Sep 24, 2026
Shopify is one of Canada’s most prominent technology companies and a major force in the global digital economy. The darling of Canadian entrepreneurial spirit, the firm shapes how businesses across the globe adapt to e-commerce. Now, Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke is pushing that transformation inside the company — effectively declaring a hiring freeze unless current employees can demonstrate why they “cannot get what they want done using AI.”
In a publicly released memo, Lütke explained that Shopify staff would need to prove that artificial intelligence (AI) couldn’t complete a job before a human would get hired.
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Seventeen months after this announcement, the results are hard to ignore: The Ottawa-based e-commerce platform ended 2025 with roughly 7,600 employees, down from roughly 8,100 a year earlier. This 6% reduction in staff came at the same time as the firm’s revenue grew roughly 30% — to US$11.6 billion.
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And Lütke doesn’t plan to stop. In the latest SEC annual filing, Shopify said it intends to expand “without significant additional hiring in the near term.”
For Canadians, this isn’t about one tech company — it’s about the threat AI imposes on future employment growth.
Which Canadian jobs are most exposed to AI?
Statistics Canada estimates that 31% of employees aged 18 to 64 work in jobs that may be highly exposed to AI, based on 2021 census data.
“The majority of workers in Canada are in jobs that may be highly exposed to job transformation related to artificial intelligence, but about half of them could benefit from it,” wrote Tahsin Mehdi and Marc Frenette, the authors of a Statistics Canada report on the exposure of AI on Canadian jobs.
According to their analysis, 31% of employees aged 18 to 64 work in jobs that may be more susceptible to AI-driven displacement and less likely to benefit from AI; another 29% were in jobs that may be highly exposed to AI but with opportunities to benefit, while the remaining 40% of Canadian workers were in jobs that probably aren’t highly exposed to AI.
For the at-risk group, the jobs exposed cut across all pay grades — ranging from retail salespeople, data entry clerks and office support workers to software engineers, economists, accountants and financial auditors. According to the report, jobs more likely to be highly exposed generally require higher education — so a post-secondary degree isn’t automatic protection and doesn’t translate into job security.
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Is AI already costing Canadians their jobs?
The answer isn’t quite clear. The Statistics Canada report found no clear evidence of a persistent decline in high-exposure, low-complementarity jobs between November 2022 and December 2025 — and employment in these professions grew at rates similar to other jobs.
But Shopify’s current results highlight a potential trend that isn’t, yet, showing up in the data. The key is that the risk of AI on employment may not show up in declining job numbers. Instead, a company can hold headcount flat — negating the need for lay offs. But posting fewer openings impacts new graduates, squeezes current job growth and slows professional transitions.
As such, the results of AI impact may be showing up in younger demographics. In August 2026, Canada’s unemployment rate was 6.4%; at the same time youth aged 15 to 24 faced an unemployment rate of 12.9%, according to Statistics Canada Labour Force Survey. While the data doesn’t pin that gap on AI, it shows how tough entry-level hiring already is in this transitioning economy.
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Meanwhile, AI is already part of many workdays. Just over 1 in 3 Canadian workers (35.9%) used generative AI tools in their main job in the 12 months leading up to March 2026, according to the Statistics Canada: The Weekly Review, published July 31, 2026. Report authors Mehdi and Frenette found that in high-exposure, low-complementarity occupations, the share was 45.9%.
What would losing your job cost you?
Employment Insurance (EI), the federal program that replaces part of your income if you lose your job through no fault of your own, pays most people 55% of their average insurable weekly earnings — up to $729 a week in 2026. That cap is based on maximum insurable earnings of $68,900.
In this hypothetical example, an office worker earning $90,000 a year would hit that cap. At $729 a week, EI works out to about $3,160 a month before tax — well under half the roughly $7,500 a month this worker earned on the job. That’s a monthly shortfall of more than $4,300 — a shortfall that savings or significant cost-cutting would need to cover.
How can you make yourself harder to replace?
So, how can Canadian employees get ahead of the AI-disruptor? Learn how employers will use these generative models — and learn how you can use them, as well.
For instance, in the same memo, Lütke declared that Shopify would factor AI use into performance reviews. If other employers follow, workers who can show what they’ve accomplished using AI — not just that they’ve tried it — may be better positioned at review time and during restructuring.
And remember, upskilling doesn’t have to come entirely out of pocket. The Canada training credit (CTC), a refundable federal tax credit, lets eligible workers build up $250 a year toward a lifetime limit of $5,000, which can cover up to half of eligible tuition and fees. Then claim the expense on line 45350 of your income tax and benefit return.
What to do now
The practical question isn’t whether AI could touch your job; it’s whether the parts that remain untouched by AI are the parts you’re best at. If most of your week is drafting, sorting or summarizing, the next year may be the time to shift toward work that relies on judgment, relationships or accountability — and to build a cash cushion while you do. To help, here are five tasks to help AI-proof your employment:
- List the tasks you do each week and flag the ones AI could handle — then build skills around the rest.
- Keep a record of results you’ve produced with AI tools so you can point to them at review time.
- Size your emergency fund to the gap between your take-home pay and EI’s $729 weekly maximum.
- Check your Canada training credit limit in your CRA My Account before paying for a course.
- Update your résumé if your employer freezes hiring or starts tying budgets to AI use.
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Romana King, Senior Editor at Money.ca, also writes for various North American publications and the RKHomeowner blog. Her book, House Poor No More, is an Amazon bestseller and five-time award winner, including the 2022 New York CPA Society's Excellence in Financial Journalism (EFJ) Book Award.
