would democratize the workplace and save plants from closing:

• Create a National Worker Ownership Fund to help employees buy out businesses when owners retire, sell, or relocate.
• Pass Right of First Refusal legislation giving workers the first chance to purchase their workplace when the boss walks away.
• Provide low-interest financing and technical support for worker co-ops, especially in manufacturing, tech, and services.

To further strengthen workplace democracy, we will make it easier for workers to form unions and defend the right to strike. Here's how:

• Pass Leah Gazan's bill to remove section 107 of the Canada Labour Code which violates our constitutional right to strike and interferes with the bargaining process.
• Expand Sectoral Bargaining. Sectoral bargaining can make joining a union easier for precarious workers, raise workplace standards, and increase collective power.
• Reintroduce single-step union certification. If a simple majority of workers in a workplace sign a union card, that will be enough to certify a union, as is the case in Manitoba.
• No federal support without decent labour standards. Federal support for major projects will be conditional on enforcing decent labour standards, including union membership, mandated safety programs, and apprenticeship training.

Our Humans-First AI Policy

Our campaign's policy and governing focus is about creating good jobs and improving the health and wellbeing of people across Canada.

To the extent that small-scale use of machine learning tools can help advance those goals – by helping health researchers analyze their own data, or solar technicians track the sun throughout the day – we will support that work.

The problem: "Artificial Intelligence" is a blanket term used to erase the distinction between publicly useful, small-scale uses of machine learning (i.e. cancer research) and multi-billion dollar corporate products built on Generative AI like Large Language Models (LLMs), that are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our private lives, schools, and government.

Our position on corporate Generative AI products is that:

• They have been built through the theft of private data, and intellectual and creative property (including that of millions of Canadians);
• The industry's unchecked spending has created a dangerous stock market bubble, driving an estimated 80 percent of U.S. stock gains last year and threatening the economic security of Canadians and Canadian institutions invested in them;
• Corporate AI's success is predicated on causing mass unemployment in Canada and around the world – to keep the bubble from bursting, AI products need to deliver higher "productivity", otherwise known as rapidly displacing millions of paid jobs.
• The rapid and unchecked build-out of industrial-scale corporate AI infrastructure like data centers is a threat to our communities' air quality and access to potable water; the massive energy use of these data centers is being met by increasing fossil fuel production, driving carbon pollution and threatening the transition to clean energy.

Furthermore, the Liberal government is in a massive conflict of interest regarding AI because of Prime Minister Mark Carney's investments and stock options in the industry.

The PM holds long-term stock options that cannot be sold in his former company Brookfield Corporation and Brookfield Asset Management, which recently launched a US$100-billion AI infrastructure program. In this way, Liberal government's policies to boost corporate AI in Canada will financially benefit the PM through his long-term entanglements with Brookfield – an egregious conflict of interest that needs to end.

An Avi-led NDP would:

• Provide a public-service "human guarantee". If you need to get a human on the phone in accessing federal services in Canada, you will be able to. We believe in public service excellence, and that means having dignified, professional and human access to the services you fund and have a right to use.
• No AI Austerity. Oppose any attempts to replace public servants with chatbots. Reverse Carney's 40,000 public service jobs cuts.
• Pause the expansion of AI data centers in Canada. Americans are in open revolt against the unchecked expansion of AI data centers that are polluting their air, driving up their local energy costs, and threatening their access to clean drinking water. We can't let that happen in Canada. Our first priorities are producing energy for human health and wellbeing (e.g. heating and cooling) and protecting our limited clean water for human consumption, agriculture and fisheries. A pause on data centres is a much-needed chance for our systems of government and regulation to catch up to this transformative technology which has been unleashed without any democratic debate whatsoever. In this spirit, we enthusiastically support the "people's consultation" civil society initiative for a national AI strategy that's truly in the public interest.
• Avoid the "garbage in, garbage out" problem. Ensure that public-sector decision-making in Canada continues to be driven by world-class research data, not vast datasets hoovered up without consent by AI.
• No generative AI in government publications. Federal government writing, photography, graphic design will be done by and for humans.
• End AI conflicts of interest in the public sector. We will ensure government officials aren't invested in the industries they regulate, including corporate AI. Canadians expect their government to be free of financial conflicts of interest: not owning stocks in the industries you oversee just makes sense.
• Regulate AI tools. There must be regular reminders/disclaimers from chatbots and other AI tools that they are bots, like tobacco warning labels.

Defend Workers' Rights

Canadian artists, journalists, musicians, writers, and filmmakers are being exploited by trillion-dollar tech corporations that profit from their creative work while paying little or nothing for it. Meanwhile Canadian gig workers deliver food and drive people around while facing precarious working conditions, low pay, and no protections.

Avi's vision is a digital economy where labour is respected, creators are protected, and our collective work builds a secure, sustainable future.

