Human Resources Committee on Oct. 21st, 2025

[Timothy Lang]

I love the question because I wrote about that exact thing a couple of years ago for the Osgoode Hall Law Journal. I always believed in, even back in my private sector days.... Why recreate the wheel? We should replicate best practices around the world. It saves our own government or organizations time and money.

You're absolutely right. Germany is the model. Certainly, starting even in high schools, they have a more advanced apprenticeship program, where people can go into the high-paying, great jobs in the trades, and, of course, the other stream where they're going into an academic career, which is all-important as well. As much as STEM has been pushed so much, I'm still a big believer in the all-important critical learning that you learn in any kind of education.

All that to say, you're absolutely right. We should look at a place like Germany where they have, I think, the lowest youth unemployment in the world. Although Canada fairs a lot better than a lot of nations, we should always strive to be the best. Copying best practices like that would be something that we should definitely endeavour to do.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Ms. Koutrakis.

Mrs. Gill, you have the floor for six minutes.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank the witnesses for enriching the discussions today on a subject that is of great interest to us.

Of course, there is the issue of youth unemployment. People are saying there's a crisis. It goes in cycles, but the youth unemployment rate is unfortunately higher than it is in other segments of the labour force.

That said, this issue is set against programs for foreign workers, including programs for temporary foreign workers.

Mr. Worswick, you talked about your research, and I'm very interested in it.

Do you see any differences between the situation in urban centres, such as Toronto, Montreal or large suburban cities, and the more outlying regions?

Yesterday, I met with entrepreneurs who have temporary foreign workers as employees. In their workforce, they don't see young people or students competing with temporary foreign workers. There are a number of reasons for that. For example, young people aren't able to do the type of work that is often full-time, and sometimes on the night shift. Also, these jobs sometimes require skills that students don't necessarily have.

Furthermore—I don't know if you also noted this effect in your research—even if students had access to certain jobs, they were not so-called entry-level jobs. It seems that a certain segment of the population have left some higher-paying jobs with benefits, including insurance. Young people are therefore taking up these jobs to start with rather than the people who they were traditionally intended for in my time, some 30 years ago.

I'd like you to tell me more about that. I would then ask that you address the issue of temporary foreign workers and young people. Later on, I will talk to you about students.

[Christopher Worswick]

Certainly. Thank you for the question.

There are reasons to believe that the impacts of, let's say, removing the temporary foreign worker program would impact different sectors of the Canadian economy and different cities versus suburban areas, rural areas, small towns and somewhere in between.

In the absence of a temporary foreign worker program, if a firm advertises a position and is unable to fill it at the advertised wage, one would expect that three main things could happen. The first is that they might readvertise at a higher wage and they might get applicants at that higher wage. The second is that they might instead say, “Well, I need to make investments in technology, and then my existing workers are more productive or it's easier to attract people to these job vacancies.” The third possibility is that the company may go bankrupt because the company is not viable at these higher wages.

It's in that flexible wage framework. There is no maximum wage in Canada, so firms can always advertise at a higher wage if their profitability allows it, but that could vary by types of jobs, regions and levels of experience. For example, I don't love the idea of a carve-out for agricultural workers, but there's a possibility that it might be the right thing to do because farms might have to raise the wage too much to get these workers doing jobs that are fairly remote geographically and seasonal.

How this would impact different employers, if we were to eliminate the temporary foreign worker program, depends a lot on that context.

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

Thank you.

I like the fact that we can put the effects into perspective, because they're not the same everywhere. The same thing goes for the unemployment rate. Some places are approaching full employment, while others have a 20% unemployment rate. You mentioned agriculture. I'm also thinking of fishing.

In some places, going to a restaurant may be considered a luxury, while in others, it can be seen as an essential service, particularly for workers.

The same logic can also be applied to student workers. You talked about cities, but in rural areas, the very existence of some educational institutions depends on access to foreign students. They often end up settling in our regions, which have experienced a negative demographic shift, as is the case in my riding. In my constituency, more people leave than are born there or stay there.

I'd like you to tell me about studies. It can be about institutions after high school, such as colleges or universities.

[Christopher Worswick]

With international students, it's a more complicated situation because while they do work.... I remember the days when our students at Carleton University could work a maximum of 10 hours per week, and it had to be on campus. At that time, there were clear benefits to that program. The international students at the university level pay a remarkable tuition. I think it's three, four or sometimes five times as much as what a domestic student does, so it is very important to these institutions and, arguably, to the Canadian economy.

