Canada’s new artificial intelligence strategy, AI for All, presents an ambitious vision for the country’s future. The federal government argues that artificial intelligence can increase productivity, strengthen competitiveness and create opportunities across the economy.
But what happens when AI decides who has access to those opportunities in the first place?
As immigration researchers at Toronto Metropolitan University’s Bridging Divides initiative, we study how AI is reshaping immigrants’ access to employment. We see a growing intersection between Canada’s immigration issues and AI issues. Both are essential to Canada’s economic future. However, these topics are rarely discussed together.
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into employment, the question is no longer just who Canada will admit, but how opportunities will be distributed once immigrants arrive.
The technologies that shape hiring today may play an increasingly important role in determining whether Canada’s skilled immigrants can fully contribute to tomorrow’s economy.
Canada’s dependence on immigration
Across the OECD, the share of immigrants in the workforce is increasing. They are increasingly central to economic growth, demographic sustainability and innovation.
Immigrants accounted for four-fifths of Canada’s labor force growth from 2016 to 2021, highlighting Canada’s continued dependence on immigrants to maintain its workforce.
At the same time, Canada is rapidly embracing artificial intelligence. The use of AI is rapidly expanding across the workplace, including recruiting, hiring, and workforce management. Recent evidence from Statistics Canada suggests that the adoption of AI in Canadian businesses has doubled in the past year.
These developments are often discussed separately. It shouldn’t be that way. The future success of one may increasingly depend on the other.
Immigrants are underemployed
Canada’s immigration system is widely recognized as one of the most developed in the world for selecting skilled immigrants. However, labor market integration remains one of the most persistent challenges facing immigrants.
Despite their high levels of education and professional experience, immigrants continue to face higher rates of underemployment and overqualification than Canadian-born workers. Statistics Canada reports that nearly one-third of recent immigrants with post-secondary education are more than qualified for a job, compared to less than one in five Canadian-born workers.
Canadian Press/Daryl Dyke
Many continue to face barriers related to recognition of foreign qualifications, limited professional networks, and demands for so-called “Canadian experience.” Research has long demonstrated how internationally acquired skills and experience are often undervalued in the Canadian labor market.
These challenges are not new. What is new is the infrastructure on which they increasingly operate.
Algorithms as gatekeepers
Historically, access to employment has been primarily mediated by human institutions and judgments, from credentialing agencies and recruiters to recruiters and professional networks, which determine whose skills are recognized and who are ignored. Many decisions are now made early within digital systems that evaluate, rank, and filter applicants before human recruiters review them.
Applicant tracking systems, automated screening tools, predictive analytics, and AI-enabled recruiting platforms are transforming recruitment across Canada and other OECD countries.
A growing body of research has raised concerns about how these systems can reproduce existing inequalities through the data and assumptions they rely on. A Cornell University study found that many claims about fairness in algorithmic hiring remain difficult to test because hiring systems often inherit patterns embedded in past hiring data.
Similarly, Safiyah Noble, a professor of gender studies and African American studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, shows in her book how seemingly neutral digital systems can reproduce broader social inequalities. Algorithms of oppression: How search engines reinforce racism.
The OECD Employment Outlook warned in 2023 that AI systems used in employment could raise serious concerns regarding transparency, accountability, accountability and discrimination, particularly for groups already disadvantaged in the labor market.
AI is moving beyond simply providing advice to exercising authority in decisions that affect people’s lives and livelihoods. Recruitment is one of those decisions.
“Black box” screening system
Preliminary findings from a recent Bridging the Divide study, based on interviews with immigrants, employers and recruitment professionals across Canada, suggest that many immigrants experience digital employment systems as a “black box” that shapes outcomes but is largely invisible to those affected.
(Getty/Unsplash+)
One participant stated that she repeatedly applied for positions that matched her qualifications.
“From the description itself, you felt you were a suitable candidate, but for some reason, such as your resume not matching the criteria, your resume was not accepted.”
The problem is not just rejection. It’s uncertainty. Applicants often do not know whether they were rejected because of qualifications, competition, employer preference, or automated review systems.
Another participant explained:
“I applied to seven jobs and didn’t get any responses. That’s when I went to ChatGPT to find out why I wasn’t getting any responses.”
Many participants explained that they are learning how to adapt their applications to algorithms rather than recruiters. In fact, job seekers are increasingly being asked not only to prove their competency but also to make themselves machine-readable.
Fairness in Canada’s AI future
This does not mean that AI is inherently discriminatory, nor does it mean that employers should abandon digital recruitment technologies. When used responsibly, these tools can increase efficiency and help employers identify qualified candidates.
But Canada has spent decades refining its methods for selecting skilled immigrants. Less attention has been given to technology, which increasingly shapes whether those skills are recognized upon arrival.
As AI becomes integrated into recruitment, we need to think about how opportunities are managed once immigrants enter the labor market. If immigration policy selects skilled immigrants, AI will increasingly decide whether to consider them as skilled workers.
Canada’s future depends on both immigration and artificial intelligence. Ensuring that these two ambitions strengthen rather than undermine each other could become one of the defining policy challenges of the AI era.
