Madam Speaker, my colleague spent a lot of time talking about the Canada summer jobs program. As she knows, this is not a new program. It has in fact existed in this country since I was a very small child, which was a long time ago. However, what is new with the program is that the Liberals have established a very short duration for the jobs; the average is eight weeks, so effectively there are not summer jobs but summer half-jobs for many students, which is not what young people need and not what employers want. The Liberals are shortening the duration in order to suggest that they have created more jobs than they would have if they were normal-length summer jobs.
I want to come back to the issue around training and the discriminatory measures introduced in the budget. The parliamentary secretary said that this will not affect any current students, but what about future students? What about the high school student who says, “I would love to be a chiropractor”, “I would love to explore the field of acupuncture” or “ I would love to work in a salon, but my family struggles financially, and I will no longer get student grants in these programs.” How is that fair?