Evidence of meeting #11 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 43rd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cerb.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Employment and Social Development
I couldn't tell you when, but I can tell you that we are looking closely at this issue.
NDP
Jenny Kwan NDP Vancouver East, BC
Well, I hope something will be done very quickly. As each month passes, these families are getting more and more desperate, and they've had no support. I just wanted to flag that.
Another issue is the Canada summer jobs program. The government changed the criteria without consulting MPs. While I support increasing the eligibility hours and the 100% funding for NGOs, the problem with that is it does not come with additional funding for the riding. Effectively, it means that fewer organizations will get support for the Canada summer jobs program.
Is there any consideration of increasing the overall budget for the Canada summer jobs program?
Associate Deputy Minister, Department of Employment and Social Development
[Technical difficulty—Editor] made all these adjustments because we were concerned that the demand for summer jobs would be less than expected.
As you know, we wanted to create 70,000 jobs, and we were concerned that because of the COVID-19 situation and social isolation, a lot of the jobs would be.... Employers would have applied in a pre-COVID time. We thought that a lot of them, when we offered them the funding, would not have the jobs still available due to their business shutting down or being reduced to a large extent.
We are in the process of doing that now. We'll know more about what the take-up is on the jobs and how the flexibility helped to keep it at least the same. I can tell you that the minister is quite ready to think about adjusting as we move forward, when we have more information about what the real demand is for those who have applied.
Also, the minister has asked MPs to inquire in their ridings about supplementary demand for these jobs—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Sean Casey
Thank you, Mr. Robidoux. Thank you, Ms. Kwan.
That completes the time allocated, and then some.
I want to offer a sincere thanks to all of the officials who appeared before us today. Thank you for your patience and thank you for your professionalism. We very, very much appreciate the work you do. We also appreciate the effort you put in here before the committee today.
With that, we are past the hour. We'll see you in a week. Take care, everyone.
The meeting is adjourned.