Finance Committee on April 3rd, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I call this meeting to order. This is meeting number 28 of the Standing Committee on Finance. Our orders of the day, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), are for the study of youth employment in Canada.

We have five witnesses with us here this afternoon. I want to thank all of you for joining us here at the finance committee.

This will be the order of presentation. We have Mr. Christopher Smillie, senior adviser, government relations and public affairs, with the Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO. We have the president of the Canadian Teachers' Federation, Ms. Dianne Woloschuk. We have the national president of the Canadian Union of Public Employees, Mr. Paul Moist. We have, from Restaurants Canada, here under their new brand, the executive vice-president, government affairs, Ms. Joyce Reynolds. From the Royal Bank of Canada, we have the vice-president, RBC learning, Ms. Susan Uchida.

Welcome to the committee.

You all have five minutes for your opening statements.

We will start with Mr. Smillie. We'll proceed down the row, and then we'll have questions from members.

[Christopher Smillie, Senior Advisor, Government Relations and Public Affairs, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO]

Thanks very much.

My apologies in advance, members of the committee and fellow witnesses, I'm dragging a bit from Politics and the Pen last night. I'm a bit nasal due to the red wine consumption.

Thank you for the invitation. The Canadian building trades represent skilled trades workers across Canada in every trade you could imagine, with close to 550,000 members from coast to coast. We received the invitation to talk about youth employment, and it is an issue dear to our hearts.

Youth employment in Canada is a complex issue. I'll try to give you a bit of a tip-of-the-spear view from our organization and some of our collective experiences in construction. I'll share with you some of the things we learned recently as participants on a study tour to Germany and the United Kingdom. I do notice, from your witness list of previous meetings, that some of those delegation members have spoken already, so I'll spare you most of the gory details of the trip.

If I were playing a word association game, the first thing that would come to mind when faced with the phrase youth employment is training. Training, employment, and ultimately success are all inextricably linked. Show me a group of young people with little or no access to the right kind of training, and their employment prospects aren't hard to decipher. Show me a group of young people with access to information about training options and actual training for actual jobs in the economy, and the story is quite different.

Employment and prospects for employment all rest on the education and training available for consumption. The way in which these training opportunities are intertwined with industry is the linchpin. In law, you need an LL.B. to be a lawyer. In the skilled trades, you need a J-O-B.

Here are some quick public policy measures we think would drastically improve youth employment prospects in Canada.

We need to incent companies to hire apprentices. In construction, in our universe, fewer than 20% of companies hire apprentices. The business case is clear for apprentices. Companies can make more money on apprentices than they can on journeypeople. The margins are higher on those employees, and then they can charge their clients more money to have apprentices on site.

In terms of opponents who say that investing in young people is pointless because of poaching or because their company is too small to be able to train, it's all bogus. If the work is good and the people are properly trained, no one is going to leave over a $2-an-hour increase to go to another employer. People stay at jobs because of a company's investment in their development. Research shows that employee engagement and retention increases with investment in the people side of your business, a self-fulfilling problem around poaching.

Following are some of the key learnings from Germany, as part of the delegation.

One of the things that I found most interesting was that small companies join together in a consortia led by the chamber of commerce. These consortia and the chamber of commerce have a role to train young people and a responsibility to train young people and to plan. We think this kind of concerted effort in Canada is needed, by either the Chamber of Commerce in Canada or some other group that could add value to the system by taking the lead, much like is done in Germany—something that's easily implementable into our system in Canada.

The second thing we noticed in Germany is that there are government-funded trainers who ensure that the knowledge from journeypersons—they call them meisters in Germany—to apprentices is transferred properly. In construction, journeypeople aren't necessarily teachers. They're the people who have worked their way up through the ranks. They have the skills and they have the licences, but they're not necessarily good at transferring skills to other people.

I hope you guys didn't hear this yesterday.

Did you know that in Germany 50% of young people go the skilled trades route, and 50% go the academic route? There are off-ramps between the systems for kids as they move through the system—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

You have one minute.

[Christopher Smillie]

If one of the streams isn't working they can move back and forth. In Canada this mix is more like 15:85, so 15% go into skilled trades.

