Human Resources Committee on Oct. 2nd, 2025

[Natilien Joseph, Liberal, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Thank you.

I'll now turn to Mr. Gagnon.

Mr. Gagnon, I want to congratulate you on all your work. You're doing an outstanding job.

We're talking about employment equity. We know that our government is working hard to ensure compliance with employment equity obligations.

In the course of your work, do you ever have trouble finding jobs for young people from diverse backgrounds?

I'm not just talking about ethnic diversity. I'm also talking about gender diversity, such as transgender people.

[Alexandre Gagnon]

Yes. These groups have always had more difficulty finding jobs. There have indeed been issues in this area. We're talking about young people today. However, I know that immigrants also face greater challenges when it comes to finding employment during economic downturns, such as the current situation.

I believe that your question was for Mr. Humbert. Is that right?

[Natilien Joseph, Liberal, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Yes. Excuse me.

My question was for you, Mr. Humbert.

[Rudy Humbert]

Thank you.

First, I would like to say that I share your sense of urgency in addressing this issue today. Youth unemployment currently sits at the same level as it did 25 years ago. This means that the situation has been alarming for 25 years. We should be concerned about the fact that, in a quarter of a century, no one has found a more structured solution. We should never be satisfied with the fact that young people are forced into unemployment, given that this leads to disrupted life paths and significant socio-economic costs.

I would also like to point out that our current sense of urgency stems from the fact that 80% of job losses have been borne by young people.

In terms of diversity, I would just like to point out that the unemployment rate for young people from non‑standard backgrounds is more than double the figures provided earlier. Entrepreneurship is sometimes a way forward for these young people who face employment barriers and who are forced to create their own jobs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Joseph.

Mrs. Gill, you have the floor for two and a half minutes.

[Marilène Gill, Bloc, Côte-Nord—Kawawachikamach—Nitassinan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'll begin by speaking to all the witnesses.

Gentlemen, I would like your recommendations. You can submit additional information and recommendations in writing after the meeting. The committee members can then discuss them and build on them when preparing the committee report.

I'm especially keen to hear your ideas on how to tackle youth job insecurity and unemployment. I'm thinking in particular of Mr. Buck, who can shed some light on the situation for young people in rural areas.

We spoke briefly earlier about the Canada summer jobs program. Let me give you an example. The Basse Côte Nord residents have a hard time hiring young people given the criteria set out in the Canada summer jobs program. As a result, many jobs are lost. If you have any recommendations regarding this matter, please submit them in writing after the meeting.

I would now like to put two questions to the officials from the Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec.

First, according to a recent Statistics Canada article, youth employment in the accommodation and food services sector declined by 22% across Canada between 2024 and 2025. This doesn't just apply to Quebec, of course. This was also the case in the retail trade sector and the information, culture and recreation sector.

Did this decline have anything to do with the COVID‑19 pandemic? I know that this was a difficult time for the sectors that I just listed. The members of your respective organizations certainly had to deal with these types of challenges.

Mr. Gagnon also spoke about the challenges that lie ahead in education and the fact that the Quebec government must show considerable flexibility in order to tackle them in the coming years. This also applies to the other provinces.

Can you provide examples of successful initiatives in Quebec that could inspire the other provinces and territories?

[Stéphane Pageau]

I'll answer the first question.

The three sectors listed have indeed seen a decline in job vacancies, even in Quebec. This decline is particularly apparent in the retail trade and the accommodation and food services sectors. Artificial intelligence may affect certain sectors. However, some fields are included in these statistics even though they have low unemployment rates. This is the case, for example, in Quebec's tourism industry. According to industry representatives, the unemployment rate is 4.2%. This means that the need for workers is enormous. I believe that regional disparities in employment affect the overall statistics.

We're seeing a decline in job vacancies and difficulties in these industries. However, we still believe that these are cyclical. For example, business travel decreased significantly, which may have had an impact.

I believe there has indeed been a decline in these sectors, particularly in student employment. It's time to take action with a set of measures, including through the Canada summer jobs program. However, we believe that it's still necessary to take a long‑term view. We don't think that this situation will last, given the upcoming employment‑related challenges.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mrs. Gill.

I have Madame Cobena, for five minutes.

