Debates of Nov. 3rd, 2025

Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Clarke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is odd to me that the Liberals do a great job of talking about how they are giving money to people, but they do not ever state where that money comes from, which is also the people. They go out to our communities and our ridings and take that money, take a chunk of it to Ottawa and give out the shells to the rest of us.

Does the member not realize they are actually impoverishing Canadians with their high rates of taxation and even higher rates of spending?

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to read something out. We will double the number of international students in Canada, which will create 86,500 net new jobs. We are going to invest $5 million in this. We will create 173,000 jobs. International student expenditures in Canada will rise to over $16 billion, generating economic growth and prosperity in every region of Canada. This will provide an annual boost of approximately $10 billion to the Canadian economy.

That was written by the Conservative government in 2014 about investing in international students and the same kinds of programs we are currently investing in, because they create growth and jobs.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Mr. Speaker, youth unemployment is indeed a major concern, and we need to address it. I thank the hon. parliamentary secretary for her speech on this. However, I have two questions for her.

My first question has to do with the drastic changes made to the approach to the temporary foreign worker program. In my riding, many small and medium-sized businesses in the steel industry, the insurance industry and others are saying that these radical changes are jeopardizing their survival. I would like to hear my colleague's comments on that.

My second question is this. The hon. parliamentary secretary is also the member for Trois‑Rivières. In her view, is it a good idea to have chosen to give a speech in the House in English only?

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question, and I also thank him for asking it in French and acknowledging the importance of French. I apologize to him and I will endeavour to add French to my speeches in the future.

There is no one solution to the issue of temporary foreign workers. We really need to take a measured approach by region and by sector. Yes, there has been a pause, but we need to look into this and be smart about it. It is true that businesses need labour, but it is probably also true that there is undoubtedly abuse in certain sectors. We need to find a way to manage this better.

[Bardish Chagger, Liberal, Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciated the perspective the member shared. Even within the riding of Waterloo, there is a diversity of views and perspectives. Constituents recognize that the government is trying to take measures to advance the country and ensure that Canadians do well, but they are frustrated by the official opposition refusing to move forward even in inches and take concrete measures or help be constructive in that approach. The member referred to comments about important things. Constituents in the riding of Waterloo recognize that Conservatives voted against the national food program, dental care and early learning and child care, and the list goes on.

I would love to hear from the member what she believes the opposition can do to help Canadians have a better outcome and make sure that they benefit from the purpose the government is here to serve.

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the opposition should really consider supporting us in our budget next week, which will contain all of these affordability measures for Canadians across the country. In addition to that, members can engage genuinely at committee in order to bring real solutions. That means not bringing a solution that starts with, “Oh, because the government failed so epically, this is the solution.” The debate cannot start there.

[Kurt Holman, Conservative, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I stand in the chamber, I am proud to represent the people of London—Fanshawe.

During the campaign earlier this year, I heard from many parents about the struggles young people have to go through just to find their first job. Many parents were on the edge of tears telling me about the struggles their children repeatedly have to go through in applying for their first job.

I got my first job at the age of 16. It was unique for a person of my age. I was a systems administrator for an Internet service provider in the 1990s, when accessing the Internet was done via dial-up modem and we surfed the Internet with the Netscape Navigator browser. I wonder if that kind of unique job opportunity would be available for a young person today under the current Liberal government.

With so many young people frustrated by looking for work, what is the average number of applications a young person has to submit before getting their first job? Is it 500, 1,000 or 2,000 applications?

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we heard at committee that a lot of employers are looking for people with experience, and this is stopping young people from getting jobs. This is why we have the programs I listed in my speech earlier, like the innovative work-integrated learning program, FSWEP, the co-op program and Canada summer jobs.

Again, employers are looking to hire people with previous experience, and this is why we are investing in giving youth those first experiences.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I know the member has been listening to the debate today. I have expressed a great deal of disappointment that we are debating this issue when we should be talking about Bill C-4, which would give first-time homebuyers and 22 million Canadians a substantial tax break. The budget is coming tomorrow. We are witnessing a filibuster by the Conservative Party when we should be talking about the interests of Canadians.

