Mr. Speaker, here are the facts. The Conservatives talked this morning about how the Canadian economy has weathered through the last recession. That is not true for the economy writ large, but it is particularly not true for young Canadians and young workers.
There are 250,000 fewer jobs for young Canadians now than before the recession. That is according to Finance Canada. There is an important provision in this. We have also seen job quality, as my friend talked about, drop dramatically across the entire economy, but particularly for young people. There are fewer and fewer entrance jobs. We know from all the evidence that when young people get the training at colleges, polytechnics, and universities, if they do not get into their fields of employment soon after that training, it is called employment scarring. The effects and impacts on their earning power over their entire working lives is dramatically lessened. They have to get into the work that they need.
We have seen this in this bill. This is an important piece that I did not mention before. Right now, under the Canada Labour Code, unpaid interns, the young people looking to get the experience they need, are not protected against sexual harassment or unfair work conditions. One would think that the Conservatives would move that into the Labour Code so that the young people doing the internships in particular would be protected. They said they would, and when we got to the bill they did not.
The Canadian students' associations and the Canadian Intern Association came forward at committee and asked what the government was doing and why any Canadian business taking interns would not want to commit to protecting them against sexual harassment. The Conservatives said not to worry about it, that they would take care of that later, after having promised to put it in this bill. This was something practical that could have been done to protect young Canadian workers entering the workforce. The Conservatives simply made a choice. That choice was not to take action to protect some of the most vulnerable workers, those seeking internships, particularly unpaid ones, who are trying to get experience. The job market is so lousy for them that they have to do these other things to get the experience they so desperately desire.
For the love of Pete, New Democrats moved the amendments and implored the Conservatives to make this change and protect young Canadian workers from unfair work conditions, from extended hours, from sexual harassment, and the tough-on-crime Conservatives said no over and over again. It is shameful. I have no idea, with all good reason, ethics, and morality, why the Conservatives would not act on this, but they did not. New Democrats obviously will.