Human Resources Committee on Oct. 21st, 2025

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you.

Thank you very much, gentlemen, for being here today.

I'd like to take us a little bit away from the immigration issue right now to look at regulations. Within our platform that we wrote and our mandate in the election, we talked about taking away some of those regulations and silos among provincial governments or from private sector employees.

I'm going to also share my time with my colleague here, Mr. Joseph, but my first question is for Mr. Lang. Thank you very much for being here.

I read a little bit about you the other day and the depth and breadth of what you do within the YES program. Looking at that regulation piece, I'd like to know what types of private sector partnerships or collaborations you feel we could do as a federal government to help strengthen our ability to connect youth and with employers.

[Timothy Lang]

From my view, with all due respect, I can't think of a collaboration between the government and the private sector. I think the better avenue would be allowing organizations like ours to go and do that work and certainly with more resources or encouragement to ensure there's greater collaboration at different levels.

We work with all organizations—lots of entry-level jobs for really barriered youth, but also engineers, people with a Ph.D. We work with all youth. There is already, you could say, a system where there is collaboration between the private sector and a not-for-profit, an NGO. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anything the government could do better other than more resources or encouragement to ensure that this happens.

We're always thinking of different ways to drive youth employment, and even in the last conversation with MP Genuis.... I know for a fact that a friend of mine who runs a manufacturing plant in Calgary said he depends on temporary foreign workers. As he was speaking, I was thinking that maybe there could be a program where we encourage young people, if the wages are right, to go and take those jobs. We know that lots of times they won't, but again, test everything. We love testing things. If it fails, it fails. That could be another type of collaboration. We know in some sectors—manufacturing and, certainly, agriculture—that a lot of youth just will not take those jobs, but maybe we should try to encourage them through incentives, relocation and higher wages.

As far as collaboration with the private sector goes, we do it well. I can't think of anything other than what's already in place.

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Thank you very much.

You mentioned in your introduction about getting bang for your buck versus investment in impact. I'd like you to expand a little bit, then, regarding what we as a federal government can do with our investments to help gain further impact.

[Timothy Lang]

Yes, I appreciate that. I'm proud of my organization. Again, maybe coming from the private sector, I run it like a small business—entrepreneurial. We know every dollar saved can go to a youth who might not have enough money to even get to our program, so we try to save money so they can have it for food if they come hungry, or for TTC tokens, transportation or whatnot.

To your very important point of what the government could do, again, my strong belief is to look at the programs that are results-oriented, that work and have impact and hopefully fund them more. Organizations like ours are relatively small, and certainly in terms of funding from the federal government, very small. Just a little bit more funding could go a long way, because we see changed lives day in and day out. That's why I go back to knowing there will be people in my sector who will be annoyed, because they do sometimes get tens of millions—10 times more than us—for research and round tables, and ministers will come to speak and it looks impressive.

Even on this panel I saw some past transcripts where someone was saying that youth who are unemployed develop more mental health issues. Well, I'm sorry for being cynical, but obviously. Some of the things are obvious. We know that first-hand, and we do our own research.

All that is a long-winded way of saying—I apologize—put more focus on impact organizations and make sure there truly is impact. We have targets we have to hit.

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

It's accountability and targeting.

Thank you so much, Mr. Lang.

[Timothy Lang]

Yes.

[Jessica Fancy-Landry, Liberal, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

I would like to share the rest of my time with Mr. Joseph.

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

Good morning, Mr. Worswick.

I'll be blunt. I've been listening to you for some time—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

I'm afraid your time is up.

Thank you, Ms. Fancy and 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.

My question is for both Mr. Lang and Mr. Worswick.

Mr. Lang mentioned that some fields of employment would be less attractive to young people or students. Yesterday I drove 1,000 kilometres. I drive a lot on a regular basis, and I see a lot of businesses with job offers. However, there are no takers for these positions.

In your respective work and with your responsibilities, are you seeing a change in what the workforce expects from a job?

[Christopher Worswick]

Thank you for the question.

