Has Canada Become a "Post-Industrial" Society?

Has Canada Become a "Post-Industrial" Society?

Has Canada become a "post-industrial" society? In order to answer that question, one must first define, if possible, what a post-industrial society exactly comprises. There are numerous definitions of the term, the most simplistic approach reasons that since the industrial era saw the majority of workers employed in the industrial sector, society must have moved beyond the industrial era once a minority of workers were employed in that sector - the era after industrialism; post-industrialism. However, there are many much more detailed and helpful definitions of the term. 

For instance, in 1973 Bell argued that "postindustrial societies would engage most workers in the production and dissemination of knowledge, rather than in goods production as in industrial capitalism" (Krahn & Lowe, 1998, p. 24). In 1982 Naisbitt built on Bell’s analysis, concluding that "’the new source of power is not money in the hands of a few but information in the hands of the many’" (Krahn & Lowe, 1998, p. 25). Both of these authors saw post-industrial society as embodying the diminution of class and income based inequalities and the rise of greater democratic freedoms. Others hold more critical perspectives such as Reich, who argued in 1991 that "symbolic analysts (engineers, scientists, consultants, and so on) whose skills are in great demand have become wealthier, while other American workers have become poorer" (Krahn & Lowe, 1998, p. 25). It would seem that Reich supports the "disappearing middle" thesis.

Some authors take a more balanced view of contemporary society. For instance, Godard (1994, p. 519) defines the post-industrial society as: "An extension of the ’industrialism thesis’ that argues that we are moving into a ’post-industrial’ era, where traditional blue collar/industrial work (as we know it) will virtually disappear and large, bureaucratic organizations will give way to smaller, more participative...