I would ask the member for her thoughts on her constituents' need for the tax break and the many other things being brought forward by the government.

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, yes, we should be debating Bill C-4 today. In addition to lowering taxes for the middle class, which affects 22 million Canadians, and eliminating the goods and services tax on new homes for first-time buyers, Bill C-4 also aims to end the consumer carbon tax, something that my Conservative colleagues have been calling for for a very long time. Now we are doing it, but they choose not to debate it.

This brings me back to what I was saying earlier: Questions get asked, but there is no real willingness to find a solution.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, very simply, the parliamentary secretary began her speech by saying that the Liberals' plan is working. Objectively, it is not.

Youth unemployment numbers continue to go up, and members who disagree should simply access the Statistics Canada reports, which show the numbers going up. The member can identify the continuing existence of programs that have existed since the 1990s, such as the Canada summer jobs program and youth employment strategy, but the Liberals' approach on a range of policy areas is clearly not working. It is in the numbers.

Does the member not believe the numbers, or does she hope we are not aware of them?

[Caroline Desrochers, Liberal, Trois-Rivières, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I take offence at the comment because I did not deny that there is youth unemployment. I explained the programs we have, and I linked all these programs. The member knows them, because we have been studying them at committee. We have been going over them and over the numbers.

Yes, youth unemployment exists and it is an issue. We have programs to give students their first job so that they can continue—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Richmond Hill South.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in the midst of a generational youth unemployment crisis, the Prime Minister has a message for young Canadians: to keep sacrificing. After 10 long years of Liberal failure, he is asking young people, the very generation crushed under the weight of his economic mismanagement, to make even more sacrifices.

What more is there left to give? Young Canadians have already sacrificed the dream of home ownership; they have sacrificed with a summer of no jobs, and they have sacrificed at the grocery store with skyrocketing food costs. Now the same out-of-touch Liberal Prime Minister is asking them to dig even deeper to pay for his record-breaking deficits, his anti-growth ideology and his out-of-touch experiments in economic policy. Let us be clear: Young Canadians do not need another lecture from an out-of-touch Goldman Sachs investment banker, the Prime Minister, about sacrifice. They need jobs, homes and a future filled with hope.

Statistics Canada has confirmed what every young Canadian already knows and feels on the ground: The Liberals' economic failure has created a deepening youth unemployment crisis. Let us look at the numbers. In September, youth unemployment climbed from 14.5% to 14.7%, as if it was not bad enough. That is the highest level since 2010, coming out of the great recession, outside the pandemic years. Over 460,000 young Canadians aged 15 to 24 are unemployed today. Nearly 15% are unemployed nationally, and this is climbing.

For students trying to balance school and work, it is even worse: 17% of students cannot find jobs, and it is getting worse—

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

I am going to have to interrupt the hon. member. There seems to be a device on his desk that is causing a sound. I will ask him to move it away from the microphone. It interferes with the interpreters' work.

The hon. member can resume.

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is getting worse every single day. In Ontario alone, over 17,000 young people lost their jobs just last month. Ontario's unemployment has now topped 700,000, up 83,000 in a single year. In Windsor, unemployment has soared past 10%. In Toronto, joblessness is up 46,000 year over year, a record high. This past summer, it was the worst in a generation, with returning full-time students facing an average unemployment rate of 17.9%, the highest since the great recession, outside the pandemic. This is not just a crisis. It is a generational collapse.

I will be splitting my time with another member.

Young Canadians trying to pay tuition, gain experience and start their lives have been completely abandoned by the Liberal government. Even educated workers, those who did everything right, who went to school, studied hard and followed the rules, are struggling. One in six workers with post-secondary credentials is in a job unrelated to their training. New graduates are unable to build careers in their fields. I ask the Liberal government how it can call it opportunity when no opportunity even exists.

