Human Resources Committee on Oct. 21st, 2025

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

You have 40 seconds, Mr. Reynolds, if you want them.

[Colin Reynolds, Conservative, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Lang, do you see anything that we can do better to promote the trades among young people and change that stigma?

[Timothy Lang]

Yes, continuing in schools.... The colleges do a good job in their trades programs, but certainly in the high schools, it's to continue to change the mentality. I know that it's sometimes hard, even in boards of education, to encourage that. In my day, they had shop classes. I think that some of those have gone away in schools.

From a government perspective, I know that the Ontario government has done a good job of continuing to try to fund organizations that not only promote this but that hire young people into the trades.

We're one of the recipients. We have a trades program. The programs are more expensive because some of the trades programs of course include all the tools and so on, but it's well worth it in the long run. We can't grow housing if we don't have the tradespeople to do it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Reynolds.

Mr. Joseph, you have two minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank Mrs. Gill for giving me her time.

We're talking about shutting down the temporary foreign worker program, but these workers hold the majority of full-time jobs in economic sectors like agriculture, food processing and construction, and those sectors are saying that they simply can't operate without these workers. In my riding, I've been approached by companies like Kabs Laboratories Inc. about the temporary foreign worker program.

Can you suggest a realistic alternative for people in these sectors, or are you talking about possibly sacrificing the economy for ideological reasons?

[Christopher Worswick]

I certainly wouldn't sacrifice the economy for ideological reasons, but I would say that in the absence of a temporary foreign worker program, I would expect—as I've said already—that firms would readvertise at a higher wage rate. They might attract Canadian citizens or landed immigrants to the jobs, or they might invest in new technology.

The Nobel Prize in economics was awarded last week, I think, to Peter Howitt, an esteemed professor at Brown University, who taught at Western University for many years. Their theories are about “creative destruction”—that new companies come in and replace old companies. There are papers in that literature that basically say that if you protect companies that rely on low-wage workers, they will invest less in innovation and new technology, and you'll short-circuit that growth.

These are the concerns I have. It's the impact for younger, low-wage workers in Canada, Canadian citizens and landed immigrants, and what the implications are for economic growth for the country.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Mr. Joseph, you have 10 seconds left.

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

That will be all.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you to the two witnesses for appearing this morning.

We'll suspend for two minutes while we transition to the final panel group.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Committee members, if you could take your seats, we will begin the second hour of today's meeting on youth employment.

I welcome the witnesses. You have the option to speak in the official language of your choice. As you are all appearing virtually, use the globe icon at the bottom of your Surface. Choose the official language of your choice. If there is an issue with interpretation, please use the “raise hand” icon, and I will suspend while it is being corrected. As well, please direct all questions through the chair.

Each one of you have a five-minute opening statement. At five minutes or a little over, I will thank you, which means that I would like you to wrap up quickly so we can get to our questioners.

With that, I would like to welcome, from CEE Centre for Young Black Professionals, Agapi Gessesse, executive director. From the Kiewit Corporation, we have Shaudia Ricketts. From Youth Jobs Canada, we have Joe Hersch.

I will begin with the Centre for Young Black Professionals.

Ms. Gessesse, you have the floor.

[Agapi Gessesse, Executive Director, CEE Centre for Young Black Professionals]

Good afternoon, Chair, Vice-Chair and committee members. Thank you so much for the opportunity to be here.

My name is Agapi Gessesse. I have the honour and the privilege of serving as the executive director of CEE Centre for Young Black Professionals, an organization that was founded in 2012 after the “summer of the gun”, and our mission is to create an economy where Black youth can become financially prosperous, live high-quality lives and contribute to the advancement of Canada.

We do this work by providing holistic skills training, mental health supports, mentorship and strategic partnerships with both employers and community organizations. We focus on the workforce development part by looking at where there are labour gaps in the Canadian market and how we can get Black youth from the back of the unemployment line to the front by looking strategically at where industry has the largest labour gaps, and that's what we base our programming off of. We then find employers to support our efforts, alongside government as well.

We have been doing this work for nearly 15 years, and we have three very distinct approaches.

Number one is a person-centred approach. It's really focusing on the young people furthest from the labour market. We have full-time social workers who are able to support a young person not only in their skills training but also in their life stabilization. We have full-time social workers who work on their food security and their housing security. We have an employer attached to most of our programs. We look at their transportation, how they plan to get to and from work, and, if they have children, their child care. We're really focusing on the individuals themselves and supporting them not only while they're in our program but also as they transition into the workforce. We keep our young people on a case management load for two years after they've graduated.

The second approach is what we call a trauma-informed approach. By virtue of the demographic we're serving, young people are coming from all walks of life and are experiencing different levels of trauma. One that we see very often is academic trauma that is experienced in our education systems and also might be related to life stabilization at home, etc. We have full-time psychotherapists on staff to support our young people who need extra mental health supports in order to be prepared for the workforce.

