I have said this many times to anyone that will listen...
The future is automation. One way or another this is happening. People are losing their jobs now, and to be really honest many will not get their jobs back because companies will change to automation. It has nothing to do with the virus, it was going to happen anyway, but the virus is the catalyst. I have studied this a lot, they predict 800 million jobs globally will be replaced by automation. It has already started in China, a few years ago Foxconn replaced 60,000 workers with robots. Imagine that!
Manufacturing will no longer be just in China. It doesn't need to be, because machines are cheap and can work 24/7 with near perfect quality at a consistent level.
Canada has an opportunity to be the first to move and take advantage. DO IT NOW before the US and other countries do it. The US will be slow to react because they have special interest groups that will delay the rollout, but once they start it will grow exponentially. We need to act fast.
We have a dead oil industry in Alberta, and we have millions of unemployed Canadians currently. The time is now to use all this stimulus money to RETRAIN OUR WORKFORCE to fit into automation. Someone needs to build, maintain, program, supervise these robots. This is the future. We can build a massive manufacturing industry that will cost peanuts compared to how much it can generate. And if we can be the first to do it, other countries will come to us for manufacturing.
Many of these jobs are not coming back, and Alberta is dead in the water if they think oil will keep paying off for them. It's done, time to move on. These people will never have jobs again unless we retrain them.