Mr. Speaker, with regard to (a), the Youth Employment Strategy, or YES, offers three programs. The Skills Link program helps young people who face more barriers to employment than others develop basic employability skills and gain valuable job experience to assist them in making a successful transition into the labour market or to return to school. They could be youth who have not completed high school, single parents, aboriginal youth, young persons with disabilities, youth living in rural or remote areas, or newcomers. The Career Focus program helps post-secondary graduates transition to the labour market through paid internships and helps to provide youth with the information and experience they need to make informed career decisions, find a job, and/or pursue advanced studies. The summer work experience program provides wage subsidies to employers to create summer employment for secondary and post-secondary students. The summer work experience program includes Canada Summer Jobs, or CSJ. The CSJ provides funding for not-for-profit organizations, public sector employers, and small businesses with 50 or fewer employees to create summer job opportunities for students.
The following federal departments and agencies are also part of the YES: Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada; Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada; Canadian Heritage; Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation; Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development; Environment Canada; Industry Canada; the National Research Council; Natural Resources Canada; and Parks Canada.
With regard to (b) and (c), this information can be found at the following link: http://www.esdc.gc.ca/eng/publications/dpr/index.shtml.
With regard to (d), the department does not track the number of rejected applications based on the reasons mentioned in the question.