Mr. Speaker, I will try to be brief, but there is a lot to cover.
I commend the committee for doing this review and coming together with a good number of unanimous recommendations. I commend our representatives for their additional recommendations and for bringing this matter forward to the House. We have had an excellent debate today.
There is one thing that troubles me in going through the report. I will go through this in great detail because it is of most interest to me, particularly because a lot of the recommendations raise programs that the government has historically funded, but has made the decision of late to de-fund.
I go to recommendation 1, formal public-private academic partnerships to coordinate labour market evaluations. As I mentioned earlier in the House, I have had the privilege of sitting on the environment sector table board for seven years. The government has decided to end that organization, along with all the other sector tables.
The value of the environment sector table, which was ECO Canada, Environmental Careers Organization Canada, was that several times a year it did labour market analyses. Year after year it showed that the highest growing area of employment in our country, in fact worldwide, was in the environmental field. There are endless possibilities for work, endless opportunities for aboriginal Canadians and recent immigrants. The government is ending these sector tables.
One of the things this organization did was form partnerships between universities and small colleges with industry, with the community and with first nation communities on identifying needed jobs and areas of activity where we could be working together.
Another recommendation that I find rather odd is recommendation 14, which encourages young people to acquire work experience through the Canada summer jobs program, particularly including French-English language development.
It is sad to report to the House that for more than half of the jobs under the Canada summer jobs program in my riding for which there was huge demand, as I have three university campuses and one technical college campus, many people were providing opportunity for students. Many of those were bilingual opportunities, and they were not funded. Why? Because the government is not funding that program adequately.
Very sadly, also, the government decided to shut down its funding for the Experimental Lakes Area. That was one of the best programs for providing science-based job opportunities for university students. The government de-funded it, and yet it signed off on a recommendation in the report to create those exact kinds of programs.
As the government moves forward and responds to this report, which is invaluable, I am looking forward to it perhaps reconsidering some of the decisions to cut the funding for these very important programs.
As Shawn Atleo, the National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, pointed out, in the area of aboriginal Canadians, far more aboriginal youth are being incarcerated than graduating from high school, yet the government still continues to underfund the education opportunities for students, including at university level and technical schools. There is, as I understand, 13,000 students waiting to get into these programs, but there are insufficient funds.
It is one thing to sign off on the report and make recommendations, it is another thing to actually budget for it and support programs.
My final comment would be what my colleague from Newton—North Delta asked, which was why the government was not working on the skill set for the next decade. I had many young people in my riding lined up to start companies to do energy efficiency audits and energy retrofits in homes. Then the government in its wisdom decided to provide the funding for eco-energy home retrofits for only one year, ending all opportunities for these youth, which would have been well-paying jobs using their technical skills.
I commend all of those who participated in this report. We look forward to action on it.