We have about 100,000 apprentices in the building trades system right now in Canada. They're working full time. They're making $30 an hour, and as they move through they get 10% to 15% increases. We can't get companies to take on more of these kinds of people. There are 85,000 construction companies in Canada and this doesn't include two or three-person shops.

For every apprentice who we took on with one of our employers, there were four people who didn't get a spot. Imagine those people reading the newspaper about a skills shortage or about skills mismatches in Canada. So for every one we took in, there were four people we turned away.

We'd like to see a change to the way the education system is managed in Canada. We need outcomes linked with the job market and linked with the economy, not training for training's sake. We need a central government to hold the provinces to account for the funding that they get. I can address some of these thoughts in questions as we move on.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Mr. Smillie.

We'll go to Ms. Woloschuk please.

[Dianne Woloschuk, President, Canadian Teachers' Federation]

Good afternoon.

On behalf of the 17 member organizations of the Canadian Teachers' Federation, who together represent more than 200,000 teachers, I thank you for the opportunity to present this brief.

As a teacher, I have worked for 30 years in Saskatchewan secondary schools. Many students I worked with were employed part time while in school. Some of them were sure of what they wanted to do in life, while others really didn't know and needed guidance and support.

I'm also a mother of three children, one of whom just started his first job in the field of his choosing, though it is part-time. He works a second job to be able to make ends meet. Our second son and our daughter are both still in university. The current context of high youth unemployment and underemployment in Canada gives my husband and me reason to be concerned about them and their future.

The statistics are worrying: a 13.7% average youth unemployment rate in 2013, 2.3 times the rate for workers aged 25 to 54, which is the second largest gap since 1977; underemployment as a growing problem, calculated by the Canadian Labour Congress for the 15 to 24 age group at 27.7%, more than double the reported unemployment rate; and increasingly, available jobs that are precarious, temporary, and with lower wages and few or no benefits.

Young Canadians are struggling to find meaningful work that pays well and enables them to live productive lives. All people should be able to earn a living wage. In my profession, for example, in certain parts of the country it can take as long as five years of precarious employment on temporary or part-time contracts before a young teacher desiring full-time permanent employment attains it. Even where work is available, other factors may come to bear on accessibility of employment. For example, in the north you may find work, but there's no available housing.

Education has an obvious role to play in assisting children and youth to develop a set of skills that will serve them well in their future work and personal lives. Educational attainment has a direct bearing on a host of indicators of success, including good jobs, better health, more stable relationships, and low rates of incarceration.

Canadian students have the benefit of a high-quality publicly funded education system that has performed consistently at a high level on international measures such as the Programme for International Student Assessment, conducted by the OECD. Canadian students are leaving secondary school with a fundamental flexible skill set in critical thinking, problem solving, research skills, and lifelong learning.

On Tuesday of this week, The Globe and Mail reported that Canadian students ranked first among their English-speaking peers on a PISA international test of problem-solving abilities. According to Alberta Education Minister Jeff Johnson, who chairs the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada, “The report also confirms that Canadian 15-year-olds who do well in problem solving also tend to do well in the core subject areas, suggesting that how mathematics, reading and science are taught in Canadian classrooms prepare students well to solve real-life challenges”.

In the future, Canadians will be well positioned to adapt as the economy generates new types of work. Canadian youth is well prepared for work, but there has to be work for them. Employers must be willing to take up where the education system leaves off, with paid training, opportunities for apprenticeships, and other types of opportunities for the specific work they need as employers.

The CTF therefore makes the following recommendations.

First, that the Canadian government develop a national job creation strategy with an emphasis on addressing the unemployment and underemployment of youth. This strategy must be developed in partnership with employers and labour organizations and consider a broad range of social programs, including the elimination of unpaid internships as part of the solution to youth unemployment and underemployment.

Second, that existing and newly developed statistics from Statistics Canada be utilized to depict more accurately the true nature of unemployment and underemployment, based on internationally recognized standards of measure.

Third, that changes be made to the employment insurance program and other government job-related programs to increase access and availability for youth, including explicitly connecting youth to industries seeking workers and enhancing funding for apprenticeships and other paid job training.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you for your presentation.

We'll now hear from Mr. Moist, please.

[Paul Moist, National President, Canadian Union of Public Employees]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me begin by commending the committee for taking on this subject matter. It's CUPE's privilege to represent about 625,000 Canadians, tens of thousands of younger workers in all aspects of the public service. We think the public service is a viable option for young Canadians who aspire to it.

