Mr. Chair, I am hoping we can take a break from adventures in prosecution and talk a bit to Canadians tonight about some things they care about: things like pensions; things like health care; things like infrastructure; and what I intend to spend a lot of time in my remarks talking about, which is skills training. Skills training is so important.
Last week, I visited Compétences Outaouais. The Des Draveurs school board, which represents most of the students and the school system in my riding, does an excellent job of managing Compétences Outaouais. I visited all the classes, including hairdressing, welding, information technology, and building maintenance classes. Whatever the profession or occupation, Compétences Outaouais is there. I spoke to students and to teachers, who told me that they have never seen such a tight labour market where the demand for their students and graduates was so high.
We have a very good situation in Canada. Frankly, having spent a long time either observing or participating in government and politics, I never thought we would have this problem of periodic and episodic labour shortages. We have it throughout Quebec. We have it across the country. It is a looming big demographic challenge for our country. Some may describe it as the challenge of the age. I do not think the member for Carleton would describe it as the challenge for the age; he is too busy asking the finance minister, with his valuable time, to read to him from page 47 of the budget document. However, tonight I would like to spend a bit of this House's time to talk about the future.
I am pleased to speak to how the government is investing to ensure that Canadians have the skills they need to succeed in the economy of tomorrow.
The world is changing more rapidly than ever before, and our economy is rapidly changing too. New opportunities and new technologies are engines of growth that transform our workforce.
Last week, I spent time in Montreal with a well-known academic in Montreal's university community. He told me that every profession would be affected in the next five to 10 years, whether because of artificial intelligence or simply because work and the nature of work are changing.
We need to be on the leading edge. In Canada, we need to find our way of adding value, always being resourceful, and always knowing what is coming. However, first we have to prepare our young people. We need to get young people in Gatineau and the rest of Canada used to the labour market. We need to give them a taste of the adventure of work and the opportunities that work and a career can offer.
Fortunately, we have a government that is aware of this situation and that is determined to lead the way and take advantage of opportunities in the interest of all Canadians. To make the most of these new opportunities, we need to unite our efforts and ensure that Canadians have the skills they need to succeed in a changing economy.
That is not what we are hearing from the other side of the House. They are not focused on the big picture. They are not thinking about the future. They are not thinking about our young people. They are not thinking about the challenges presented by the changing world and the challenges that the careers of tomorrow will pose for all Canadians.
It makes good economic sense to ensure that young Canadians are able to get good, well-paid jobs and have rewarding and meaningful careers.
One important way we can help young Canadians transition into the workforce is to assist them in finding a summer job. I have no doubt that most of the members here had summer jobs when they were younger. The valuable experience we gained in those first jobs often provided a stepping stone to a full-time job and a successful career later in life.
A summer job gives all students the ability to perhaps pay for their studies, to acquire experience, and to know what it means to have a routine and keep a job after their studies.
That is why, starting in budget 2016, the government supported 35,000 additional summer jobs. These really were additional jobs under the youth employment strategy's Canada summer jobs program. In our last budget, we committed an additional $448.5 million over five years to the youth employment strategy across Canada starting in 2018-19. This funding will make it possible to double the number of Canada summer jobs placements in 2019-20 and allocate additional resources for a modernized youth employment strategy in the following years.
That is what we call a good investment. However, we need to go further. We need to give our youth and labour market analysts the ability to know and, in a way, to predict the future. As that university student told me last week, the nature of work itself is changing. The needs of the labour market are changing. Things are going well today. We even have a labour shortage problem—and it is a problem.
We need to look to the future to figure out where we should be. In this day and age, it can be hard to distinguish between real information and fake information, some of which we heard this evening. When people choose a career path and are looking for work, it can be hard to separate fact from fiction. We need better information. Better information leads to better outcomes. That is why the Government of Canada invested in a digital platform to provide the accurate and up-to-date information Canadians need to make informed career decisions. The government is investing $27.5 million over five years starting this year, and $5.5 million per year ongoing, from Employment and Social Development Canada's existing resources to support an education and labour market longitudinal linkage platform.
I am happy to say that this platform will be housed within Statistics Canada, which is also doing very good work on the census and the long-form questionnaire that we brought back thanks to the Minister of Finance.
As I indicated, since 2016 we have had great job growth in this country, with 600,000 jobs, almost all of them full-time jobs. The unemployment rate has never been lower in 40 years. Salaries, as we found out last week, are increasing at the fastest rhythm that they have in over five years. This is an economy that is on the right track. It is one that we cannot keep our eyes off, for all the reasons that I have indicated.
We have to continue to work as we do with our provincial partners and continue to increase our co-operation and partnership with them as we transfer money for labour market training and labour market programs. That is especially true in Quebec, but it is true all across Canada. We need solid partnerships there. We need solid partnerships with professional organizations and others.
We need to keep our focus on skills training as we continue to work on infrastructure and continue to work on increasing pension benefits for Canadians, but we are decidedly on the right track.
We are decidedly on the right track. Our plan is working. Canada is doing well. Our economy is strong, and we have the Minister of Finance and our government to thank for that.
