Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses.
We've highlighted the Conservatives' youth jobs plan. It's what we've put on the table and proposed to the government in terms of confronting the youth unemployment crisis. The four parts of it are unleashing the economy, fixing immigration, fixing training and building homes where the jobs are.
My questions in this round will be for Mr. Fortin.
First, I want to highlight, Ms. Bednar, that I appreciated your point about the overqualification of many young people. I think it's important to understand that we're dealing with a situation in which there are not enough jobs. There are issues of training misalignment, and there are issues of not enough jobs. Some on this committee would like to focus purely on the idea that we need more training, but in reality, we're seeing a lot of young people who are highly trained. There are misalignments in training, but there are also simply not enough jobs. There's an important role for discussing the issues around training, but the first point of our plan is to unleash the economy so that there are enough jobs for young people.
Mr. Fortin, thank you for your work on this and for your testimony, which highlighted that there is a multiplier, sadly. When the unemployment rate is going up overall, the youth unemployment rate is generally going up by more. You've also highlighted how that magnification effect is getting greater. It has been wider over the life of this government than it was in previous times, but it is progressively widening. That's very alarming to me, and I think that should be alarming to all Canadians, seeing this further magnification. You've attributed that to immigration.
I'd like to start off on the issue of how unemployment overall affects youth unemployment. Again, going back to our plan, number one is to unleash the economy and number two is to fix immigration. It sounds like you need to fix unemployment overall. You need to address the problems of an overall lack of investment and a lack of economic growth if you want to address youth unemployment as well. Would you agree with that?