Evidence of meeting #8 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was students.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Thank you, Monsieur Joseph.
That concludes the first hour.
Thank you to the witnesses.
We'll suspend for a couple of moments while we onboard the witnesses for the last hour.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Committee members, if you could take your places, we will begin the second hour of witness testimony on this study.
I would like to welcome the witnesses here with us in the room and appearing virtually.
As a reminder, you participate in the official language of your choice. Make sure you have your headset on the right channel. For those appearing virtually, click on the globe icon at the bottom and choose the language of your choice to participate.
Please direct all questions through me, the chair, and wait until I recognize you before you speak.
I would like to welcome, as an individual, Mr. Richard Dias, global macrostrategist. He is here virtually.
As well, in the room we have Ms. Delaney Krieger, senior manager, career services, Build a Dream. Welcome.
From the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations—we want to hear from them—are Mr. Abdul Abbasi, chair of the board of directors, and Ms. Wasiimah Joomun, executive director.
Each of you will have five minutes for an opening statement.
We'll begin with Mr. Dias for five minutes or less.
Mr. Dias, you can begin.
Richard Dias Global Macro Strategist, As an Individual
Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate all of the hard work. Bear with me as I read this statement. I'll be happy to answer questions later.
Canada's recent immigration turn was, perhaps, the single worst policy error in Canadian history. It was sold as an all-purpose growth strategy, but tripling population growth, via immigration, of mostly younger, low-skilled and low-wage people, has had significant second-order impacts that have wide-ranging negative impacts on housing, health care, productivity growth and, of course, youth unemployment.
According to the Bank of Canada's 2025 staff paper, by Champagne, Long and Poulin-Moore, the policy design quietly shifted labour market risk onto the youngest workers, deepening wage pressures and, by extension, worsening youth unemployment and disenfranchising Canada's working class.
The pivot is compositional. Since 2025, and dramatically in 2023 and 2024, non-permanent residents replaced permanent residents as the main driver of population growth, fuelled by international mobility program permits and a surge in study permits. In the labour force survey of micro data that was referred to in this paper, NPR workers have become markedly younger and less experienced. The share of NPRs who are students hit 16.4% in 2023-24, and the average potential experience fell to 11.5 years. At the same time, their footprint shifted towards lower-productivity service-sector jobs, exactly the rungs that young Canadians traditionally climb first.
There was a price effect. The average nominal wage between NPRs and Canadian-born workers more than doubled, from -9.5% in 2006-14 to -22.6% in 2023-24. The authors of the paper I cited talk about how the widening gap is almost entirely explained by observable traits—less experience, different industries, occupation, and birth region effects—meaning it's structural and not a mirage.
How did this translate into youth unemployment and underemployment? First, it intensified competition in hiring at the margin. Employers, facing a glut of young temporary workers with open work or LMIA-exempt status, can fill schedules flexibly and cheaply, reducing the incentives to invest in training or create stable junior roles. Second, wage compression at the bottom rungs lowers search efficiencies. Third, there were credential downgrading spreads. When university students and recent graduates, domestic and international, crowd into low-skilled positions, substitution pushes other young workers out or into shorter shifts. Finally, churn begets churn.
I want to be clear: None of this is an indictment on the immigrants. My parents were both immigrants to Canada. This is an indictment on a government policy mix that prioritized volume and administrative ease over labour market integration, wage floors and the basic inability to consider the second-order effects of immigration policy.
The bank's paper quietly concludes that the composition matters. Canada's chosen composition has pushed down the ladder where young workers stand, and that's not an accident. It was a policy horror, because it was predicted in a committee just like this one.
My conclusion is that the immigration policy was, in effect, a transfer of wealth from the young and working class to the old and rich. Now, supply-and-demand dynamics affect all kinds of markets. Naturally, this is true for labour markets. Increase supply, and prices—or, in this case, wages—will fall. The opposite is also true. This forces us to consider the counterfactual. Persistent labour market vacancies, especially for low-skilled, low-wage earners, would have led to higher wages, which would have forced businesses to invest more in training, retention and capital expenditures more generally, which would have increased productivity growth. This would have benefited all Canadians and reduced inequality. The immigration policy we've suffered has done the exact opposite.
