Mr. Speaker, I move that the 10th report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities presented to the House on May 26, be concurred in.
I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the hon. member for Montmorency—Charlevoix.
This morning we are talking about the jobs crisis facing our country, and in particular facing young people. If I may be indulged briefly, this morning I want to share how proud I am to be a Canadian and an Albertan. Yesterday, Albertans decisively endorsed remaining in Canada, recognizing our challenges, working through those challenges and doing so as part of the Canadian family. Albertans rejected the idea of divorce from the rest of the federation. We may still need counselling from time to time. Within the federation, things are not perfect and there is work to be done. However, what I have seen this morning shows that in almost every single provincial riding, a majority voted in favour of staying in Canada. I want to thank the member for Parkland for his excellent leadership as part of those efforts.
This morning, we are back here fighting about a really important issue, jobs and opportunities for young people, moving the concurrence of the 10th report, an excellent report of the human resources committee. In that context, we also note really dire job numbers that we received for September. Here is where we are right now in Canada in terms of jobs. We are at a 29-year low in terms of labour force participation. Fewer people, as a proportion of the population, are in the labour force today than at any point in the last 29 years outside of the acute phase of the pandemic. That indicates not only are we seeing high and rising unemployment, but that many more people are dropping out of the workforce because they are losing hope.
Canadians who are trying to find jobs are struggling more. The job-finding rate, for example, is down to 30.6%, well below the pre-pandemic average. Youth unemployment is up to 13%. As well, the unemployment rate overall is up. In the last two months, Canada has lost 110,000 jobs. We are seeing all of these troubling indicators in terms of employment adding up to this 29-year low in workforce participation. This is the result of long-running policy failures of the government.
In the face of these policy failures, Conservatives have taken a constructive approach. Last fall, we put forward the Conservative youth jobs plan. At the same time, we were pursuing a study of the unemployment crisis, particularly the youth unemployment crisis, at the human resources committee. We were able to bring that committee to some key recommendations, a unanimous report that really aligned with what Conservatives had been saying in the Conservative youth jobs plan.
Our jobs plan had four key aspects: unleashing the economy, fixing immigration, fixing training and building homes where the jobs are. The recommendations in this report very much parallel those specific proposals that we brought in the Conservative youth jobs plan. Now it is time for the government to act. We see these dire job numbers. We have put our proposals on the table. Those proposals have been reflected in the 10th report of the human resources committee and unanimously endorsed by the committee that is studying the issue.
Now the government needs to actually act and respond to these proposals that we have put forward. Some of these recommendations I want to highlight would make a real difference in terms of getting Canadians back to work and addressing this decades-running low in terms of labour force participation.
When it comes to unleashing the economy, the first proposal is part of the Conservative youth jobs plan, and we can see the first recommendation here, that the government “seek to reduce taxes and red tape in order to address concerns about how the taxation and regulatory environment has limited productivity growth and held back youth unemployment.” It is common sense that young people in particular are often the last in and the first out when it comes to employment. They are the last to be hired and the first to be fired if a business is concerned about its future.
In order to address the youth unemployment crisis, we need a climate in which businesses are optimistic and hopeful, and where there is opportunity for people to start and grow a business. However, what we heard time and again at committee is that it is a very challenging environment as a result of taxation and red tape to start and grow a business. That is where this recommendation comes from.
The second recommendation is that “the Government of Canada recognize the positive role that natural resource development, manufacturing, and all other sectors play in contributing to the economy, and seek to valorize work in all sectors.”
For too long, we have had a Liberal government, for the last 11 years, whose impulse is picking winners and losers, deciding which sectors it likes and which sectors it likes less, including instances where government statements have pushed a kind of stigma around certain kinds of work and certain kinds of jobs. In the face of that negative messaging, we need to highlight the dignity and value of all work and affirm a respect for natural resources development, for manufacturing and for all sectors of this economy and encourage young people to take opportunities in the sectors where that work is available. In terms of unleashing the economy, this has been a key priority for us and these recommendations are included in this report.
In terms of fixing immigration, it is clear that failures within the immigration system, failures of the current government when it comes to the management of immigration, have contributed to unemployment in general and youth unemployment in particular. Therefore, we have three recommendations in the HUMA report that deal precisely with this issue, that the government work with various organizations as well as provinces and territories to“ ensure that immigration levels plans incorporate labour-market analyses, particularly impacts on young workers”.
The fourth recommendation is about strengthening “systems of credential recognition so that skilled newcomers are not forced to compete for entry-level jobs.” This is a major issue and one that Conservatives have been championing for a long time. The failure of this government to undertake appropriate credential recognition for newcomers is a double negative for our economy because it means that we lose out on the skill of that skilled worker who could be working at a higher skill level and that newcomer whose credentials are not recognized is then in a position where they have to compete for an entry-level job, which makes it harder for someone, often a young person, first entering the labour market to access those opportunities.
The fifth recommendation when it comes to addressing how the immigration challenges are contributing to unemployment is that “the Government of Canada apply strict penalties to companies hiring illegal workers.” It has not done that. In fact, we have identified instances where the government has offered multiple rounds of public subsidy to companies that have been previously caught firing Canadians in order to hire illegal workers. The companies fired Canadians, hired illegal workers and then received multiple rounds of taxpayer-funded handouts from the government.
These are some of the things we need to do to fix the immigration system and, through that, to address the challenges in terms of youth unemployment.
There are many recommendations in this report that address our Conservative proposal to fix training. When it comes to training, we need to be training Canadian young people for the jobs that exist in Canada. That means offering more support and recognition for trades work. It means encouraging young people to be aware of and study the labour market issues. It also means opening up more opportunities for work-integrated learning that align with the needs of the labour market. There are many recommendations around this.
Unfortunately, though, the government has moved in the opposite direction. We proposed offering relatively more generous grants to students studying in fields that are in demand. The Liberals have actually cut off student grants for students at vocational institutions if they are privately operated. The Liberals are making it more difficult for young people in vocational programs to access student grants at a time when we have serious shortages of people with the vocational skills that we need. Our approach needs to not be this Liberal approach of arbitrarily deciding to esteem certain kinds of careers over others. Rather, we need to support training for the jobs that exist in the real world here in Canada so that young people can get training for the jobs that exist.
The fourth proposal in our Conservative youth jobs plan was to build homes where the jobs are, to make it easier for people to relocate to where jobs are. This is recommendation 13 in the HUMA report: “That the Government of Canada study providing accelerated capital cost write-off for employers investing in workforce housing, recognizing the opportunity for young people to relocate for work if appropriate housing is available.”
This is a constructive report that builds on constructive proposals the Conservatives have put forward. We have the current government presiding over a 29-year low in workforce participation, but we are not just raising the alarm about that. We are also offering constructive solutions through our youth jobs plan and through this report. Now it is time for the government to actually act on the proposals that we have put forward so that young Canadians, and all Canadians, can get back to work.