To start with, the government should have achieved its objectives without cutting the funding of this program. However, I'm concerned, because I thought the committee had unanimously decided to review the criteria. Committee members agreed on the need to add certain criteria such as the high unemployment rate, the rate of violence and a few others.
I think it would be hard to say at this point that we don't agree on some of the criteria on which committee members agreed. However, I have some fears that these new criteria might be applied too narrowly. For example, in my riding, there definitely isn't any unemployment problem, but there is a poverty problem. So, if these criteria are narrowly applied, that will definitely cause a problem for young people looking for work, who are living in poverty and who are vulnerable.
In my view, rather than request that this program be cancelled, it would perhaps be preferable for committee members to agree to revise the criteria. Once we have seen it applied this year, we could meet to revise and re-evaluate the way it operated. I thought I understood what Mr. Chong said, as well as the people from the minister's office, who answered me that they had cut $1.6 million and that the rest had been added. They specified that 77.3% would go to non-profit organizations and the rest to the public sector or to small business employers.
I wonder whether it wouldn't be preferable for the committee to simply request a re-evaluation of the program's operation at the end of the summer. Perhaps we could introduce another motion to that effect. I believe that committee members agreed that it would be necessary to change certain criteria of this program.
I'm interested in hearing the comments of my colleagues who were perhaps here and who perhaps read the previous reports, as I did.