If we don't want opportunity to become a euphemism for young people, we need to change the plumbing. We need to throttle LMIA-exempt channels to genuine public interest cases. We need to align international student intake with housing—which we're sort of doing, I guess—and enforce the sectoral wage and our standards aggressively. We need to tie employer access to demonstrable training investments and convert more temporary pathways into stable permanent residency, so that firms have a reason to upskill young new hires rather than replacing them.
Thank you. I'm available for questions.
Liberal
Delaney Krieger Senior Manager, Career Services, Build a Dream to Empower Women
Thank you.
Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and honourable members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today
My name is Delaney, and I started my career through an apprenticeship in the construction industry. Since obtaining my Red Seal, I have transitioned into a role in which I can bring the insights and knowledge I gained through that experience to address some of the barriers that I and so many Canadians have faced and continue to face in our workforce.
I currently serve as senior manager of career services at Build a Dream, a national non-profit organization that works to advance women and under-represented groups in careers such as the skilled trades, STEM and emergency response.
I was born and raised in Windsor, Ontario, a city that has consistently had the highest unemployment rates in the country, and I now live in Calgary, Alberta, where we're seeing similar challenges for youth entering the workforce.
For me, this issue is deeply personal. I've seen first-hand how difficult it can be for young people, especially women, to find meaningful, stable work, even in regions with strong labour demand.
The recent rise in youth unemployment is not simply a short-term fluctuation. It reflects multiple structural challenges, shaping Canada's labour market.
First, we are seeing a shift in retirement patterns. Baby boomers are delaying retirement or remaining in the workforce while drawing pensions. According to Statistics Canada, the median age of retirement rose from 64.5 in 2020 to 65.1 in 2024, and the share of paid workers covered by registered pension plans continues to increase. While this speaks to longevity and engagement, it also creates a bottleneck. Younger generations are struggling to advance through their careers, and leadership transitions are stalling. This delay in turnover limits upward mobility and results in many mid-career professionals' being overqualified for lower-level jobs, which pushes youth out of the entry-level labour market altogether. Compounding this, there's often no structured transfer of knowledge from senior workers to younger ones. In my experience in the skilled trades, I often worked under supervisors who were eligible for retirement but stayed on because of financial pressures and a lack of qualified successors.
Second, as has been covered in this committee in previous meetings, Canada's immigration and credentialling systems are unintentionally contributing to labour mismatches. The 2021 census found that 25.8% of immigrants with foreign degrees were working in jobs requiring, at most, a high school diploma, which was more than twice the rate of overqualification among Canadian-born workers. Not only does this lead to underutilization of skilled talent, but it also increases competition for entry-level jobs that would otherwise be accessible to youth. At Build a Dream, we've heard this echoed by both employers and workers. Newcomers are eager to contribute, but they are held back by credential barriers and limited recognition of prior experience.
Third, the rising cost of living is forcing more people to work multiple jobs. Statistics Canada reports that 6.6% of youth aged 15 to 24 now hold more than one job, for the highest rate of any age group. This trend is especially pronounced among women, racialized Canadians and newcomers, who are overrepresented in low-wage and part-time industries. When older mid-career workers take on secondary employment, the number of available part-time and entry-level opportunities for youth declines even further.
These structural pressures are converging to create a cycle in which young people are shut out of meaningful first jobs, newcomers are underemployed, and experienced workers are unable to retire. To break that cycle, we need a holistic approach—one that looks beyond job creation and focuses on career progression, equity and retention across the workforce.
At Build a Dream, our work is focused on building pathways that don't stop at career exploration. They lead to long-term success. We work with employers through such initiatives as our trades skills incubator and career discovery expos. We help youth, especially young women, explore high-demand careers in sectors such as construction, manufacturing and technology.