How can a young person believe in the Canadian promise when the path to success has been blocked by Liberal red tape, reckless spending and endless taxes? This is not a temporary setback. This is a metastasizing crisis that threatens Canada's long-term economic future. A government that loses faith in its young people is a government that loses faith in Canada.

What caused this crisis? It was the Liberal Prime Minister and his decision to double down on the very same Trudeau-era policies that failed. It begins with their disastrous economic policy, a policy that drives away investment, kills small businesses and punishes personal ambition. For 10 years, the Liberals have pushed anti-growth laws that sabotage the very sectors that built the country: energy, manufacturing, resource development and more. They refuse to repeal their “no new pipelines” law, the same law that killed billions in private investment and forced companies to flee south. They maintain the production cap, which throttles Canada's ability to compete globally. They enforce a tanker ban that effectively blocks our provinces from exporting responsibly produced Canadian energy while our allies depend on the exports of dirty dictator oil.

Is that fair to young Canadians who could be building careers in engineering, trades or innovation, or is that just failure dressed up as virtue?

Investment is fleeing the country at a record level. Business investment for workers collapsed by more than 10% per worker under the Liberals' watch. Canada now ranks dead last in the G7 for GDP growth, experiencing negative growth and the fastest-shrinking economy as measured by real GDP per capita.

What does the Liberal Prime Minister tell Canadians? He says that we need to sacrifice. What do we need to sacrifice exactly? Is it our prosperity, our jobs, our expectations, our standards or our hope?

Let us remember what these numbers mean. Behind every statistic is a story, a young person whose dream has been delayed or destroyed, a recent graduate in Toronto forced to move back in with their parents because rent costs more than their entire paycheque, a student in Windsor who is working two part-time jobs just to cover groceries but is still unable to find meaningful summer employment in their field or a young couple in Richmond Hill who gave up on ever owning a home and starting a family because the down payment they saved up five years ago is now worth much less. This is the reality for millions. Is this the Canada our parents and grandparents built? Is this the country that once promised that hard work would be rewarded, not punished by Liberal policies?

Conservatives have a plan, not more words such as the Liberals like to use, but real action. There is an opportunity to work with Conservatives on a youth jobs plan that is built on four key pillars to restore opportunity and rebuild hope.

First, we will unleash the economy. We will repeal antiresource laws, cut taxes to drive reinvestment and eliminate the red tape that is choking homebuilding and business growth.

Second, we will fix the immigration system. We all know that the Liberals have broken the immigration system, flooding the market with labour and destroying long-held social bargains. We must fix credential recognition and realign immigration with labour and housing market realities.

Third, we will fix the training system. Federal student aid should no longer treat all studies the same. We are proposing that the Canada student financial assistance program provide relatively more support to students pursuing in-demand fields, determined based on objective labour market data. Taxpayer investments in education should prepare youth for jobs that are out there.

Fourth, we will build homes where the jobs are. Employers trying to hire in regions with labour shortages face major obstacles because workers cannot find nearby housing. To fix this, we are proposing a 100% capital cost write-off for companies that build workforce housing. This powerful incentive would help small businesses and large employers alike to attract workers while expanding the housing supply overall.

That is the Conservative plan, a plan rooted in common sense and action, not bureaucracy and excuses.

What is the Liberal plan? It is nothing but recycled announcements, photo ops and programs older than the young people today. The Liberals point to jobs funds from the 1990s, duplicate old programs and then claim victory while the crisis worsens every single day. They have spent billions on bureaucracy and have nothing to show for it, no new pipelines, no housing affordability and no youth employment gains.

Meanwhile, young Canadians line up at food banks, delay starting a family and lose faith in a system that no longer works for them. How can the Prime Minister claim to care about young people when every one of his policies makes their lives worse? How can a government that cannot permit a single project claim to support jobs? How can a government that taxes groceries claim to fight for affordability? How can a Prime Minister who has never missed a meal lecture struggling students about sacrifice?

The truth is simple: The Liberals broke Canada's promise. Conservatives will restore it.

