The 2026 national AI strategy, AI for All, lists robotics among the priority sectors where Canada can build and hold a global leadership position, and explicitly calls for the creation of sector-specific Workforce Alliances that can address the AI trust, literacy, and adoption gap. The federal framework calls for bringing together governments, employers, unions, post-secondary institutions, and Indigenous partners to identify skills gaps, coordinate talent pipelines, and align public-private investment with workforce transformation needs across essential economic sectors. The Canadian Robotics Council, the Open Roboethics Institute (ORI) and their extended partner network are already uniquely structured to operationalize this mandate.

This session builds on the groundwork laid at previous CRC Symposia—where the CRC and ORI successfully convened the first-ever national dialogues between trade union representatives, the manufacturing industry, and the robotics industry. Together, participants will co-design the launch of the Canadian Robotics Workforce Alliance to operationalize and scale the national AI strategy's workforce mandates in robotics. Establishing this body as a horizontal Working Group within the CRC will create a pre-mobilized network and first point of contact for ISED, ESDC, and federal partners on matters of workforce safety, ethics, and responsible deployment. Concurrently, it can act as a cross-cutting anchor to CRC priority market verticals—to support responsible adoption across key federal target sectors from manufacturing, logistics, and construction to the health sciences.

Frameworks & Operational Toolkits

• How do we build scalable frameworks for responsible robotics skills development and technology deployment across Canada’s priority market verticals?
• What immediate tools—such as ethical risk toolkits, Responsible ROI frameworks, or data sovereignty frameworks—do Canadian robotics companies, their customers, their workforces and communities, need to navigate rapid AI integration?
   

Governance, Inclusion & Workforce Alliance Structure

• How can a CRC-led Robotics Workforce Alliance be structured to meet federal AI for All mandates?

• Who needs to be at the table and who is usually left out? What should its priorities be?

• How do we bring alternative ways of knowing into the conversation, so that what we're building toward is a future of robotics that Canadians actually recognize as their own?

• Initial Robotics Workforce Alliance: A confirmed roster of founding ecosystem partners (industry, labour, and research) ready to drive the alliance forward.
• Proposed mandate and preliminary list of priority initiatives that leverage and build on prior ecosystem efforts