Thank you.
As we have just said, your mandate letter and Budget 2017 both contain recommendations from the Expert Panel on Youth Employment. I am going to focus on three of these recommendations.
In recommendation 8, which discusses updating the Canada labour standards, the group suggests amending part III of the Canada Labour Code in order to recognize new types of employment. You have already begun to do this by eliminating unpaid internships.
Recommendation 9 suggests broadening eligibility for employment insurance. Young people are particularly affected by the eligibility rules. The point would be to lower the eligibility criteria, and they would be the same throughout the country. This is a demand that that has been made by practically all of the organizations that work with the unemployed, everywhere in Canada. They also recommend that returning to school be added to the valid grounds for leaving work for young workers. The idea is that young people would not be penalized if they leave a job to return to school. To me that is a very important point.
The third recommendation I wanted to raise with you is the one that refers to obtaining better quality data. Indeed, when one wants to study a situation, obtaining statistics is always an issue.
I would like to hear about the government's response to these recommendations which were submitted to it last June.