The committee has heard in your previous meetings all of the statistics in every corner of Canada. Youth unemployment rates are two and a half times larger than the measured unemployment rate, and it's argued by some that underemployed youth exceed the number of officially unemployed youth.

As my colleague just said we don't know how many unpaid internships there are in Canada. Recent literature pegs it at between 100,000 and 300,000 unpaid internships. The vast majority would be younger workers in those internships. TD Economics puts a huge price tag on this, 1.3% of GDP for youth unemployment and $20 billion annually. It should be an issue for all Canadians, including trade unions.

What is government to do about this? We have four brief things to say and we'll be open to any questions.

First, provide better employment opportunities for young workers within government where possible and don't seek to create a two-tier federal public service.

Second, don't take away job opportunities that would otherwise go to youth through other labour market policies or through lack of other important social programs. By that we mean there are many aging workers staying in the workforce because they don't have access to a viable pension plan. The Globe and Mail has joined us along with most others in saying that an expansion of the Canada pension plan would allow for people to ease out of the work market and free up some of those jobs for young workers.

Before Mr. Carney departed for the U.K., he had a lot to say about the temporary foreign workers program—specifically, what it was never intended to do. It wasn't intended to subsidize any employer in Canada with low-paying jobs.

Third, provide proactive national labour force planning and training to generate quality jobs in collaboration with industry, labour, educational, and research organizations.

We want to acknowledge and compliment the federal government. There have been some positive moves to expand financial assistance available for apprenticeships through grants, the apprenticeship loan program, and tax measures. We collectively as a society, including the federal government at all levels, need to do something to enable all students to get qualified and educated, including the cost of tuition fee in post-secondary settings.

The federal government should provide funding for organizations that support long-term collaborative planning. We've seen the elimination of sector councils, the Canadian Council on Learning. In the long run we see this as counterproductive.

Lastly, Mr. Chairman, federal and provincial governments should increase direct support for youth employment. Federal funding through the youth employment strategy should be expanded.

Canadian governments could consider providing young workers with a youth guarantee. We're reading things about the European Council guaranteeing $6 billion for a Europe-wide youth guarantee. Austria has been the first jurisdiction to put pen to paper. This is worth reading and considering as a society. It might seem to be expensive—$10,000 per young worker—but I think it pales in comparison to the price we're paying for youth unemployment. The European initiatives are well worth our considering here in Canada.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Mr. Moist.

We'll go to Ms. Reynolds now, please.

[Joyce Reynolds, Executive Vice-President, Government Affairs, Restaurants Canada]

Thank you.

I'm very pleased to appear before you today, for the first time, on behalf of Restaurants Canada. As Chair Rajotte mentioned, I've represented the industry many times before this committee with the Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association,or CRFA, and we're very excited to have a new look and new name. We still represent one of the largest sectors of the Canadian economy with $68 billion in sales and over 1.1 million employees. That's more than fishing, forestry, utilities, mining, and agriculture combined. An additional 257,000 people are indirectly employed as suppliers to the industry. Our 30,000 Restaurants Canada members include independents and chains in full-service and quick-service restaurants, caterers, pubs, and institutional food service providers in schools, hospitals, and other institutions.

Restaurants provide more first jobs than any other industry; 22% of Canadians got their career start in the food service business. No other industry helps more students to pay their way through school, or works with more young people to develop valuable job skills. Canada's restaurants currently employ nearly 488,000 young people under the age of 25; that's one in five youth jobs. Restaurants are a great training ground for all careers. These jobs teach the soft skills valued by employers that may be more important to a young person's career and working life over the long term than some occupational skills, things like dependability, communication, personal responsibility, teamwork, as well as problem solving and creative thinking. Our industry provides that all-important first step on the career ladder for thousands of Canadians.

According to a recent Statistics Canada study entitled “Unemployment Dynamics among Canada's Youth”, a significant proportion of unemployed youth are people entering the labour market for the first time, most often after having completed their education. These young people have never worked and most often experience a period of unemployment of varying duration before finding a first job. In 2012, more than 28% of unemployed young people between the ages of 15 and 24 were youth who had never worked. The point is that you cannot underestimate the resumé-building experience that jobs in the restaurant industry provide. Youth who gain work experience while studying are more likely to find employment, whether it is in another field or advancement in my sector. There are many career paths in the restaurant industry, from chefs to accounts to owners to CEOs.

