You just have to look at the data. My background's economics, so I like to pay attention to that kind of thing. We've seen all the charts that show other countries are doing just fine in measurements such as GDP per capita. GDP per capita is basically a proxy for our standard of living. That's a pretty important measure for any country and we're down at the bottom.
What is really frustrating is it's not mysterious as to why we're doing so badly. Our major industries have been discouraged. This has been mentioned by previous people, so I won't belabour it. A lot of legislation has been put in place to make building anything in Canada very difficult. We kowtow to a lot of green policies—so-called climate policies or whatever you want to call them—which we have spent tons of taxpayer dollars on. They are never measured and to date I haven't seen one of those predictions actually come true.
All of these things contribute to a poor economy. Again, comparing ourselves to other countries, they're not having anywhere near the same trouble we are, so it's definitely self-inflicted.
Finally, let's face it: If the economy's not going well, nothing's going well. That goes for youth and it goes for anybody in the country. There have been far too many subsidies of businesses. All a subsidy does is benefit one business at the cost of another, often benefiting a weak business at the expense of a business that's paying taxes because it's very successful.
These types of policies are long-term failures. They are very problematic and, as a number of people have pointed out, in an economic downturn, young people suffer the most because that's when people say that they can't afford to hire a young person anymore, that they'll have to train them, and so on.
Small businesses want to do that. I've heard from small firms that say they like to hire a student every summer. These are sometimes two and three-employee businesses. When they can't afford to any more because it costs them so much to do so, they're very disappointed because small firms usually have a pretty good community orientation, and they want to help develop our next generation for a good future for the individual and the country.