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The Liberal members here in the committee like to say that their government has made investments in our economy. If that is, in fact, the case, then they are making investments with a negative return. When we have unemployment at 7.1%, which is nearing recession levels, and when we have $63 billion of investment that has fled our country since Mr. Carney took office—$8.3 billion in June alone—then that investment has a negative return.

Also, I would like to remind the members that it is entrepreneurs and small businesses, like some of our witnesses here today, that create jobs, not the government.

With that in mind, I'd like to ask a question of Mr. Rizzo.

What are the biggest obstacles you face today when trying to grow your business or when trying to hire people and create jobs?

[Perry Rizzo]

As I said before, I can speak to the banking industry in Canada. It has a real significant problem. It's risk-averse. It's not willing to invest in high-growth network companies. They're just making money too easily, and they're allowed to make money too easily. Therefore, getting banks to support companies with any kind of dream or entrepreneurial spirit that doesn't fit into all the covenants and ratios and analysis work is not going to happen. You're left with EDC and BDC, which are there to help and support companies, but let's be honest: They charge 11% interest. The way they help entrepreneurs grow is by charging us extremely high levels of debt loads to carry. It's counterproductive; it's counterintuitive to me. It seems, on the surface, that we have these systems to work, but in reality they're just extremely costly and actually hurt companies and their ability to grow.

That's one aspect, the financial institutions. Number two, again, your input costs are just so high in Canada.

My son pays.... I have four boys. They all pay $5,000 to $6,000 a year just for car insurance. The same-aged boys who live in Vermont or Connecticut or work at any of my facilities around the world pay $800 to $1,200. My kids pay $350 for their cellphones, data plans and Internet service, and the employees in Mexico pay $12 for unlimited calls, coverage and data.

When you look at what I talked about earlier, oligopolies, we've allowed our society or allowed Canada, largely through the government over years, to become extremely non-competitive. With all these factors, and people demanding high wages, it just doesn't leave.... There's nowhere for companies to invest.

There are ways forward, but that takes really significant long-term planning and major policy shifts, such as drastically reducing taxes for manufacturing companies, lowering hydro rates and lowering input costs like petrochemicals or raw materials to allow Canadian firms to compete globally.

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

On the topic of EDC, which you brought up in your remarks, Export Development Canada is, of course, a corporation. It's an arm of the government. In the context of trade and the trade war that we have going on, have you seen any programs that Export Development Canada has made available to your industry to support you in the impacts of these trade wars?

[Perry Rizzo]

EDC continues to have some programs, but it's really BDC that, I believe, has been given a mandate to help with, let's say, loans and things like that to deal with the trade war.

Let's be honest. When a company loses sales, it doesn't just want more debt. That doesn't help them. Adding more debt to our books by saying “Here's another loan” is not a path forward. All this stuff stacks up on a company. What we need is lower taxation, and we need a go-forward plan.

EDC and BDC fill roles where the conventional banks don't want to provide that financing. Thank God they're there for us, but they don't offer it at a competitive rate. You're paying a premium and it's very costly.

[Sandra Cobena, Conservative, Newmarket—Aurora, ON]

In the context of trying to diversify and look for markets outside of Canada, Canada has a bad reputation that we're difficult to do business with and that even if our price and our quality are comparable to, say, those of an American company, we're always going to lose that piece of business.

Have you seen something like this? Have you experienced something like this in your business?

[Perry Rizzo]

Yes. The—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Your time is up.

Madame Koutrakis, you have five minutes.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm having a difficult time trying to follow the testimony here. We are studying youth employment.

I'm trying to see the relationship between the study at hand and the testimony we are hearing from some of the witnesses today. I think most Canadians would agree that we do not simply want to put it all on the shoulders of governments to create thousands of jobs, although governments do have a role to play, and they do. This is why we're having this study, to make sure that, as we go forward, we're putting in place the policies and the programs that are needed to make sure that we take care of that. Most importantly, we want to help people develop good careers.

For the people who are employers here—I don't know if this is Mr. Johnson and Mr. Rizzo—how do we create an environment where the private sector—you're both in the private sector, so I'm sure you have some insight to share with us—is incentivized to hire more young people in jobs that earn them more money but also will help them develop their careers or, in fact, find new careers? I'm not looking for your bottom line. I know that people obviously go into business because they want to make money, and the backbone of our Canadian economy is having successful businesses. Nobody in this room is going to say otherwise.