The Liberals are saying that they are making so-called generational investments; instead, we are witnessing a generational betrayal. The Liberal government inherited one of the most prosperous, stable and opportunity-rich nations in the world and squandered it.

The Liberals hollowed out our industries, demonized our workers and replaced production and innovation with ideology and bureaucracy. They built a bloated bureaucracy and called it progress. Now the bill has come due, and they look to young Canadians and the next generation to pay the bill. That is not leadership; that is abdication.

Our Conservative plan will be different. We will unleash the power of young Canadians, not bury them under debt. We will cut taxes so that hard work pays off. We will scrap the industrial carbon tax and cut taxes on homebuilding, so farmers, truckers and builders can make life affordable again.

We will repeal the “no new pipelines” law, lift the tanker ban and scrap the production cap so that Canada can once again be an energy superpower that provides well-paying jobs to young people from coast to coast. We will reward hard work again, so we are not sacrificing to survive but working to thrive for a better tomorrow.

Canada's best days are not behind us, although that is what the Liberal Prime Minister wants Canadians to believe. They are ahead of us.

[Natilien Joseph, Liberal, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am a little confused. The Conservatives spend 50% of their time voting against the government's youth employability programs, safety programs and more, and the other 50% of their time advocating for young people and youth employability.

My question is this: Can my colleague across the way look into the camera and claim that the Conservatives are being sincere?

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will look directly into the camera.

I know the Liberal member is a little perplexed, but so are young Canadians. The Liberal Prime Minister went into a room full of students and told them they needed to sacrifice more, to lower their expectation and to be content with less, because the Liberals robbed them of their future. Those students and young Canadians all across the country who are watching are the ones who are perplexed.

They want to know why their government is working against them when it should be supporting them and uplifting the next generation.

[Luc Thériault, Bloc, Montcalm, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I see "help wanted" signs all over my riding. I have met with business leaders, entrepreneurs and workers at various companies. Of course, I am obviously not talking here about temporary foreign workers in the agriculture sector. The people I meet are concerned about applying a 20% standard, so reducing it to 10% would be a really big deal for them. The fact is that they cannot hire enough staff without temporary foreign workers. Without them, business owners would have to shut down. They would not be able to process orders.

Is the situation in my colleague's riding really that much different from mine?

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have some advice for that member. He should maybe stop parroting the talking points of the corporate lobbyists who are courting his office, because that is what it sounds like he is repeating right now. Although that story sounds rich, the numbers from StatsCan do not lie. This is a government agency that provides these unbiased statistics: Youth unemployment is up to 14.7% and it keeps going up. It is the highest level since 2010 coming out of the great recession. There are 460,000 young Canadians, aged 15 to 24, nearly 15%, unemployed nationally; 17% of students cannot find jobs; and 17,000 young people lost their jobs just last month. Ontario's unemployment now tops 700,000, which is up 83,000 in a single year.

If that member has the guts, maybe he should go back to his riding, talk to some students and repeat that story while these statistics, this reality, is happening all across the country.

[Helena Konanz, Conservative, Similkameen—South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think that everyone in the House agrees, or should agree, that there is a deepening youth unemployment crisis. Since September, it climbed from 14.5% to 14.7%, the highest since 2010. Conservatives have been sounding the alarm for years now and the Liberals have ignored the warnings.

Can the member explain again what he believes is the root cause of this youth unemployment crisis?

[Vincent Ho, Conservative, Richmond Hill South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the root cause of this youth unemployment crisis is one person. It is this Liberal Prime Minister, because he calls himself a new Liberal prime minister, but he has just proven that he is just another bait and switch. He chose to double down on the same failed Trudeau-era policies of the last 10 years instead of turning the page and trying something new.

Our Conservative plan would be different. We would unleash the economy. We would repeal anti-resource laws. We would fix the immigration system that the Liberals broke. We would fix the training system. We would tie student aid to programs that are reflective of the job market. We would build homes where the jobs are.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there have been discussions among the parties and I believe you will get unanimous consent to go to Questions Passed as Orders for Return so that I can make a very brief statement and then return to the debate we are currently having.

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.