The third approach we take is a culturally relevant approach that we have tweaked over the years we've been doing this work, and it really speaks to the soft skills of a young person. We believe in experiential learning and learning things like social capital: What is it, and how are you going to create a conversation with your colleagues at work who, outside of the workplace, you might not have anything in common with? How do you network? How do you set up your LinkedIn profile? It's all of those soft skills that are super critical for this work economy.

We started in Toronto and now have turned into a national organization. We have expanded our reach outside and scaled into other urban centres, like Ottawa, Montreal, Edmonton and Halifax. We partner with other grassroots and emerging Black-led organizations to support our expansion and to be able to see the fruits of our model.

Over our entire existence, we have an 87% retention rate, which means, two years after graduation, 87% of the young people who graduate through CEE's programs are working in the industry we trained them in. We've served over 4,500 young people, and we're not only equipping them for the workforce. We're also supporting them as individuals to help them imagine where it is they would like to contribute to the economy and how they would like to do that. All of our programs are really centred around a skill that cannot be taken away from them. Then they decide what it is they'd like to do with that—if they would like to become an entrepreneur, if they would like to work a nine-to-five or if they would like to take that skill and become a freelancer. However they decide they would like to contribute to the economy is where we would like to see our young people thrive, and we've been able to see 87% of them do so.

Of the young people we serve at CEE, 70% are on social assistance, and 77% of that 70% have successfully transitioned off of social assistance after joining our programs. We know that our model works, and our model also needs to be expanded so that we can serve more young people. In June 2025—I'm sure these stats are not foreign to any of you—our unemployment rate for young people sat at a national average of 14.2%, the highest since the pandemic.

Black youth, unfortunately, are at 24.4% as of last year. That's more than double the national average. In Ontario, nearly one in four teenagers in the labour force is unemployed and some demographic groups face as high as 22%. These are not just statistics. These represent wasted potential and an untapped talent pool that we at CEE try to address.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Gessesse.

We'll now go to Ms. Ricketts for five minutes, please.

[Shaudia Ricketts, Head of Trades Strategy and Recruitment, North America, Kiewit Corporation]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. Thank you for the opportunity to speak about youth employment in Canada, particularly in the skilled trades and construction sector.

My name is Shaudia Ricketts and I serve as the head of trades strategy and recruitment at Kiewit Corporation, one of North America's largest construction and engineering companies. Additionally, I serve on the board of directors for the Canadian Apprenticeship Forum, a national non-profit that brings together industry, labour, educators and government to strengthen Canada's apprenticeship system.

From both points, I see the same reality. The skilled trades offer incredible opportunity, yet too many young Canadians are still struggling to access, complete and thrive in these careers.

Skilled trades are vital to Canada's economy, contributing over $150 billion annually to GDP and employing 1.6 million Canadians. With nearly one in five construction workers retiring by 2030, we must increase youth participation and apprenticeship completion to meet infrastructure and housing goals. Meanwhile, youth unemployment has climbed to 14.6%, its highest level in 15 years.

The disconnect is striking. We have the jobs and we have the youth, but the bridge between them remains too weak to overcome persistent barriers.

The first barrier is limited early exposure. Too few students encounter trades careers in school. Underfunded shop programs and insufficient guidance mean many miss out on early engagement, which is crucial for changing perceptions and opening doors.

Second is complex apprenticeship systems. Varied provincial and territorial regulations, coupled with inconsistent certification processes, create confusion and discourage completion. A harmonized approach is essential to improve mobility and completion rates.

Third is financial and mobility pressures. Apprentices often travel far and pay out-of-pocket for housing and tools. Limited financial support leads many to drop out before certification.

Fourth is employment insurance gaps. Many apprentices are ineligible for EI during training or face delays in benefits. Financial barriers are the leading cause of program discontinuation.

Fifth is representation challenges. Women, indigenous youth and newcomers remain under-represented. Many communities lack local training or culturally relevant supports. Removing these barriers is absolutely essential to growing our talent pipeline.

Despite these challenges, promising initiatives are emerging across Canada: mentorship and early outreach programs that introduce trades careers before high school graduation; industry-indigenous partnerships that embed cultural relevance in local employment pathways; employer-led retention programs that support apprentices through certification and federal initiatives such as the apprenticeship service program, which incentivizes small employers to hire first-year apprentices. However, large employers, those training thousands of apprentices annually, were excluded from this program. To achieve meaningful scale and address national labour shortages, we need inclusive policies that engage all employers, large and small.

To build a sustainable, inclusive and future-ready workforce and to address the barriers outlined above, I respectfully recommend the following actions.