Employer expectations probably are shifting. That's my reading of what's happening. If I owned a small business and I could hire a 28-year-old person from Mexico who has a family to feed versus an 18-year-old Canadian who is a bit lost and hasn't decided what they want to do, I think I would want to hire the temporary foreign worker. However, that's not what the program is really about. The program is supposed to be about filling gaps in the labour market and helping when searches fail.

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

I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I don't have much time.

I was talking more about the employees themselves, because the jobs are available. One entrepreneur told me that, in four years, he had received only 10 résumés from young people in the region, and that he had no choice but to turn to another workforce.

Are young workers' expectations different, which would explain why, for perfectly legitimate reasons, they wouldn't accept certain positions?

[Christopher Worswick]

I'm sorry that I misunderstood the question.

Jobs with higher wages are more attractive, all things being the same—that's obvious—but we have a situation where we're reliant and where firms are benefiting from international temporary migrants of different types. It's hard to know the counterfactual. If the wages were higher, would Canadian citizens and landed immigrants who are young take these jobs? I think they would. In my mind, the question is how much higher the wages would have to be.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mrs. Gill.

Mrs. Goodridge, go ahead for five minutes.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank both of the witnesses for being here today.

I will start with you, Mr. Lang.

Would you say there's a tendency in this Liberal government to spend millions on strategies and round tables rather than targeting the root causes of these issues?

[Timothy Lang]

I've definitely seen, from ESDC or other departments, investment in organizations like ours, which we greatly appreciate, but certainly the last government did cut funding. It was said that they didn't cut funding; it was that they were just oversubscribed. To me, that was hard to hear, because that means they cut funding from organizations like ours and gave it to new organizations. That was a mistake, I think, because they don't understand that it means not only cuts. We then have to lay off people, pay severance and pay leases that we don't have programs for.

If programs work and you're reaching your targets, they should at least be maintained or continued, but then, as I said before, I've seen organizations that get tens of millions and, again, have these round tables, fancy websites and 17 executives for every position. In our organization, my VPs wear three or four hats, like IT and programs. They do three or four things because we know every dollar saved can go to help youth.

I have seen that and I am hoping, through today, we will all agree that more should be done for organizations that have real impact, and I think it's important to look at what real impact is. I go back to the—

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

The WE Charity...?

[Timothy Lang]

Yes. For the WE Charity, we used to say their impact.... They counted the whole school as an impact when they really just meant the student council or volunteer. I'll use that as the example.

Even when you have organizations that have impact, it's important to look closely. What is their impact? Ours is clear: It's jobs. We get tens of thousands of people. Do we put them in employment? It's true that we include impact as going back to school or into some sort of training, but what is the impact?

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I appreciate that. It leads into my next question.

Do you track the percentage of youth from your internships, placements and mentorship programs, etc., who remain with the employer post-program?

[Timothy Lang]

That's a great question. We get it all the time. Because of our own resources, we track them up to a year. Beyond that, it's hard. Usually, if they're in employment for a year, we know anecdotally. I've met people who have been out 20 years and say, “You changed my life” and so on.

We know the hardest part is getting their foot in the door. Sometimes, as you can imagine, the things we take for granted.... There are really sad situations. In their own home, they might have a parent saying, “You're no good. You're a loser.” We have to—

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I appreciate that. We have a limited amount of time.

[Timothy Lang]

Sure.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

I share your concern. I think it's absolutely shameful that for the last 10 years, we've had a government that has spent tons of money on all kinds of make-work projects and the WE scandal. There are so many scandals that have added up. The result we are seeing is a youth unemployment crisis.

I'm the member of Parliament for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake. People from all across the country and all across the world have come to Fort McMurray for generations. We've seen no housing starts this year in Fort McMurray. We don't see any growth because all we see are antidevelopment policies coming from the government.

Do you think the anti-energy policies from the government are having an impact on youth jobs?

[Timothy Lang]

That's probably out of our area of expertise. I couldn't comment on that.

[Laila Goodridge, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Worswick, could you speak to that? Are Liberal anti-energy policies having an impact on youth employment in Canada?