Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all our witnesses for being here today to testify on our study of the Canada summer jobs program.
Obviously, I want to send a big thank you to Paul.
I saw some of my colleagues chuckle a little bit when they heard the municipality name of Douro-Dummer, but I wear it proud. It's where I'm from. It is a unique name, but it's what we are.
Paul, you gave some very concrete suggestions and feedback in terms of Canada summer jobs. I want to go through them and ensure that they make it to the report stage of this to improve the program.
Number one, you talked about earlier decisions and being notified early. This is Business 101. We cannot plan or make decisions if we don't know what we're dealing with. Number two, you mentioned the selection criteria. A lot of the programs for Canada summer jobs are not reflective of the applicant. In particular, the Township of Douro-Dummer or rural areas don't necessarily have the diversity that is required for some of these applications. Number three, you said that it was quite tedious, meaning that it was challenging for your staff. It would time out and you'd lose spots in the application and have to start all over again.
As somebody who runs a municipality, and as a treasurer, as you said, you understand bureaucracy. A lot of this is the same problem that we see in programs across the board, in all government programs. It is a real bureaucratic problem. There's more bureaucracy being done than there are actual results.
One thing you said was that this program is not maximizing its funds. From a treasurer's perspective, that is one of the things we want to talk about. Giving somebody money doesn't always give a return on investment if it's not invested properly. Could you expand on what you think that means? How efficient is the system from your perspective of working in a municipality? How efficient is the Canada summer jobs program?