Madam Speaker, like my colleague from Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, I will be opposing this Conservative motion, because, by implication, it calls into question the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to some degree.
As we have heard repeatedly in the House, we have been subject to the charter for 35 years, since 1982. There was a general consensus to welcome and respect the charter.
The Liberals' management of the Canada summer jobs program has been quite confusing, which has caused many groups, especially religious groups, to feel excluded and think they could not submit a Canada summer jobs application. This has led to some unfortunate outcomes. For example, some groups will not get any funding from the program because they did not know for sure whether they were eligible to submit an application.
In the wake of this controversy all our offices received many calls. I think that the Liberals are still getting calls because this is still so confusing. Religious groups, who say that their work helps the community and that young people join them in helping the least fortunate in the community, are asking whether they have the right to submit an application. We had to explain that the nature of their activities did not go against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that they could indeed submit their application.
It bears repeating that the NDP finds it unacceptable to provide funding, taxpayer money, to groups whose work is based on fighting against women's rights, against access to abortion, and against defending the rights of the LBGTQ2 community.
As we all have been saying for years, the question of women's rights is absolutely not up for debate. As I said earlier, even the Supreme Court has ruled that restricting the right to abortion is unconstitutional. Based on that, I think that clarifications were made and continue to be made.
Any organization that wants to can apply to give young people a rewarding experience to earn money for school, in what may be their first job or simply some summer work. I think we can continue to offer these jobs and that the government should provide funding, so that young people can work and apply the skills they learned in school
In my riding of Salaberry—Suroît, 151 jobs were funded for young people last summer. The wide range of jobs were very much appreciated. The jobs included working in museum archives, being day camp counsellors, and working in youth centres. Also receiving funding were jobs at recreational organizations, such as the Régates de Valleyfield, which is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year.
There are so many interesting jobs for young people. However, I must say that the Liberals and the Conservatives are playing politics here. It is appalling that we have gotten to this point. The Liberals showed in their budget that they are using the Canada summer jobs program as a marketing tool. Unbelievable. For example, last year, after I told organizations that they were approved for jobs, I was told that I would have to reduce the number of weeks each young person could work so that more young people could have jobs.
I was told to give only six weeks of employment to some young people in order to have more jobs for more youth. That made no sense. A six-week summer job does not cover a lot of post-secondary expenses. What will young people do for the rest of the summer? What about the organizations that hire a young person for just six weeks? What will they do for the remaining eight weeks of the summer? They will have to close their doors or cut their services. That is not what they want. Young people need to work for 14 or 16 weeks or they will not have enough money to pay for their rent, food, and what they need for school. Once again, the Liberals are all talk, and they are going to say that they have an excellent record and that they created thousands of summer jobs. In reality, it is a blow to young people if they are unable find jobs that pay enough or last long enough to allow them to fully dedicate themselves to their studies the rest of the year.
The budget talks about Canada summer jobs, but there was nothing about the rest of the youth employment strategy. I wish the Conservatives had mentioned that in their opposition motion today. Will cuts be made to the skills link program? One has to wonder. Will cuts be made to the career focus program? Is there any money for those programs in the budget? No money was announced for those programs in the budget on Tuesday. The Liberals favour the Canada summer jobs program because MPs are the ones who do the work of deciding who gets the jobs, so the Liberals do not have to do it. They do not have to do all the work of administering the program because members of the House are doing it.
There is nothing in the budget about precarious employment. A report was tabled on that subject, but there is very little about it the budget the finance minister announced on Tuesday.
We would also have preferred to talk about all of the budget's shortcomings. I will mention a few others. The Liberals talk about doubling the budget as though $400 million was never allocated in the past, but the Conservatives allocated that same amount for this program in 2010-11, when they were responsible for the budget.
The budget does nothing to make the funding for the Canada summer jobs, career focus, or skills link programs permanent, even though they are used by thousands of Canadians. For example, an organization in my riding, Une affaire de famille, received a significant amount of funding, about $150,000, in 2017 to give young people facing barriers to employment access to services that would help them to return to the labour market. This program helped 31 young people. The organization wanted to continue with this project, but it recently received a letter from the government saying that it was unable to renew the project because of budgetary constraints.
What will happen to young people in extremely disadvantaged regions, such as Salaberry—Suroît or the Upper St. Lawrence? These young people are struggling. They may have addictions, they may have dropped out of school, or they may have mental health problems. Organizations such as the one I mentioned are trying to help them to get jobs, give them valuable and relevant tools, build their self-confidence, and direct and guide them. However, now the government is taking all that money away from these organizations, leaving them with no alternative. It does not make any sense.
Last year, in addition to failing to renew this program, the Liberals added Young Canada Works to the youth employment strategy, even though that program falls under the jurisdiction of another department, Canadian Heritage. This year, there has been no mention of the program, not even under official languages. However, many francophone organizations use the Young Canada Works program because it is the only one that has a language criterion and that enables young Acadians, Franco-Saskatchewanians, and Franco-Yukoners to more easily access jobs where they can work in their mother tongue.
There is also the problem of Phoenix. We should also be talking about that since we know that over 200,000 public servants are affected. Generally speaking, people who work irregular schedules are having the most problems, for example, those doing paid internships, those on parental leave, and summer students. They are the ones who are suffering the most. They do not have access to the parliamentary network.
We should have been talking about these types of projects that affect whether young people can or cannot get good and lasting jobs that will help improve their lives. That was not addressed in the budget.