So how do we improve youth employment outcomes? I have a couple of recommendations. Restaurants Canada members have consistently identified payroll taxes as an obstacle to job creation because they are a tax on jobs, but they are also the most regressive form of taxation. Those individuals at the lowest end of the payroll scale pay the highest amount proportionately. Young people under the age of 25 make up a high percentage of low-earning Canadians. This is because they tend to receive lower wages until they have built up work experience and skills. In addition, they often prefer flexible arrangements, such as part-time shifts, as they balance their work and education.

Young people under the age of 25 are the most vulnerable to the vagaries of high payroll taxes. They are the most likely to get passed over for jobs and suffer an above-average share of job losses. The regressive nature of payroll taxes contributes to their woes by providing a disincentive to hire them because the tax rate, compared to their wages, is disproportionately high. Canadian youth suffer from an unemployment rate that is consistently more than twice as high as the adult unemployment rate. In February 2014, it was 13.6% compared to 5.9% for those over 25.

As a result, Restaurants Canada proposes a youth new hires program to replace the hiring credit for small businesses that was in place in 2011, 2012, and 2013. This would mean that employers could receive an EI premium tax credit for the payroll of new hires, 25 years of age and under, when measured against their payroll for youth in the previous year. A more long-term solution would be a year's basic exemption in the employment insurance program, modelled after the year's basic exemption in the CPP program. It is a cost-effective way to provide targeted payroll tax relief to the groups most punished by this form of taxation: entry-level workers and labour-intensive businesses. At the same time, universal application makes it fair and easy to administer.

The YBE refers to the annual earnings level in which premiums are not applied, and could be in the range of $2,000 to $3,000. The timing for the introduction of a YBE is excellent since the EI fund is scheduled to be in surplus by 2015. It would assist employers in expanding payroll to provide more young people with entry-level positions and retain them in these jobs.

To conclude, restaurant jobs are often portrayed as being inferior or less valuable to society than other jobs are, when in fact they provide long-term career opportunities and a springboard to careers in other fields.

I have two United Way ads here. We need policies that reflect this vision of the restaurant industry and not this other vision. I'm going to pass these ads around.

If you see our jobs as a training ground and a gateway to opportunity, please consider our recommendations for modifications to the EI program.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much, Ms. Reynolds.

We'll hear from Ms. Uchida now, please.

[Susan Uchida, Vice-President, RBC Learning, Royal Bank of Canada]

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and members of the finance committee.

Thank you so much for inviting me to appear before this committee on youth employment.

I'd like to begin my presentation by sharing three key findings from an August 2013 Ipsos Reid poll of recent university and college graduates that RBC commissioned. In it, 73% of graduates surveyed said that a lack of job experience was a barrier to them finding their first job; 77% said that lack of connections and a network was a barrier to finding their first job; and among those who found work, nearly half of recent graduates indicated that having applicable job experience helped them in starting their career.

These facts clearly show that making the transition from a formal education to finding meaningful work and making a contribution in the workforce present many challenges to young people today. Resolving this challenge will require a concerted effort by many of us to commit to youth employment.

At RBC we believe in investing in today's youth. RBC's five-year, $100-million Believe in Kids pledge supports a wide range of programs for developing well-rounded kids and youth in Canada. We have a strong record for hiring youth. We hire more than 2,400 youth annually into permanent positions, and we provide more than 900 internship, co-op, and summer experiences every year.

Today I am proud to present a new program that complements what we already do to address youth employment, which is a year-long paid internship opportunity RBC has created for recent graduates, called the RBC career launch program. We believe this intensive program will help solve the no-experience, no-job cycle that's facing so many young graduates today.

First I'd like to outline the structure and format of the career launch program, and then I'll describe three key ways it will help recent graduates find meaningful employment.

RBC is offering 100 paid internships to recent college and university graduates aged 24 and under, from any program or discipline. In our first year we have positions in four provinces and 13 cities across Canada. The internship is 12 months long and designed around three rotations. First, a six-month rotation is intended to provide a core customer sales and service experience in our retail banking branch network. Next, a three-month rotation is a unique part of our program. Participants, as contract employees of RBC, will be assigned and dedicated to a local Canadian charity chosen by RBC. Finally, a three-month rotation provides hands-on experience in a professional corporate environment.

