Thank you, Mr. Chair and members of this committee, for the invitation today and for making this study on youth unemployment a priority.
As the leader of the Forest Products Association of Canada, as the proud son and grandson of unionized pulp and paper workers in the upper Ottawa Valley and as someone who worked in the forestry sector as a young person to help pay for school, I will say that this is a topic that’s close to my heart both personally and professionally.
Forestry is jobs: 200,000 full-time, family-supporting jobs in over 300 communities across the country and another 200,000 indirect jobs from coast to coast.
Let me begin by thanking all parties around the table for their engagement with and support of our sector and its employees during this very difficult time.
Last week, we were grateful to have representatives from the Liberals, Conservatives, Bloc Québécois and NDP all join us for our national forestry conference and all commit to standing with our industry, our people and our forestry communities as we face serious headwinds given the current trade dispute with the United States, which now has our softwood lumber companies facing combined duties and tariffs of over 45% on exports to the United States.
As the government works to secure a deal that works for Canada, we, as an industry, are doing our best to keep employees working and to keep them as connected as possible to our mills and woodlands operations. We are working with the federal and provincial governments and our labour partners to support employees who might find themselves out of work, either temporarily or for a longer period of time. The priority now is to protect the existing jobs as best we can.
Despite these challenges, which the committee is looking at through this study, for the foreseeable future we still have a lot jobs that need to be filled: forest technologists, forest technicians, logging truck drivers and heavy equipment operators. What some young people might not know about are the emerging opportunities in drone technology, AI, wildfire risk mitigation, biomass electric power generation, and prefab, modular and mass timber manufacturing. We continue to be focused on building a future-ready industry and supporting the talent pipeline for the jobs of tomorrow in Canadian forestry.
Half of our employees will retire within 20 years, and right now only 10% of our workforce is under the age of 25, despite nearly five million young Canadians being ready to work. We see real opportunity in the young Canadian talent pool and a huge opportunity in the indigenous youth talent pool. We are working with a range of partners to address skills gaps, rural infrastructure barriers and a generally limited awareness of some of the interesting careers and good-paying jobs that can be found in forestry. Last fall, FPAC released “Unlocking a Future-Ready Workforce for Canada’s Forest Industries”, which profiled some of the needs and opportunities.
In summary, I'll close with just a few recommendations, and we can get into more detail in the Q and A if you wish.
First, we should develop a forest-sector skills development plan that clearly maps skills gaps and a regional approach to addressing them. There’s some great on-the-ground infrastructure to build off of.
Second, as part of this development plan, we should support employer-led training programs in rural and northern communities so that young people don't need to leave home to be trained.
Finally, we should stabilize and grow proven youth employment programs and support networks through multi-year youth employment program funding through ESDC. With regard to groups that are tried, tested and true, I'll reference the outland youth employment program as one that has 25 years' experience in providing six-week training opportunities to indigenous youth in high school, aged 16 to 19. In that 25 years, they've put over 1,000 indigenous high school children and youth through that program, and they've touched nearly 200 communities across the country. Well-established groups like OYEP should not be facing funding cuts; they should be leaned in on because they have a proven track record. Project Learning Tree Canada, Forestry Together and Women in Wood are other grassroots initiatives that we're pretty proud of, that are connected to communities, that started with a coalition of the willing and that now enjoy broad support across Canadian forestry.
In closing, before I turn it over to my colleagues, I just want to say, on behalf of businesses, employees and communities in the forestry sector, that we appreciate your engagement and support.
I look forward to any questions or comments you might have.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.