Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this important issue of youth unemployment. To begin, I would like to say to my Conservative colleague who just finished his speech that I agree with him on one of the major points he mentioned: changing leaders obviously does not mean that we have a new government. We agree on that. This is my nod to him in response to his remarks.
We have to be careful when we address this issue. The issue that was raised at the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities is good and important, but there is no simple or populist solution to this issue. The committee is alarmed by the data on youth employment, which is at a 25-year low. A very low employment rate means that unemployment is very high. In fact, the current unemployment rate is the highest it has been since 2010. The youth unemployment rate reached 14.7%, while the rate for the entire active population was 7.1% in September 2025.
I would like to remind the House that the official unemployment rate always underestimates the actual number of unemployed people. I hope that my fellow MPs are already aware of that but, if not, I am happy to share that information with them. The unemployment rate primarily takes into account people who are registered with EI and who are looking for work. It does not take into account those who are discouraged by, on the sidelines of or disheartened with a job market where the deck is stacked against them. The actual unemployment rate is therefore probably higher than the numbers show.
Of course, it all depends on the age of the young people, but the younger they are, the more likely they are to be in precarious, low-skilled jobs, often in retail or something similar. These are often jobs that people do not want to keep in the long term and end up leaving. There is a relatively normal turnover rate that needs to be taken into account.
At the same time, there is another important phenomenon: The cost of living has been very high for the past two years, food inflation is rampant and wages are not keeping pace. Imagine what it is like to earn minimum wage. These jobs are unattractive. This is also one of the reasons why young people may be refusing to take them. There are a lot of factors involved, and it is quite complex. At the same time, job offers for young people have declined over the past few summers. It is important to look into this further.
However, we should avoid engaging in petty populism by saying, for example, that the temporary foreign worker program must be scrapped and claiming that this will magically fix the youth unemployment rate. This would indeed be a magic formula. Those are nice, empty slogans to throw around but they do nothing. I am reminded of the Conservatives' last catchy slogan: Axe the carbon tax, it will lower the cost of food. People were yelling at each other over it.
However, the carbon tax no longer exists in Canada outside Quebec. Did grocery prices go down? Have grocery prices in Canada outside Quebec gone up less than grocery prices in Quebec? In Quebec, we continue to be responsible, and we still have a price on pollution because we want to see long-term improvement. The answer is no. Grocery prices have not gone down. If axing the tax had really had the impact that the Conservatives have been talking about for months and months, Quebec would have scrapped its tax, too; we are not stupid. We do not want people to fall on hard times. We are capable of taking meaningful action by adopting a long-term vision and acting intelligently.
Let us be statesmen rather than politicians. Does everyone know the difference between the two? A farmer told me this story. I told him I would remember his example because I liked it so much, and I have been striving to be a statesman ever since. Politicians make decisions based on the next election, whereas statesmen make all their decisions based on and informed by the next generation. That is our job—