An Avi-led NDP would:

• Support Gig and Tech Workers. Guarantee labour protections, collective bargaining rights, and fair wages for creators, platform workers, and digital labourers. This includes protections for freelance contracts, platform-based gig work, and remote digital labor. We'll fight to introduce enforceable minimum standards for pay, benefits, and workplace safety in online and app-based work, and end the misclassification of gig workers as "independent contractors" instead of employees.
• Modernize Copyright for Workers' Rights. Build a 21st-Century Copyright Charter that guarantees fair compensation, enforces author rights, and modernizes licensing for digital platforms in Canada. Fight for creators to retain control over derivative works, receive ongoing royalties for AI training and digital distribution they agree to, and have legal support to defend their rights.
• Rein in Digital Surveillance and bring in Right to Repair. Employers are increasingly using AI-driven surveillance technology to monitor employees in nearly all sectors, from banking to farming to white collar jobs. This surveillance can impact wages, job security, working conditions, and employment equity. Meanwhile, consumer electronics create waste and cost through planned obsolescence while farmers can't even fix a tractor without paying high fees to distant corporations to flip a switch and turn off a digital lock. Legislation needs to catch up with the development of technology by establishing laws outlining workers' rights, governing the data that can be collected by employers, and how this data can be used. And a Right to Repair law could unleash a whole new industry in homegrown 3D parts printing and repair centres, while saving consumers money and keeping e-waste out of landfills.
• AI Transparency and Consent. Require Canadian companies to publicly disclose AI training datasets and obtain explicit, opt-in permission from all creators whose work is used. Non-consent must prohibit usage, and independent audits will verify compliance, with penalties for violations. Employers will not be allowed to claim that AI systems have expertise held by licensed professionals.

This vision also extends to the federal public servants that deliver the programs and services Canadians rely on across the country. They do this essential work every day while being demonized by the Conservatives on the one hand, and staring down 40,000 job cuts at the hands of the Carney Liberals on the other. We will respect their rights at work by:

• Supporting telework arrangements to give workers and their families flexibility, and to help recruit and retain top-tier civil service candidates; and,
• Fully implementing pay equity, including by investing in the Office of the Pay Equity Commissioner to enforce compliance and resolve disputes.

Employment Insurance that Works

A robust Employment Insurance program isn't just about wage replacement. EI provides a social safety net and gives workers the power to exercise their rights. If a worker faces exploitation, unsafe working conditions, or layoffs, they shouldn't worry about having their basic needs met.

Currently, only one in three unemployed people can access the Employment Insurance they pay into. Workers are deemed ineligible for reasons such as immigration status, or not meeting the minimum number of hours worked. This is particularly challenging for part-time, gig workers, or those who are self-employed.

That's why it's vital for us to expand eligibility so EI is accessible and universal. Any worker can become unemployed, notwithstanding the local unemployment rate. A uniform entrance threshold of 360 hours to access EI for all workers, regardless of location, would help solve this inequity.

In addition, an Avi-led NDP will push for the following changes to EI:

• Improve adequacy of EI benefits for all workers. We are in a cost-of-living crisis, and EI needs to provide enough to keep workers out of poverty. Under Avi's leadership, we'd see an increase in EI benefits to 75% of previous earnings with a minimum benefit of $600 per week. Our reforms would also ensure migrant workers contributing EI premiums have full access to EI.
• Eliminate the 50-week limit on combined parental special benefits and regular benefits and extend the reference and benefit period to 104 weeks so that new parents are not denied regular EI benefits if they get laid off. The current 50-week limit means workers facing a layoff before or after a parental leave (which affects women in particular), may be denied EI benefits.
• Restore the EI Board of Appeals. Avi's NDP would ensure the Liberal government keeps its promise to re-establish this board, that includes worker representatives, so that EI appeals are accessible to workers.

Justice for Migrant Workers, Immigrants and Refugees

Migrants staff our hospitals, harvest our food, and care for our children and elderly. Without them, essential services would collapse. Yet instead of giving these workers the rights and stability our parents and grandparents had when they first came here with permanent residency or citizenship on arrival, the Liberals and Conservatives changed the system, bringing in more people on temporary visas with fewer rights instead.

Then after COVID, as housing became even more unaffordable and inequality grew, both parties turned to blaming immigrants and migrants instead of pointing to the corporations hoarding wealth. The Liberals changed immigration rules overnight, breaking promises to people who had planned their lives and invested tens of thousands of dollars to make Canada home. As a result, thousands are forced to leave every day. Employers are losing workers. Communities are losing neighbours. Canadian citizens wait years to reunite with their spouses and parents.

But it doesn't have to be this way. We can give people the stability they need. We can end the exploitation that temporary immigration breeds. We can build a country with one set of rights for everyone.

Many of us are struggling with unaffordable housing, impossible grocery prices, and services that don't meet our needs. The problem isn't too many immigrants. The problem is a system designed for corporate profits instead of building a country that works for all of us.

This is our plan:

• Stop breaking promises. We will stop changing rules on people in the middle of the game that punish them and let people renew and access permits according to the rules under which they arrived; Reverse the Carney government's cuts and hire 3,000 immigration public servants to clear the over one million backlogged applications and reunite families now, not in decades.
• End exploitation by eliminating work permit restrictions that give employers extreme power over workers and control over their whole lives. No more permits tied to a single employer or limits based on sector, hours, occupation, or category; Build a single-tier immigration system with permanent resident status for all and equal rights from day one; Create and enforce real housing standards for migrant workers—clean water, locks on doors, cooling during heatwaves. No more cramped, unsafe, and overpriced housing; Sign the UN and ILO conventions protecting migrant workers' rights and make Canada follow international law on worker protections.
• Protect our Shared Humanity by ending the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement because the US is not safe for refugees; Establish a National Plan for Asylum with Dignity—a network of reception centers with real funding for shelter and housing so refugees aren't left sleeping on our streets; Double the number of government-assisted refugees to meet Canada's humanitarian commitments instead of abandoning people fleeing war and violence.