Human Resources Committee on Oct. 16th, 2023

[The Chair (Mr. Robert Morrissey (Egmont, Lib.)), Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

I call the meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 81 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee is meeting on a study of the Canada summer jobs wage subsidy program.

Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format. I believe all committee members and witnesses are attending in the room.

I would remind all members attending that you have the option of participating in the official language of your choice. If there is an interruption in translation services, please get my attention. We will suspend while it is corrected. I would remind members to speak slowly, if possible, for the benefit of the interpreters. As well, be careful with cellphones near the mikes, or your earpiece, as it can cause popping that can cause harm to the translators. Just as a reminder, direct all comments through the chair.

We will be meeting in the first hour with Minister Ien.

Madam Minister, welcome to the committee. We will begin with five-minute opening comments from you on this very important subject.

As well, I would like to welcome Frances McRae, deputy minister; Catherine Demers, associate assistant deputy minister; Rhonda Fernandes, director general; Jenny Tremblay, director general; and Damon Rourke, director of workforce development. They will be staying for the latter part as well.

We will begin with Minister Ien for a five-minute opening comment.

Madam Minister, you have the floor.

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Youth]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and hello, everyone.

Mr. Chair and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to talk about the Canada Summer Jobs program.

It is a program that is part of our strategy to get young people jobs and valuable work experience.

However, first I want to acknowledge that we are gathered on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe people.

We are in challenging times. We know that young people are feeling the impact. To chart a path forward, we need to make sure we're creating opportunities for young people. That's why we have a youth employment and skills strategy. This includes youth programs as well: the student work placement program, which helps develop work-ready skills through things like co-ops, internships and project-based activities; the Canada service corps, which creates volunteer opportunities for young people looking to give back to their communities; the youth employment and skills program, which gets students and other young Canadians quality jobs in their fields, where they can gain valuable work experience; and of course, Canada summer jobs, a successful program that has changed the lives of a lot of young Canadians.

I mention these programs because they show that this is a comprehensive approach. It is a comprehensive approach to helping young people, so whether they're looking for their first opportunity or graduating and looking to get a job in their field, we're going to be there every step of the way.

In 2020, during the pandemic, when youth unemployment rose to a staggering 30%, we responded with one of the largest youth support packages in the world to make sure that no young person was left behind, and Mr. Chair, our approach is working: Youth unemployment has returned to its prepandemic level, and recent data shows that 65,000 more young people were working in August this year than before the pandemic. This is what happens when smart investments are made at the right time. They pay dividends.

I saw the impact of this up close when I was in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, and stopped by to get what I'll call really cool accessories from a young woman named Sarah. Sarah told me that during her CSJ job, she was able to work on her sewing skills. She worked on those skills, and that led her to selling garments and accessories online. Today she has launched her own business. It's called Sarah Crowe Designs. She does, as she told me, what she loves every single day. There are stories like Sarah's right across this country, CSJ success stories.

Here's what we also know: We know that not every young person has the same access to these opportunities, which is why our youth strategy takes into account gender, race, socio-economic status, sexual orientation and disability. We know that these factors can be barriers to gainful employment, and when we look at the data, we see this: In 2020, for example, StatsCan reported that the employment rate for those with disabilities was 65% compared to 80% for those without.

There's always room for improvement, and we're being thoughtful about the changes that we need to make to continue delivering these programs while adapting to new realities. We're not resting. Where there are improvements to make, we'll make them, and we'll do so by listening and learning.

Our young people deserve a good life and a good start in the labour market in careers that they like. We have to make sure that no one is forgotten.

Once again, thank you for this opportunity.

I'm happy to take your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Madam Minister.

Now we'll begin the first round of questioning with Madam Vecchio for six minutes, please.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Thank you very much, Chair.

Welcome, Minister.

I'm going to read a bit into the record first, regarding some of your testimony. According to the OECD, Canada experienced a larger change in youth employment during the pandemic compared to other OECD countries:

In 2019, the year prior to the pandemic, Canada's youth unemployment rate was 11%. The youth unemployment rate in the UK was similar at 11.4%, higher in Ireland at 13.5%, and lower in Germany at 5.7%.

In June 2020, the youth unemployment rate in Canada increased over 16 percentage points to 27.4%.

