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Some Canadians may have a case for requesting religious exemptions from artificial intelligence usage in the workplace, following formal Catholic Church warnings from Pope Leo XIV about the technology.
But experts caution that requesting religious exemptions is not simple, and the question of where reasonable accommodation lies with an emerging and largely unregulated technology is still murky.
The Pope’s sweeping manifesto calls for the robust regulation of artificial intelligence, warning in his 42,300-word encyclical letter that “technology is not simply a tool.”
“When it becomes the standard by which everything is judged, it begins to dictate what matters and what can be discarded, reducing creation to an object of exploitation and human beings to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency,” the Pope said.
“What is needed is a more active political involvement that is capable of slowing things down when everything is accelerating,” Pope Leo said in the text, entitled Magnifica Humanitas, or Magnificent Humanity.
He also states there is a “subtler danger” for AI usage, calling for “robust legal frameworks, independent oversight, informed users and a political system that does not abdicate its responsibility.”
Leo also called upon AI developers to work for the common good rather than profit.
“Just as the creator of an artistic or literary work must consider the values it conveys, so developers are called to embed values in their projects with due seriousness: with transparency, responsibility toward affected communities and careful attention to ensuring that what is being cultivated is a genuine good.”
Prime Minister Mark Carney — who is a practising Catholic — is poised to reveal his government’s long-awaited AI strategy this week following repeated delays.
He discussed the topic of artificial intelligence with Pope Leo on Friday, with Carney “welcoming the Pope’s leadership in this field.”
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“They discussed the imperative that AI must serve humanity, beginning with the protection of the individual. Prime Minister Carney expressed Canada’s desire to lead internationally on responsible AI and tools to benefit the global community,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a readout of the call.
The federal government is expected to announce its long-awaited national AI strategy this week.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, Canada’s national assembly of the bishops of the Catholic Church, also described the Pope’s letter by saying it “places the dignity of the human person at the centre as the criteria for guiding technical progress.”
“The Church’s social teaching accompanies these transformations, pointing to the common good, solidarity and subsidiarity as the fundamental benchmarks for understanding and interpreting the transformation currently underway,” according to the assembly’s media release.
Formal religious writings on the subject might leave some Canadians wondering whether they can seek a religious exemption from using artificial intelligence in their jobs.
The Canadian Human Rights Act aims to “extent the laws in Canada that proscribe discrimination,” while the Ontario Human Rights Code is a statute that states that “every person has a right to equal treatment with respect to the occupancy of accommodation, without discrimination because of race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, citizenship, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, age, marital status, family status, disability or the receipt of public assistance.”
Christopher Achkar, a managing partner at Achkar Law, states that those laws could potentially be cited by Canadian employees in a request for religious accommodation.
“Employees can cite those religious reasons as reasons to be accommodated and not have to use AI,” he said.
“Because these two pieces of legislation protect against discrimination on the basis of those grounds, employers have to accommodate those employees when they cite that they are part of those groups that subscribe to those beliefs.
“If there are religious groups, for example, and in this case not using AI for religious reasons, then the code protects them from being terminated, discriminated against or treated differently or adversely because of these reasons, so employers have to accommodate.”
However, Puneet Tiwari, an employment lawyer and partner of Leavitt LLP, said this applies to an employer unless there is “undue hardship.”
This refers to the point at which an employer is no longer legally required to accommodate an employee.
In Canadian employment law, employers must accommodate employees to this point — not to the point of inconvenience, preference or minor disruption.
“There’s no blanket answer. It has to be taken in on a case-by-case basis,” Tiwari said.
Aaron Zaltzman, an associate with Whitten & Lublin Employment Lawyers, said that “if it is a religious belief, then the employee would be entitled to reasonable accommodation.”
“I actually think the hardest hurdle there would be proving that it’s a religious belief,” he said.
“AI is obviously not something that was contemplated when the Torah or the Bible or most current religious texts for mainstream religions were written. So, the question of whether objections to AI as a religious belief is very up to interpretation.”
He also added that in the future, there could be adjustments to laws already in place to meet these needs.
“It is certainly an evolving field, and it has to have effects on the existing laws in place, so I definitely see that coming into force within different acts around.”
Tiwari said accommodation “is a two-way street.”
“So the employer and the employee can engage in a dialogue to see, ‘Hey, are there any solutions?’”
New data from the released Tuesday found two-thirds of Canadians (68 per cent) say it is government’s place to heavily regulate AI and tech companies, even if doing so slows development.
However, three-quarters (74 per cent) doubt any government is truly equipped to keep pace with the technology.
In addition, the poll found that just one in six (16 per cent) of Canadians would leave it to tech companies to self-regulate.
— with files from Reuters
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