The problem is that once you say to the students that they can work 25 hours per week off campus—which is a big difference from 10 hours per week on campus, as it used to be—and that they can work as many hours as they want when they're not in the teaching semester, suddenly you're starting to have a big labour-market impact, given the number of students involved.

I think it was more of an Ontario problem at the private and community college level, to be fair to institutions across the country.

You mentioned commercial fisheries. I think there is an open question there as to whether you would treat those the same as farming. My preference would be to have very targeted temporary foreign worker programs.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

Thank you, Madam Gill.

Now we have Mr. Genuis for five minutes.

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

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

Last week, we announced a Conservative youth jobs plan, and one of the pillars of it is fixing immigration.

Professor Worswick, I appreciate hearing your reflections on the immigration policy problems and their impact on youth unemployment.

As part of our plan, we also recognized and highlighted some of the differentials between urban and rural areas by promising policies to make it easier for employers to attract employees into more remote areas with workforce housing. I note that in your testimony you highlighted how the immigration policies of the current government have exacerbated unemployment, particularly by bringing newer immigrants to urban centres with, in many cases, already high levels of unemployment. This shows particularly how there has been a misalignment between the immigration policies pursued by the government and the labour market needs.

On this issue of the urban-rural distinction, what policy changes do you think could help unemployed people in areas of higher unemployment consider opportunities and take opportunities more easily in areas with lower unemployment, often rural or remote areas?

[Christopher Worswick]

Do you mean that people within rural areas move to higher-wage areas?

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

No. For people who are living in areas with high unemployment and who might want to consider opportunities in regions of low unemployment—because they're having trouble finding work where they are—what kinds of policies do you think can make it easier for people to take some of those opportunities?

[Christopher Worswick]

Obviously, there could be informational barriers. People may not know about opportunities. It's costly to move, and there is a lot of risk. There may be scope for government programs to support that type of thing. It could be expensive.

My view is that I'm a little bit of a laissez-faire economist on a lot of these issues. I do support our social safety net. I think we do want, as the other speakers have said, to help people up when they're down. However, whenever we do a program to try to help people move or change or retrain, I think we should be doing a pretty rigorous cost-benefit analysis.

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

Yes, I agree, and we're not proposing a program to do it. What we're proposing is an incentive to make it easier for employers to attract folks.

Can I ask about your analysis and your dialogue with the government around it? You've done a lot of analysis showing how a suite of immigration policies that the government has pursued has contributed to higher youth unemployment. You've spoken and written a lot about this whole area.

Does the government have its own analysis that contradicts your analysis? Did it come up with numbers previously, to justify the previous policy, that are different from your numbers, or is it your sense that it pursued these policies in the absence of that analysis?

[Christopher Worswick]

I haven't had that kind of dialogue with the government, to be fair, so I haven't seen numbers that suggest that this was.... I think these policies didn't have the negative consequences that I'm arguing they did. Obviously, the previous federal government did change direction on some of the policies, as was already noted.

I have interactions with researchers at IRCC, and I know that the government has been concerned about getting the non-permanent population rate down from around 7.2%, if I remember correctly, to under 5%. I would say that 5% is historically extremely high, so we went from an even more extremely high level down to that.

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

I'm sorry, but my clock is ticking.

[Christopher Worswick]

No problem.

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

I just want to understand. Have you seen an economic analysis done by them in advance of these policies, though? Is that publicly available? Have they shared it?

[Christopher Worswick]

No, I have not.

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

Okay. Do you think they've done an economic analysis of this or...?

[Christopher Worswick]

To my knowledge...not prior to the changes that we saw.

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

Okay.

Just very quickly, you didn't mention the significant growth in inland asylum claimants. Do you see that as contributing to the youth unemployment problem as well?

People often have to wait for years before their claims are adjudicated.

[Christopher Worswick]

I haven't actually looked at that, but it's a candidate, certainly, yes. It's not an ideal situation. I tend to try to focus more on the economic programs, given my expertise, but obviously everyone needs to work or generate income, so it's possible.

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

Yes, it has economic implications.

[Christopher Worswick]

Yes.

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

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bobby Morrissey]

We have Madam Fancy for five minutes.