You alluded to that, but in countries such as Germany and the U.K., where job retention programs were introduced, they experienced increases of only 1.6 and 2.4 percentage points respectively.

By summer 2021, youth unemployment rates largely recovered but remained elevated compared with their levels in 2019 across most of the OECD countries, and Canada was no exception to this trend. In Canada, the youth unemployment rate in June of 2021 was 2.6 percentage points higher than in June of 2019. The difference was lower for Germany and the U.K. at 1.2 and 1.5 percentage points, respectively, but slightly higher for Ireland....

Specifically looking at this, we know that there were job retention programs, but in Canada we didn't actually have that. It was very, very different for people when it came to job retention.

Minister, I'm reading this into the record so that I can talk about key indicators. In 2016 we saw a doubling of the Canada summer jobs program, where we saw a nominal increase from 2015 and 2016 of 0.1%. When I'm looking at the 2021 funding for the program, which was five times more than in 2015, and I'm removing the data from 2020 and 2021, can you advise me of whether quadrupling the funding for Canada summer jobs actually quadrupled the number of jobs?

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Karen, thank you so much for the question and for the information you provided.

I'll start with 2015-16, because you made an excellent point.

When this program started in 2015, it was at 35,000 jobs. That simply was not enough. That's why we doubled those jobs to 70,000.

You make excellent points about the unemployment rate, and that is true. What we've done, though, with this program and the suite of programs that we have—and I'll talk about those in a second—is delve deeper into those numbers. What those general numbers don't show are the numbers for unemployment in Black communities, racialized communities, indigenous communities and people with disabilities. Those numbers are even greater, so that's what our national priorities with regard to those programs focus on.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Fantastic.

Looking into that, with the quadrupling, can you tell me what the numbers were, then, compared with Canada summer jobs, if we're looking at it? What were the numbers employed through Canada summer jobs in that final year when it was quadrupled?

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

What I can tell you is that this program has been severely oversubscribed for some time. I'm going to give you some comparative numbers on that.

In 2019, Karen, 148,000 people applied for this program.... I'm sorry; 79,000 were actually the jobs that were offered. I'm looking at basically doubling those numbers. This is a program in which 148,000 people wanted to take part, and there were 79,000 jobs in organizations.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I'm sorry, Minister: You're saying that in 2019 it was 79,000 jobs.

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Yes: 148,000 jobs were requested and 79,000 were provided. It was meant to be 70,000, but there was—

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

From 2015, those numbers went from what you're saying was 35,000 to 70,000 in 2016, and in 2019 it was only 79,000.

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Then it goes up from there, because we had a pandemic. When you—

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Let's take those pandemic years out of there.

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I don't think we can, Karen.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

I think it's important that we do, though, because—

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

I don't think we can take them out, because that was catastrophic. When we look at the mental health of kids, when we look at kids who were doing high school at home.... We have to remember that we have a suite of programs in the youth employment strategy. Canada summer jobs is one of them, and it's high-schoolers.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Minister, I really respect what you're saying there, though I think with the pandemic we did see the government explode a lot of money out of there. We can talk about WE Charity, but I don't think that's the right thing to do in this space.

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

No, but it was necessary to increase the jobs there—

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

But on the number of jobs, when we looked at the number, the fact that job retention programs.... We actually had close to 30% of Canadian youth not working compared to what other countries—

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

And it went down to 10%.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

But compared to other OECD countries, we only saw an increase of 2% or 3%. There was a different approach that we could have taken so that kids may have been able to have the opportunity to work.

I want to move on to another thing. We do know that over the five-year period, there was a change. How did you communicate to constituents, not only to the members of Parliament but to employers? We know that in 2022 we went back down. The number that was provided for funding, the 2019 prepandemic funding, was reduced.

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

That was the 2019 funding.

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

When people were applying for this in the communities, how did they know there was less than half of what there was in the previous year?

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

Karen, this is a program run by 338 MPs, who have priorities. In my riding of Toronto Centre, I basically said we were going back to prepandemic numbers—

[Karen Vecchio, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Minister, did all of the—

[Marci Ien, Liberal, Toronto Centre, ON]

—and then put my priorities, as MPs can do, and listed them the way they need to be.