Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to address the House today with respect to Bill C-3 to highlight some of the real problems with the government's approach to immigration.
We have seen, over the last 10 years, the profound failures of the government's approach to immigration. Rather than confront those failures, the government is proposing legislation that would further weaken our immigration system. We have grave concerns about the approach the Liberals are taking and how they have tried to deceptively bundle weakening provisions with a few things that we proposed in the past. They have bundled some of those good propositions with the significant problems they have integrated into this bill that will weaken Canadian citizenship. I will lay that out in a few minutes. I want to start by highlighting the context of where we are with immigration and how it relates to some of the work I have been doing as the Conservative shadow minister for jobs.
Members know or should know that we have a serious metastasizing youth unemployment crisis facing this country. The nature of that crisis is simply that youth unemployment is now at 14.7%. The numbers have continued to grow, approaching a 15% youth unemployment rate. Over 460,000 young Canadians between the ages of 15 and 24 are presently unemployed, so, yes, it is a youth unemployment crisis. Not only have the Liberals been asleep at the switch, but their policies have been making the problem worse. They do not have a plan to address it. They do not have a plan to reverse the damage their policies have done.
We have put forward a Conservative youth jobs plan. There are four elements to that youth jobs plan: unleash the Canadian economy, fix immigration, fix training and build homes where the jobs are.
Let us focus particularly on the subject of today's debate, which is immigration. The Liberals have broken our immigration system. They have failed to align our immigration system with the needs of our labour market. There are many ways in which this is evident. We had economists testify before the human resources committee about how Liberal immigration policies have exacerbated competition for entry-level positions while failing to identify the skills we need and bringing people in to fill those skills.
One area where this is quite evident is the Liberal failures on credential recognition. When we fail to have an effective credential recognition system for newcomers, it hurts our job market in two ways. When someone comes with a skill they could be using to fill an essential skill gap but is instead forced to work an entry-level job, that person is not filling the area where a skill is needed. Meanwhile, they are competing with a young person for an entry-level position. It is a loss for those trying to enter the workforce, who are facing more competition, and a loss for employers looking for people they can identify at higher skill levels.
Effective credential recognition is critical. Identifying people with the right credentials and qualifying people to work when they come to Canada are critical for aligning our immigration system with the needs of our labour market, yet we have seen over the last 10 years a persistent failure to do this.
We have all heard the stories of people with incredible qualifications who come to Canada and work entry-level jobs just to get by and provide for their families. I want to salute the sacrifice and virtue of the individuals who are willing to do that. At the same time, it is a broken system that forces people to be in that situation when they have credentials they could be using to benefit our country and are not.
I found it quite interesting that recently, the Liberal minister responsible for this area announced the intention to create a new fund to try to solve this problem without appreciating or acknowledging that an existing federal fund is supposed to be doing this. Maybe the minister should acknowledge it. Rather than creating a separate fund on top of the existing fund, we should hear what the minister thinks of the performance of the existing fund.
Clearly, there has been a failure to address this issue of credentials recognition, which is exacerbating the challenges we see in youth unemployment. Conservatives have been highlighting this issue of credentials recognition as an important way to resolve challenges we see across our economy. We have proposed a number of different programs and methods that would force results, instead of pouring more money into the problem without a clear direction or vision of how it will be solved.
If we have one fund that is supposed to be doing this, why are they creating an additional fund that is supposed to be doing the same thing as the first? I would love to know what results the minister thinks that replication of an existing structure is going to achieve. Canadians are not interested in more Liberal announcements. They are interested in a real plan that will deliver results.
We have profound failures in immigration that need to be fixed. I would love to see the government put forward legislation to address some of these problems in the immigration system.
By the way, when the immigration issue was brought up at the human resources committee, the Liberals objected, saying it is not related to the committee's mandate. The human resources committee is supposed to be studying the impacts of various policies on youth unemployment. The Liberals do not want to talk about one of the primary causes of youth unemployment, which, according to economists, is an immigration system that is poorly aligned with our labour market.
Needless to say, prior to the government being in power, there was a consensus in support of an immigration system that was fair, generous, worked well and aligned well with the needs of our country. We can help the most vulnerable and defend and advance our economic interests. It takes focus, discipline and precision, which the government has not had. Thus, in the last 10 years, the government wrecked the consensus we had around support for what was at the time a well-managed, effective and generous immigration system.
Here we are today. We need to fix immigration, and we especially need to align our immigration system with the economic needs of our country. Instead of putting forward a plan to fix immigration to align it with the needs of our economy, we have this legislation. The Liberals want to put in place a framework that would allow a family to live outside Canada, generation after generation, with no limit, and continue to pass on Canadian citizenship infinitely, provided that people visit Canada during that period of time.
The Liberals' priority is not to clean up the mess they created in immigration or make the system more effective, efficient or aligned with our interests, but to provide a further expansion of the ability of people who might not have any substantial connection to Canada yet have some Canadian ancestry to gain citizenship.
The legislation is particularly poorly aligned with what Canada is supposed to be about. Canada is supposed to be about the fact that citizenship is not based on ancestry but on a commitment individuals make to this place and to each other. That is what our citizenship is supposed to be about. As Cartier said, we are one political nation. We are not defined by common ancestry; rather, we are defined by being one common community that includes people of different linguistic, religious and ethnocultural backgrounds.
The bill says that if I move out of Canada, it would be possible for my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren after them to continue to be Canadian citizens, provided that in each generation, people make a few extended visits to this country. That does not align with the best of our tradition. It is a further diminishment of what common citizenship is supposed to be about, which is being a community of people from diverse backgrounds who are committed to advancing and defending the common good together.
We need to go back to a stronger sense of Canadian citizenship based on shared attachment and a commitment to the common good.