Exploration is just the first step. To ensure that interest translates into sustainable employment, our workforce initiative network and career support services provide ongoing mentorship, upskilling opportunities and wraparound supports. Together, these programs not only help young people enter the workforce but also ensure their retention, advancement and long-term success, addressing the bottlenecks we're seeing in entry-level positions across Canada.
As part of the solution, I would recommend, first, supporting intergenerational knowledge transfers in such sectors as the skilled trades, ensuring that mid-level workers and qualified immigrants are trained and ready to step into leadership roles; second, investing in credential recognition and upskilling programs to ensure that immigrants can contribute fully to their fields and open entry-level roles for entry-level workers, such as youth; and third, developing targeted incentives and mentorship initiatives to support women and under-represented youth in transitioning into higher-paying, secure careers.
The youth employment challenge is not just about economics; it's about fairness and future opportunity. If we don't act now, we risk losing a generation of talent that Canada's workforce urgently needs.
Thank you for your time and commitment to this issue. I look forward to your questions.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Thank you, Ms. Krieger.
Now, Mr. Abbasi, you have five minutes, please.
Abdul Abbasi Chair of the Board of Directors, Canadian Alliance of Student Associations
Good afternoon. My name is Abdul Abbasi. I'm here on behalf of the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations, or CASA for short. We represent more than 410,000 post-secondary students across Canada. I also serve as the vice-president, external, for the University of Alberta Students' Union. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today.
This committee has heard from a range of stakeholders on the rise in youth unemployment. I would like to highlight how this crisis is particularly affecting post-secondary students. This past summer, we saw the highest unemployment rate for students since 1999, excluding the COVID years. While the long-term benefits of post-secondary education remain clear, we're increasingly concerned about the short-term employment challenges students face.
Post-secondary graduates experience low unemployment in their prime working years, with unemployment among 25- to 29-year-olds being approximately 40% lower for college and university graduates than those with a high school diploma, but we are finding that it is work during study and immediately after graduation that students are struggling with the most. The unemployment rate for 15- to 24-year-olds is roughly twice as high as core age employment. Our focus is on identifying targeted measures to support this vulnerable group at a critical point in their educational and professional journeys.
Other witnesses before this committee have highlighted a skills mismatch. We believe it is less that the wrong skills are being taught; rather, employers expect a more complete skill set, including having workplace experience. From what we have heard—ask any student, and they will also tell you—entry-level positions frequently require prior experience, making it increasingly difficult to get a foot in the door.
CASA understands the position that employers are in. We think a large factor in this year's rise in youth unemployment is due to a rise in business uncertainty, linked largely with geopolitical risk. For many businesses, short-term positions are the easiest to eliminate in times of economic uncertainty, especially when training investments made during a two- or four-month summer job or co-op position won't remain at a company, but these short-term hires are essential for building the skills that employers expect for early-career workers. When these opportunities are limited, it not only affects individual career trajectories; it also poses a risk to Canada's long-term economic competitiveness. It is generally understood that employers will underinvest in training relative to the economic optimum.
CASA believes that to address the student unemployment crisis, work-integrated learning is critical. Getting students entry-level experience is something that will require economic incentive to reduce employers' perceived risks.
In its platform, the current government committed to provide funding for youth employment programs, including the student work placement program, or SWPP. We know that SWPP is an excellent tool to promote high-quality work-integrated learning placement and has added flexibility to provide opportunities outside of just the summer. In fact, an evaluation of SWPP in 2022 found 95% satisfaction with the program for both students and employers. While the program in 2023-24 was supporting about 60,000 young students annually, it has shrunk to 40,000 this year. That does not help in addressing the unemployment crisis. We therefore would like to see longer-term commitments to funding for 60,000 positions. We believe greater predictability in funding will be welcomed by businesses that rely on the program to support talent development and workforce planning.
Work-integrated learning is a chance to improve educational quality and workforce preparedness. Students are gaining skills that will increase their future employability, and they are earning while they learn. Employment helps students afford essentials like tuition and rent. Around a quarter of students struggle to pay rent. Half say they skip meals to make ends meet. Providing students with paying positions is one way to reduce this hardship. An assessment of SWPP participants by the Information and Communications Technology Council in 2023 found that students received significantly more in income than their next best employment option, and employers gained net value from the program despite their required wage contribution to the students.