Participants in the program will work on a variety of project-based assignments and gain exposure to the wide variety of roles in our functional group, such as finance, HR, and operations, roles that exist in large corporations today.

Now that I've explained the structure and format of career launch, let's look at how we attempted to solve the education-to-employment challenge I outlined earlier. It does so in three ways. First, it helps participants gain business skills such as collaboration, communication, and critical thinking. It accomplishes this through work experiences that demand these skills, as well as providing dedicated mentorship and support. Second, it gives them access to a network and an ability to build relationships with seasoned and influential professionals. Third, it gives them exposure to and practical hands-on work experience in retail banking, in the not-for-profit sector, and in a large corporate setting.

Ultimately participants in this program will be able to point to a meaningful experience that's comprehensive, that helps them personally to make decisions about their careers, and that is attractive to future employers.

Our enthusiasm for the program was definitely shared by Canada's youth. We received nearly 5,000 applications over a two-week period, and through a robust selection process we hired 100 recent graduates who started with us on January 27.

In summary, the RBC career launch program helps resolve a key challenge facing recent graduates—finding their first meaningful employment. We certainly realize that 100 internships alone won't solve the challenge, but it was important for us to take the first step in getting there. We encourage other organizations in the public and private sectors to join us in this endeavour to instill confidence and enthusiasm for young graduates entering the workforce.

We would be happy to share all elements of the program publicly.

We look forward to making a positive impact on youth employment in Canada and to supporting tomorrow's leaders.

I thank you again sincerely for the opportunity to speak with you today.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you very much for your presentation.

Colleagues, we'll begin members' rounds.

Mr. Dubé, you have the floor.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I would like to thank the witnesses for being here today.

Mr. Moist, you spoke about pensions. At the last meeting, we heard a little bit about this matter of two-tier pension systems for young people. It is an increasingly evident problem.

Do you think this kind of pension worsens the situation of underemployment insofar as young people want to prepare for their retirement and are willing to take jobs that don't pay as well? What do you think about that problem?

[Paul Moist]

Thank you very much for the question.

In the whole pension debate, we reject the notion that this is a payroll tax. Pension contributions by workers and employers throughout their lives are not a payroll tax, it's deferring a portion of one's wages for the inevitable, when we all retire. That's the first point.

Secondly, the notion that the economy in Canada could not withstand a CPP premium hike—we say CPP, because there won't be a private-sector solution to the sponsorship of defined-benefit plans—that it would be injurious to the economy.... That did not happen when Mr. Martin increased premiums to stabilize the fund in the late nineties, and there's new evidence that the government is in possession of that. That wouldn't be derelict to the economy right now.

There are two separate issues at play here. Do we want to take positive steps to arrest youth unemployment, and secondly, throughout our working lives.... Somebody mentioned before we started today the financial literacy task force that was chaired by the former head of Sun Life, his name escapes me right now—Don Stewart. I appeared in Winnipeg in front of him.

We think it's a prudent move, a conservative move. It's fairly radical to think that people should start working and at age 40 start thinking about retirement. We're much more conservative in the trade union movement. We believe there should be no debate that all of us should start saving for retirement from the day we begin working, with a contribution from ourselves as workers and a contribution from employers.

A separate issue is the shockingly high rates of youth unemployment, and we think other measures need to be happening.

The last thing I'll say is that we bargain on behalf of young workers. They don't have the same benefits as full-time workers, but we like to bargain for a living wage for young workers. In Gatineau, we went to the Quebec labour board and asked why 1,200 swimming instructors could not be represented by CUPE. We succeeded in front of the pay equity tribunal in Quebec. They went from $10 an hour to $18 an hour, and $18 an hour is not an extreme wage for the certifications required to be an instructor, and secondly to pay for university.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

What has your experience been with wage scarring? The one study that keeps coming back on that impact is from TD Bank. It talks about the plight of young workers. Have you folks in CUPE seen that more and more with the unemployed, particularly the wage scarring and the long-term consequences of that, whether it's related to pensions or just the basics of young people buying homes and starting families, and all those things that strengthen our communities?

