the same price, which means a lower quality - adjusted price. consider all the digital technology that now goes into a new car, making each model year more sophisticated than the last. whether through higher wages or lower prices, our purchasing power rises. the third channel is the creation of new types of jobs. before you can put robots on an assembly line, you need people to design, build, program and maintain them. driverless cars will also need designers and maintenance workers, as well as people to create systems to control the traffic. these new jobs tend to be very well - paying, and the workers earning these salaries spend them on everything you might expect : food, cars, clothes, housing, travel. this spending creates a fourth channel of distribution by supporting jobs and growth in other unrelated sectors of the economy, such as construction, renovation, maintenance, manufacturing and tourism. and then there is the fifth channel through which technological benefits are distributed, and it may be the most powerful. as new technologies become widespread, they create opportunities for growth far beyond their original setting. today, digital technologies are spreading rapidly throughout the canadian economy, enabling growth in all kinds of industries. canada is embracing digital disruption from this brief illustration, you can see that the effects of new technology on the economy are quite complex. certainly, they go far beyond the initial disruption experienced by a displaced worker. so, let us look at some of the ways that canadians are embracing digital technologies. one way to get a rough measure of this process is to look at the sector called “ computer system design and related services. ” over the past two years, the number of jobs in this sector has grown by more than 20 per cent — five times faster than total employment for canada as a whole. output from this sector has expanded by more than 7 per cent every year for the past five years. today, it accounts for close to 2 per cent of output in the canadian economy. to put this into context, the computer system design sector is already more important to the economy than the auto and aerospace sectors combined. that is because in many of these 2 / 6 bis central bankers'speeches digital jobs, labour and brain power make up almost all the value of the product — there is very little automation involved. these jobs are showing up throughout canada. earlier this year i was in victoria, where there are as many people working in information technology as there are in government. british columbia, along with ontario and quebec, is also a hub for

create value in diverse industries. matching skills, maximizing benefits now, let us go back to the other side of the coin, and talk about the workers whose jobs become obsolete through technological change. their immediate concern is to find a new job. many will look to some sort of training or education to help them become qualified for another line of work. unfortunately, the skills gap is often portrayed in exaggerated terms — how can a long - term factory worker be trained to write computer code, for example. this only serves to discourage people. recall my earlier description of the process of technological change, and the channels through 3 / 6 bis central bankers'speeches which the benefits are distributed throughout the economy. yes, technological change creates brand - new jobs in the high - tech sector, but the new incomes that are generated there create new jobs across the whole economic spectrum. right now, there are 462, 000 job vacancies in canada. the details might surprise you even more. over the past two years, the number of vacancies in the sector that includes computer system design has grown by about 8, 000. but over the same time frame, construction job vacancies have increased by almost 10, 000, transportation and warehousing vacancies have grown by 14, 000, while manufacturing vacancies are up by more than 14, 000. these numbers suggest that technological advances are driving growth and creating opportunities broadly. they also imply that we need to do a better job of matching people with job openings. i often hear from business leaders about how hard it is for them to find workers with a specific set of skills. yes, canada needs more people who can write code. but we also need people with skill sets that may not be too far removed from the ones that are being displaced. a displaced factory worker has valuable skills that can be used in many different jobs where there are vacancies. much is already being done by governments to make it easier for people to retrain throughout their working life. there are programs that allow displaced workers to receive employment insurance while they are retraining. grants and loans are available for people who want to become an apprentice for a trade. there are tax credits and deductions for both people and employers who start an apprenticeship. no doubt, canada ’ s geography poses a challenge. a worker laid off in alberta needs a lot of confidence to pull up stakes and move to ontario for a new job, especially if their spouse already has a