This is just one of the tools we see at the government's disposal to build a higher-skilled and productive workforce, but it is an important one.
We look forward to a wider-ranging discussion and your questions.
Thank you.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Bobby Morrissey
Thank you, Mr. Abbasi.
We will now begin the first questioning, with Mr. Genuis for six minutes.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Thank you, Chair.
Thank you to all the witnesses. This is very revealing testimony today.
Mr. Dias, you spoke about how Liberal immigration policy has been way out of whack with Canada's economic interests. You spoke about levels being too high but also about the mix. You informed us about how the mix has tilted towards those coming into entry-level positions and said that has had particular effects exacerbating economic divisions and inequality in our country. That is, having an immigration system that skews towards people taking entry-level positions has been to the advantage of the wealthy, and it's particularly hurt the young and the working class.
I wonder if you could share a bit more about how the choices in terms of the mix and the particular immigration programs have impacted young people and the working class in particular. Then, also, could you share more about the solutions? What should we be doing now, in light of what has happened in the last 10 years and particularly the last five, to put our immigration system on a better footing?
Global Macro Strategist, As an Individual
I mean, you said it's been against economic interests. I don't think that's quite true. Many people have benefited from this immigration, in my view. Genuinely, I honest to goodness believe it is the single worst policy error ever. Between 1980 and 2015, total population growth in Canada was 319,000, and in the last three years running consecutively it was 900,000, the vast majority of whom are immigrants and the vast majority of whom are young, low-skilled and low-wage immigrants.
When we look at the youth unemployment rate, that's where it begins and ends. Other people who came to this committee and warned about this in 2014 and 2015 were ignored, obviously. They basically said this exact thing would happen. I would suggest that the committee members go back and listen to those speeches and read those committee submissions. It's simple supply and demand. If you import a lot of young and desperate people, they will displace the young and desperate people who are incumbent to this economy.
The other thing that I think is really important and we often forget about is that it doesn't force businesses to adjust and invest in the workers who are here. I was listening to the previous statements, and they said we need to improve training and we need to encourage businesses to support the training, education and retention of young people. Nothing does that better than having a significant contraction in supply, which is what we were entering into in 2014-15. For the exact reasons those corporations were complaining about having too many vacancies, the attitude from the government should have been, “Tough luck; do something about it,” and those companies would have been forced to do all of the suggestions I heard those well-respected and well-spoken contributors say just a half an hour ago, which is talking about training, retention and providing pathways to secure long-term roles.
Going forward, we need to basically end all of those programs and allow the market to clear. Unfortunately, there's really no fix. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. It will take a long time—many years—for this to unwind.
Conservative
Garnett Genuis Conservative Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB
Thank you.
I'd like to share the balance of my time with Ms. Cobena.
Conservative
Sandra Cobena Conservative Newmarket—Aurora, ON
My question is for Mr. Dias as well.
Economists often speak about intergenerational equity. Would you agree that today's high deficits and debt represent a form of intergenerational burden whereby younger workers and families are left to pay for yesterday's overspending?
Global Macro Strategist, As an Individual
Yes. I don't believe in.... I don't like the word “equity”, but I do think.... When I say that there was a transfer of wealth from the young and, in particular, working class.... We often forget about that. It's not just youth unemployment. It's the unemployed or discouraged workers—people who are less educated, who would have also been competing against those low-wage, low-skilled immigrants.
In a scenario where you don't have that labour market supply, the demand, if it's consistent, will push up wages, which would basically get rid of inequality to some degree, certainly at the margin. You would have high labour demand at the low-skill, low-wage position, which is largely the working class and young people. You would have a much higher wage growth at that part.
Unfortunately, the opposite happened. Obviously, if you're low-wage and low-skilled, and you're in the working class, you're spending more and more of your income on rent. Of course, what do international students and low-wage, low-skilled immigrants do? They rent. What do old, rich people do? They buy.
