Mr. Speaker, this evening we are discussing the jobs crisis facing Canadian young people. Conservatives have been sounding the alarm about this jobs crisis ever since the last election and, in fact, in many ways before that.
The crisis has continued to get worse. Over the last three years since we came out of the pandemic, unemployment numbers have continued to go up, especially for young people, so it is not just something that has happened in recent months, but something that has continued to get worse in recent months. This is now, I think we can say, a metastasizing crisis that affects not only the present but the future, as young people miss out on the critical skills and points of development that come with those first jobs.
Right now, we are approaching half a million unemployed young people between the ages of 15 and 24. Over 460,000 are currently unemployed, and we are getting closer and closer to 15% unemployment for young people. This is a serious problem. It responds to clear policy failures from the government, failures on the economy, immigration, training and a number of other areas.
We have been hearing about how the cost of living crisis, the price of groceries and the price of housing are contributing to unemployment, because it makes it harder and harder for employers to be able to afford a living wage when what is required to live in Canada is much more than it used to be because of the increase in the cost of things.
In response to these events, Conservatives have put forward the Conservative youth jobs plan, which highlights our response, what we are constructively proposing to the government and suggesting it implement as part of the upcoming budget. Our proposal is to unleash the economy, fix immigration, fix training and build homes where the jobs are. This is a plan with detailed policy behind it that we have put to the government and encouraged it, again, in the constructive spirit Canadians expect of us, to implement.
Unfortunately, we have not seen any jobs plan from the government. In fact, it has taken to denigrating our constructive proposals rather than seriously engaging with them. This is unfortunate. We have presented these ideas in a constructive spirit, and the government is denigrating our ideas and failing to present any proposals of its own. The best it can do is point to programs that have existed in this country since the 1990s as if they are something new. It talks about the continuation of programs that have existed since the 1990s that are clearly not meeting the present moment in terms of the metastasizing youth jobs crisis.
Then, we have had announcements to replicate existing programs: for instance, on top of the existing credential recognition fund, to create another, separate credential recognition fund without really contending with the fact that the government's existing programs are not working to meet the crisis we have.
I think Canadians are very disappointed by the performance of the government on this file. They would have liked to see the government come constructively to engage with the ideas we put forward as an opposition. We have put forward a detailed Conservative youth jobs plan that is about unleashing the economy, fixing immigration, fixing training and building homes where the jobs are, and on each of those points we have articulated a policy.
I hope we will see the government stop denigrating good ideas and recognize how its policies have contributed to the problems we face right now. Instead, I hope it will listen to our ideas in a constructive spirit and consider implementing some of them as part of a plan that it can put forward in the budget, building on what we have proposed. Will the government do that?