AI and employment: threat or opportunity for Quebec workers?

Contrary to what one might think, the artificial intelligence revolution is not a promise for tomorrow. It is happening now, in the offices of Montreal, Quebec City, Laval and Gatineau. Accountants using AI tools to automate bank reconciliation. Lawyers relying on LLM assistants to analyze contracts in seconds. Journalists generating first drafts in English and French simultaneously.

According to a study by the Institut du Québec published in 2025, 62% of Quebec companies with more than 50 employees had already integrated at least one generative AI tool into their operational processes. That figure was 23% two years earlier. The acceleration is dizzying.

The short answer: those whose tasks are repetitive, well-defined and documented. A call center agent who always answers the same questions according to a predefined script? AI has been doing that work since 2023. A junior analyst who spends their days compiling Excel reports from structured data? GPT-4 replaces them in 20 minutes.

The most exposed sectors in Quebec include data entry (approximately 45,000 positions), certain aspects of administrative and clerical work (120,000 positions partially affected), and a portion of basic financial services.

But beware of oversimplified analysis. The history of the industrial revolution reminds us that automation destroys tasks while creating new jobs we had not imagined. The question is not "will my job disappear?" but "how will my job transform?"

For every job threatened by AI, new roles appear. The Quebec Tech Index 2025 lists more than 12,000 job offers directly related to AI published in the province last year, a 340% increase in three years.

Among the most in-demand roles: prompt engineers, AI ethics and algorithmic governance specialists, data curators (guardians of training data quality), and AI product managers capable of defining products around language model capabilities.

More surprisingly, so-called "human" professions are also experiencing renewed interest. Therapists, specialized educators, social workers, craftspeople — professions where empathy, embodied creativity and human contact are irreplaceable — see their perceived value increase as automation extends to cognitive tasks.

The individual response to the AI transition rests on three pillars. First, tool mastery: knowing how to use ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot or their specialized equivalents is no longer optional. It is the new digital literacy.

Second, developing cross-cutting skills that AI cannot easily replicate: critical thinking, complex communication, emotional intelligence, strategic creativity. These capabilities become lasting competitive advantages.

Third, staying in motion. The half-life of technical skills has dropped from 5 years to less than 2 years in some digital domains. Continuous learning is no longer a luxury — it is a professional survival obligation.

The AI transition cannot rest solely on individual workers. Companies have a responsibility: investing in the reskilling of their teams rather than simply laying off and rehiring. Organizations that develop a culture of continuous learning will emerge strengthened from the transition.

On the government side, the Quebec AI Transition Plan (2025-2030) provides 800 million dollars for training, data infrastructure and SME support.

AI in Quebec is neither the end of work nor an economic panacea. It is a profound transformation that, well orchestrated, can strengthen the province's competitiveness while preserving the quality of life of its workers.