It was literally the worst possible way to improve your labour market. Instead of being progressive, which is what I think most policies should be, it was actually regressive. It was a transfer of wealth from the young and working class to the old and wealthy, and to corporations.
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I see that we didn't stay too long on the topic of youth unemployment. We quickly veered to the topic of immigration. I find it quite appalling that this forum is being used to express these kinds of anti-immigrant views, when our country was built on immigrants.
I would just like to remind you that our previous panel talked about the root of youth unemployment, which is really what we're trying to do here with this study. We're trying to better understand what's at the root of youth unemployment and how some of the programs we have, if any, are supporting youth gaining meaningful employment—what we could do better and what we could change.
I'd like to focus my time on that. I do invite members to.... I will leave it at that.
Congratulations, first of all, to our witnesses here in the room. Thank you for taking your time. Thank you for putting your thoughts together and sharing this with us.
You talked about the importance of integrated work and learning—learning on site. Out of the federally supported programs that are currently supporting this, could you expand a bit on what works well and what we should try to preserve?
Maybe we can start with Mr. Abbasi, and then we can move to the other witnesses.
Chair of the Board of Directors, Canadian Alliance of Student Associations
Something that previous witnesses have also touched on, and we have seen working well, is the student work placement program. In recent talent shortage surveys, 77% of Canadian companies struggle to find qualified workers. That is essentially what student work placement programs help address, making sure that, again, companies like biotechs are helping train those students, so that when they go to the workforce, they have those skills. There is a need to fund that, and going from 40,000 students to 60,000 students, especially considering the youth unemployment situation we're in.
Senior Manager, Career Services, Build a Dream to Empower Women
Thank you for the question. It's an excellent one to really focus on and highlight what's been working.
Something we at Build a Dream have really found is that our investment into our retention and advancement has alleviated a bit of what I was speaking about, how that mid-level worker is what's really pushing. On the heavy end of things, on the retirement side of things, there are a lot of individuals, especially if you're working for a small and medium-sized business.... I can't even begin to describe how many times I've worked with employers who have fewer than 20 people, and there's an employee who's highly skilled and highly trained but unable to retire because they are the only person who holds that knowledge. You have that person on one end, and then you have these young, eager high school students on the other end.
The issue is that because nobody's supporting these young, eager students and youth, etc., through that mid-level phase in transitioning into that leadership pipeline, the more senior workers who are close to retirement are actually unable to leave. They want to enjoy retirement, more often than not, but because they can't rely on the youth and the students to, within three months, pick up all of the skills and knowledge that took 20 years to build, we're seeing that big gap there.
Definitely more investment into the retention supports and the advancement supports would help ensure that those individuals—the youth and anybody in these more entry-level jobs—are able to progress through into mid-level careers without leaving the industry entirely.
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you.
Ms. Joomun, do you want to add anything on this?
Wasiimah Joomun Executive Director, Canadian Alliance of Student Associations
No, thank you.
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
I'll just go back to Mr. Abbasi.
We have programs like the FSWEP and co-op programs, which help students get meaningful experience while they're studying.
In your view and in your engagement with all of your students nationally, does that help them continue that employment afterward? Do they fare better in finding a job afterward because of those experiences?
Chair of the Board of Directors, Canadian Alliance of Student Associations
As you have mentioned, work-integrated learning is something that is really important and prepares students for the workforce that they will be going into. We have heard that if they have those work-integrated learning skills and experiences beforehand and if they have those experiences, it really helps them to keep that job or get a job afterward.
Coming back to SWPP, only about a quarter of the employers that hired students through SWPP said they would have hired otherwise. That also means that 75% of the jobs that were created would never have been created. With the student population increasing and with youth unemployment increasing, I think there is a need for more opportunities like that.
When students have those co-op and internship opportunities.... The expectation that employers have is that after you graduate you need to have a year or some experience in the job market in your field, in an entry-level job. It's getting really hard, and these co-op or internship opportunities really help bridge that gap, so students can have those jobs.