First is to strengthen early career awareness. Invest in modern shop facilities and school-industry partnerships and use real-time labour market data to guide students towards high-demand trades.

Second is to expand apprenticeship access and incentives. Introduce targeted tax incentives for project developers and major industrial owners who demonstrate a commitment to workforce development by ensuring all contractors meet or exceed federally recognized apprenticeship hiring requirements. Establish targeted tax incentives or funding programs for employers who retain apprentices through to certification completion, reinforcing employer investment in long-term workforce development. Incorporate apprenticeship completion metrics into public procurement and infrastructure contracts, rewarding employers who successfully train and certify apprentices. Continue harmonizing apprenticeship standards across provinces and territories to improve mobility, consistency and credential recognition nationwide.

Third, we need to modernize the employment insurance program. We need to adapt EI eligibility to reflect project-based trades work and guarantee uninterrupted support during training, and have pilot models that reimburse employers who maintain wage support for apprentices during training blocks, strengthening retention and reducing dropout rates.

Fourth, we need to reduce the financial and mobility barriers for apprentices. We need to provide targeted supports for travel, housing and tools to enable apprentices to access training when it is unavailable locally. We need to expand non-repayable grants rather than loans to reduce financial burdens, recognizing that debt-based models have not been shown to improve completion outcomes.

Fifth, we need to grow Canada's skilled trades talent pipeline from under-represented groups. We need to fund preapprenticeship, mentorship and bridging programs for women, indigenous youth, newcomers and other equity-seeking groups, and support indigenous-led training partnerships that reflect community cultural strengths and regional economic opportunities.

The skilled trades offer purpose, pride and prosperity for young Canadians, but the system must evolve with policies that reflect how apprentices actually live, learn and work. Canada needs a national apprenticeship strategy, codesigned by industry, labour, educators and government—not in silos but in partnership.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and members of the committee. I welcome your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Ricketts.

Mr. Hersch, you have five minutes or less.

[Joe Hersch, Managing Director, YouthjobsCanada]

Good day, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Joe Hersch. I'm the managing director of YouthjobsCanada. We have been in operation for eight years. We were founded in 2017.

The YouthjobsCanada mission statement is to bridge the divide in Canada between youth and at-risk youth ages 15 to 30 and employers by helping provide the building blocks for youth of all diversity, with an innovative, integrated and singular platform offering graduating options to building long-term relationships with employers.

The YouthjobsCanada vision statement is to provide a valuable resource in Canada to youth and vulnerable youth and employers in order to improve the job-ready skills of at-risk youth by working together in transition opportunities today in order to improve and lower the high youth unemployment rate in Canada tomorrow.

At the moment and since about 2021, we have been working with the Canada job bank with a feed of jobs that are posted on Canada job bank into YouthjobsCanada. We're in a somewhat unique position that way, and we value and respect the relationship we've been able to build with the Canada job bank and ESDC.

We also, in our heartfelt best wisdom, had this mission to truly help make a difference and bring down that high youth unemployment rate since 2017. Taking snapshots from year to year—and it's hit a lightning rod this year—everybody has come to the realization that youth unemployment is still really high.

Although we see some successes with the YESS program, we'd sure like to stimulate some further conversation between ESDC and the YESS program leadership group to find out how we can better collaborate and work together.

There are some contributing factors to why the youth unemployment rate is high. Earlier today, some individuals hit on some of those points, which we agree with. There are barriers there. There are individuals with disabilities and challenges to integrating into the workforce. That's not disputed but in order to try to really come up with a level playing field relative to why organizations may be choosing to look abroad, there has to be more work done to adjust youth expectations—we still see that as a concern—to increase reliability, to lessen turnover and to increase the productivity of youth. Those are undeniable from our standpoint.

The major industries that we continue to have employers post roles for...and we've had thousands and thousands of postings over the eight years that we've been in operation. The top three are still restaurant and hospitality, trades and technical, and health care. These seem to be the jobs that most traditional employers have a hard time filling. These typically end up with groups that are looking to try to make inroads into the workforce, and that's fine.

Working with ESDC and the YESS program, we'd like to see options for resource availability, not just to ourselves but to other external organizations. It appears that the program for YESS funding had a brief window of funding options, last available in 2023, but we'd sure like to recommend that this be looked at again to allow organizations to apply for funding so that support services can be put into place.

We've run quite the successful operation. We're privately funded, and we've been quite financially stable. The same can't necessarily be true for the organizations that are trying to make inroads to help solve the challenge; however, we're open to working together with ESDC and the YESS program leadership group.

We have three recommendations for you to consider.

First is options for solutions in the future for greater and improved integration and collaboration between YESS and ESDC involving the 11 federal departments and 14 federal programs. We see these programs as good but not necessarily enough. They're great starters to help youth have that work sensation and work experience, but they don't necessarily get them into industry because these 14 federal programs are with departments that have jobs internally available. It doesn't really get them into the market economy. We'd like to propose greater working co-operation among the YESS program, ESDC and other organizations, including YouthjobsCanada.