I would like to ask you as employers, what is your responsibility to help youth find jobs and to encourage them and mentor them, whether it's in skilled trades or any other kind of job? What is your responsibility as the private sector in this whole thing?

I am genuine in my question. I would like that to be part of our report, because I think that if there's anybody who could give us insight, it is the private sector.

[Robert Johnson]

Who wants to go first?

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Either one can go.

Mr. Johnson, go ahead.

[Robert Johnson]

I'll go for just a few minutes.

First of all, I think that immigration has impacted the employment side dramatically. When you run an ad, it doesn't matter what it is for, whether it be for a senior head of finance, HR, engineering, quality or general labour, there is primarily one ethnic personality showing up for all the jobs with regard to it, and a lot of them simply don't have the skills. It's about looking to find the key people.

I would also add that the taxation has plagued our company. I'm in the process of expanding. My cost in permits alone is 28% of my building cost to put up a facility. If we had a different taxation process and another way to incentivize the development of people and help people learn skilled trades and have apprenticeships, we could develop people inside the system and inside the company, but you have to have the right people showing up for the job, and you have to have the incentive to be able to develop the people.

[Annie Koutrakis, Liberal, Vimy, QC]

Go ahead, Mr. Rizzo.

[Perry Rizzo]

It's a great question.

First of all, I'm an extremely passionate Canadian. That's why I'm here today. We invest and create our own apprenticeship programs and training programs. We take youth. We take people with little experience, and we develop them internally. We identify whether or not they have skill sets. We have promotion with internal policy. There are a lot of good things that can happen, but they take money, and they require the company to be in a really healthy position.

I want to disagree with a couple of points, and they might not be as poignant as I heard them, but the government shouldn't be involved in creating jobs. The private sector needs to be creating jobs. The government is not efficient or effective. The private sector is the reason we've been talking so passionately about this topic today. It's the private sector that needs to be creating jobs, creating the innovation, creating the technology and, in our case, manufacturing.

The ratio is 7:1. For every job we create, we influence seven other jobs. We create another seven jobs for every person we hire. When we build a product, there's someone making the skids, someone making the boxes, and someone making the screws and the fasteners. That's why manufacturing is so critical to China and to every economy in the world that wants to succeed. Manufacturing is a very important aspect of it.

To your point, how do we create jobs? We allow companies—not the government creating a new administration centre—to create an environment to be rewarded, to grow and to succeed through lower taxes, lower input costs and a long-term strategy for development.

With the trades, construction is—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Rizzo.

Thank you, Madame Koutrakis.

The final round is for two and a half minutes each.

Mr. Genuis, you have two and a half minutes.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

Mr. Rizzo, I want to probe your comments about the link between the cost of living crisis and the unemployment crisis. You were talking earlier about how, effectively, as the cost of living has gone through the roof, what constitutes a living wage—that is, what your employees need in order to live in a city with incredibly expensive housing and to cover basic expenses—becomes a lot higher. Other jurisdictions, where workers are making less money, at a nominal level, but are better off because of a lower cost of living, become much more competitive jurisdictions to invest in, relative to Canada. I think it's an important point, because we've been talking about both of these crises—cost of living and unemployment—and you're highlighting the relationship between the two.

I wonder whether you could share a bit more about how the cost of living crisis impacts business investment, the ability to create more jobs, etc.

[Perry Rizzo]

It's a great question.

It's just every day. Our annual reviews come every December. We're very committed and loyal to our staff. Employment tenure is probably 25 years, on average, at our company. We have long-term, committed employees.

It's really hard for me. Every year, I want to give back to the employees. We want to try to compensate them, and the conversations are just constantly the same, about how expensive it is to live in Toronto and how expensive it is to live in Canada, to a point where good people, who have been with me for 10 or 15 years, have started to identify whether they can move and transfer to one of our U.S. facilities. The reason they're doing this is that they want to start a family and own a home. It's just not feasible in Canada for most of the youth. All these things are really big, systemic problems.

To put it in perspective, at a facility in Georgia, where we make components, the average person makes $16.50 to $17 U.S. an hour, and house prices are $40,000 to $50,000, so the employer can attract a lot of people. At lower wages, those people can still live, acquire...and do quite well. However, in Canada, when most of your money is going to mortgage debt, living expenses, insurance and all the items I talked about before, the youth of today have no money left over to dream about that next step in their lives.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Genuis.

Ms. Desrochers, you have two and a half minutes.