It's a pleasure to be visiting the immigration committee. I serve as our Conservative shadow minister for employment.
My questions are primarily for Mr. Miranda.
We have been pursuing for a long time this issue of the metastasizing youth unemployment crisis in this country. As you mentioned, 14.3% is the current youth unemployment figure. In many ways, that unemployment figure understates the nature of the crisis, because we also have declining labour force participation among young people. We're seeing many instances of young people struggling to find employment in their field. It sounds like this is part of your story as well. They study and develop expertise in a particular field and eventually find a job, but it's outside of the field they trained for.
It's so important that you're here and it's so important that we hear directly from young people who are affected by this crisis. The nature of how certain groups are represented by coordinated organizations has led to a dynamic in which we in Parliament in particular haven't heard enough from young graduates who are grappling with this issue in real time. To you and to others who are listening, I'll say that we as parliamentarians need to hear more from that perspective.
Often, the discussion here shifts to how we attract talent. Many young people I talk to are asking a different question: How do we get investments and opportunities to align with the talent we already have here and the talent that is looking for opportunities so we can put that talent to work and give them a chance?
I wonder if you have reflections on the state of discourse around this issue and on how we need to hear more about having opportunities available for existing talent rather than just focusing on attracting more talent that may compete with existing talent.