The second recommendation is options to consider incentive programs for employers in Canada for year-round wage subsidy options to stimulate investment in youth employment. We see that as pretty key because that way there's equity from both the market perspective and the social perspective that the federal government is trying to support.

The last recommendation is how the youth employment ecosystem we see could look in the future by modelling and focusing better on connecting the market employer opportunities and the YESS program deliverables. We see that as a gap—

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Mr. Hersch. You can continue those comments in questioning. I'm sure you'll get several questions.

We'll begin the questioning round with Mr. Genuis for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to all the witnesses. I'll start with Ms. Gessesse.

As you mentioned, youth unemployment is very high—it's even higher in the community you serve—and because of that, we need to be especially clear about the importance of evaluating the effectiveness of programs, especially programs that are publicly funded.

You talked about the effectiveness of your programs, and thank you for doing that. Those are incredible numbers. Congratulations on the work you're doing and the results you are achieving. Those numbers highlight the importance of identifying outcomes.

We've also heard testimony that the government has spent money in ways that are, in the views of other witnesses, ineffective with organizations that do not produce results. Most infamously, we've had mention of the WE Charity scandal, but there are other cases. There doesn't seem to be a systematic evaluation of outputs for spending.

You talked about the right outputs. Are young people working in the fields they were trained in years out from the training programs? It's not enough to say that we've hosted x number of conferences or even that we've trained a certain number of youth. The question isn't whether you've run training programs but whether those training programs have achieved the objective, which is young people in jobs.

I'd appreciate hearing your insights on how we can propose shifting dollars from less effective forms of training and support programs to more effective programs, and more effectively align government spending with the desired outputs.

[Agapi Gessesse]

One of the challenges that CEE has experienced has been in the call-out process. Although we have very high impact, we're not a very large organization. Part of the issue that we have come across is the fact that every time we reapply for a grant, it's about what's written on the paper and not necessarily the track record of what we've been able to do with the funds prior to.

A perfect example of this is the YESS program—you know, I didn't get to finish—which is a program that we encourage this government to continue to fund and support organizations like ours, but we have been unsuccessful. We've been successful in receiving the funds after a lot of advocacy around the work that we're doing, and we have exceeded our numbers, much to what I've described. However, then after, when the call-out came again, we were unsuccessful, so it doesn't allow for us to have continuity around us. It also impedes our ability to bring employers on board.

The way our model works is really for employers, government and us, as community, to come together, but the reality is that corporations are not going to fund the entire program based on the needs of the young people we have. The wraparound supports and all of that are really reliant on foundations and government funding. Then the employers can pay for the pieces that they're benefiting from, which are the actual hard skills and workforce development training.

I think, looking at—

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

Can I just jump in? I'm sorry.

It sounds like you're saying that the applications that you're being asked to fill out don't put questions about outputs and results front and centre. Is that the case: that they're focused on asking you other questions that are not as oriented toward the actual outputs you produce?

[Agapi Gessesse]

I think the issue.... There's an opportunity for you to explain what you've done. However, for organizations like ours that have a very strong track record and do have results, I think that should be accounted for in the evaluation process so that it's not like a fresh, new situation where bureaucrats can't look at your past track record and can only see what's on the paper. You can only explain your impact through numbers, of course, but there's a lot more to it outside of numbers that you can't really fit in a 500-word box.

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

Yes, it seems so foundational that we should be focusing on actual outputs in the spending, so thank you for your attention to that.

In the time I have left, Ms. Ricketts, our party has proposed direct support for high school vocational programs around trades to try to get young people exposed to these programs as early as possible. I wonder if you could tell us briefly what you think about that and also about the state of programs targeted at young people—high-schoolers, teenagers—to expose them to the trades.

[Shaudia Ricketts]

I absolutely support it. It's important, actually, that we expose students as early as grade 6, because children actually start to think about a career and what they want to do when they're older. They typically already have an idea by the time they've hit the high school era as to where they want to go, so organizations like Skills Canada, which is an incredible organization, do expose students to the trades as early as grade 6. There are different books they will read to kids in elementary school that give them exposure to the trades.

The issue is that not a lot of people know about the opportunities that are present in the trades. As a parent, I would say we all want our children to do the best, and we assume the best is university, but I've met some really incredible trades professionals. The idea is that there's a stigma that a trade is not a profession, when it is a profession.

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

Thank you for that.

How can we remove the stigma? What other steps would you like to see to remove the stigma?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Give a short answer, please.

[Shaudia Ricketts]

Expose not just the students but also the parents to the financial benefits of a trade and the long-term opportunities for individuals who go into the trades.