Perhaps I can help. To support the decision to reduce the budget for the summer career placements, which is one of the streams within the youth employment strategy, the department is constantly analyzing Canada's labour market situation. We use a wide variety of tools, including the Labour Force Survey.
Overall labour market conditions are stronger than they have been for many years for young people, particularly in the summer. For example, in 2005 the economy generated 1.4 million new summer jobs, and in 2006 older students experienced their best August ever for summer employment. In fact, for the best three years, their employment rate was up to 72%, which was up 2.6 percentage points from the previous year. Among those who were employed, 70% were able to find full-time work.
In addition to this labour force information, we looked at evidence from the program in the past. We found that one-third of employers who received a wage subsidy through the program indicated they would have created some or all of the jobs anyway. In addition, we found that 30% of participating students could have found work without the program. So the decision was taken to retarget the program towards students who have real barriers to finding summer employment.