[Paul Moist]

I think it takes a lot longer to get started nowadays, and as my colleague from the building trades said, the worst thing that can happen to any of us, whether you're a middle-aged worker or a young worker.... Everything I've read in three decades of doing this for a living.... If somebody is injured and we cannot reintegrate them back to work and they go a year or two without being at work, it's 10 times as hard to reintegrate them.

The European example that I spoke of earlier talks about a guarantee. Their youth unemployment situation is arguably worse than ours, and I don't know much about it—I've just tried to prepare for today—but the youth guarantee in Europe, four months after leaving school or losing a job, people under 25 should receive a good quality offer of employment, further education, or an apprenticeship or traineeship. Where did they come up with four months? It's because every day that you're not working after that mark, it's harder to get you back to work.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

We're talking about reintegration. When you say it's been a year or two that someone hasn't been working and how difficult it is to reintegrate them, does that philosophy apply as well to a recent graduate? Is that a correct understanding of what you're saying?

For someone who just graduated, let's say, and for a year or two they're underemployed essentially because there's nothing available, there's a degradation of skills. We've heard about that problem from other witnesses. Is that a similar phenomenon to, for example, older workers who have been injured and have to reintegrate into the workplace?

[Paul Moist]

I think it is. It has not been studied as much in Canada as it should be, but 10% of CUPE members work in a post-secondary setting, many of them teaching classes. At York University, where we had a strike, unfortunately, for 13 weeks, 58% of the teaching is done by CUPE members who are teaching assistants and can't get tenured positions. The average wage is less than $30,000 a year. That's 58% of York's teaching, and York is a renowned institution. The 65,000 CUPE members who work in universities across Canada are not all teachers, but many of them are. It's taking them longer to get started in life.

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

In wrapping up, Ms. Reynolds, you spoke about changes to employment insurance based on the needs of your sector. Perhaps I missed something, but I'm not sure I understand what your specific requests were. Could you expand on that quickly?

[Joyce Reynolds]

What I'm referring to concerning the youth hires program is very similar to what was in place for the small business EI credit. If you were to hire additional employees and you were under a certain size of business and in the next year you increased your payroll over that of the preceding year, you would get a credit. I'm suggesting that this be applied specifically to youth, so that if you increase the number of youth on your payroll from one year to the next, then you get a credit.

The other is the year's basic exemption, which already exists in the Canada pension plan. Right now, if you make $2,000 per year, you can get your EI premiums back through your income taxes. Only 23% actually do. With the year's basic exemption, if you make $4,000 per year, then you only pay premiums on $2,000, rather than—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

I'm sorry; we're over time.

Colleagues, I'll just remind you that we are extending round time today, but let's make sure we leave enough time.

Ms. Reynolds, we will come back to this, I'm sure. I know that other members will ask that.

Mr. Saxton, please.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

Thank you, Chair.

Thanks to our witnesses for being here today as well.

My first question is for Dianne Woloschuk, from the Canadian Teachers' Federation.

Dianne, in your opening remarks you suggested that we consider eliminating unpaid internships. If we were to eliminate unpaid internships and those positions were not replaced with paid internships, aren't you concerned that youth might miss an opportunity to get valuable experience?

[Dianne Woloschuk]

I think they should be replaced by paid internships. One thing we would hope to see is employers becoming more involved in that sort of thing.

This isn't directly an internship, but just to give you an example, at the Canadian Teachers' Federation every summer we hire a co-op program student. One thing we became aware of this year was that there were a number of students for whom the program was seeking positions but for whom there were no employers available or willing to take them. We received repeated requests, although we had taken a student already.

It seems to me that those kinds of opportunities for young people need to be available. In my experience from the programs that we have at the secondary level in school, whereby students are participating in work experience kinds of programs, the employers usually are very pleased with the work the students do. To participate in those programs is great experience for the students. It often leads to employment for them, and generally it creates a lot of excitement among young people too, particularly those looking for trades education.

So I would suggest paid internships.

[Andrew Saxton, Conservative, North Vancouver, BC]

You said that you think they should be replaced, but there is no guarantee that they would be replaced and there's a good chance that many of them would not be.

Listening to what you have to say, then, I gather you're very much in favour of the Canada job grant, because it is going to be offering opportunities for young people.