Mr. Speaker, Canada faces an ongoing youth unemployment crisis. The youth unemployment rate is over 14%, which is more than a full point higher than where we were a year ago. According to the latest job numbers, more than 440,000 young people between the ages of 15 and 24 are unemployed. This continues to be a very bad situation for youth unemployment. Over 14% unemployment for young people is a bad number. It is not a good number, very clearly, and we need a strong response to address the youth unemployment crisis.
This is precisely why Conservatives put forward the Conservative youth jobs plan prior to the budget, calling on the government to take specific action to address the youth unemployment crisis. Our plan had four pillars: unleash the economy, fix immigration, fix training and build homes where the jobs are.
Unfortunately, budget 2025 not only fails to address this problem, but also contains specific provisions that would set us back. One of the things that I want to highlight tonight is how the Liberals completely broke their promises when it comes to the apprenticeship grant. Conservatives had proposed renewing it. Liberals had said they would renew it, and in fact they said they would expand it, yet there is no funding for that in the budget whatsoever.
Most apprentices study at polytechnics, and there would be no support for polytechnics in this budget. The budget actually goes further. On page 217 in the budget, the government is now proposing to completely withdraw any student grants in general from students who go to private institutions. The Liberals, in fact, would put more money into helping research councils help universities to attract foreign researchers to come to universities, but they would pull resources away from students who are attending career colleges. There would be nothing for polytechnics. There is a broken promise on the apprenticeship grant, and now the government would completely cut out of the system students who study at career colleges.
An important point to note is that there are many good vocations that students might pursue where overwhelmingly the only options are private institutions. If someone wants to study history or psychology, women's studies, law or medicine, then yes, they would most likely go to a public institution, but there are many other areas, such as those in trade skills and in specific professions. I talked earlier today about courses in the beauty industry and in alternative health, such as chiropractors and traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, where, overwhelmingly, people who are pursuing these disciplines go, and must go, to private institutions. That is their only option, yet in these areas, where there is labour demand and where people want to pursue these careers, the government would completely and arbitrarily shut out these students.
Our jobs plan actually called for a completely different approach. It called for support through students' grants to be aligned with the needs of the labour market. It called for having evaluations done of what the labour market needs are and to use student grants to magnify the needs of the labour market. Instead, the government would really deploy a kind of profession prejudice to shut students out, who are studying for these kinds of vocations at these kinds of institutions. It is discriminatory. It is not right, and it would risk exacerbating shortages in these professions, which would hurt our economy down the line.
Therefore, at a time of youth unemployment being very high, budget 2025 would make the situation worse by harming students, especially those in the trades and in other kinds of vocations that involve training outside of universities. Why would the government do this?