Mr. Speaker, it is a great honour, as always, to rise on behalf of the people of Elgin—St. Thomas—London South. I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Edmonton Southeast.
I have the great privilege in this role of meeting people all over the communities that I represent, but I love when I get the opportunity to meet with young people. I love when I get the opportunity to speak to classes. I can tell members that whenever I go into a high school class, they are always so enthusiastic. Sometimes they are so overwhelmed by their excitement that they cannot even bring themselves to listen.
I have a great deal of hope for high school students, even if they do not share that hope right now. Whenever I speak to these students, knowing that in any grade 10 class, not everyone is interested in politics, I always try to find issues that connect with them and issues that speak to the experiences they are going through, the lives they are living. Without a doubt, whenever I have asked these classes how many of them are having trouble finding a job, almost every hand goes up.
In fact, a few weeks ago, I was speaking to one grade 10 civics class, and I asked that very question. Students laughed because they view their inability to find a job right now as a punchline. They do not even believe it is within the realm of reality. That is heartbreaking.
We have heard, in the course of the discussion this evening, members talk about the importance of first jobs and the pride one feels having a first job. I remember that my first grown-up job, so to speak, was at the age of 14 working as a busboy at a hotel restaurant. It was an opportunity I had at 14 to develop skills, to earn a bit of income and to do something with my life, however young.
It was interesting. A year into that, for whatever reason, I felt like I wanted to do something else, and I did something that I do not recommend to anyone, certainly not now. I put in my two weeks' notice without having a plan. Within the next two weeks, I had been offered several jobs, at 15 and with one year of work experience. That was the opportunity available to me, available to people my age and certainly available to people in this chamber who are older in years than I am.
It is heartbreaking to me that this is no longer the case. Not only do young people today not face a situation in which they are getting multiple offers, but they are finding themselves applying for dozens or hundreds of jobs and failing to find even one company that will hire them. It is not because they are not passionate. It is not because they are not dedicated or hard-working. It is because the jobs are simply not available to them.
We have seen in the last year, despite the Liberal government's proclamations that things are great in Canada right now, really dismal unemployment numbers. In fact, I remember when youth unemployment reached a record just shy of 15%. How many people in this chamber were sounding the alarm about that? The region I represent has an even worse situation for youth unemployment right now. The London area, which includes St. Thomas and Elgin, has a youth unemployment rate, as of last month, of 19.9%. That means one in five youth looking for work cannot find it.
These numbers are bad enough, but they tell only a portion of the story. They do not show the people who have given up, the people who are not looking for work and the people who have withdrawn from the labour market. That number, when we take all that into consideration, shows an even more grim portrait. When young people cannot find a first job, it means they have a harder time finding a bit of a better job and then a better job than that. What I hear from employers, who are sometimes facing the opportunity to hire someone, is that they are getting applicants who are 20 or 22 years old who do not have any meaningful experience because they have not been able to find jobs where they would normally cut their teeth, where they would normally develop skills and gain experience.
We have now, as the cumulative effect of this, a delayed entry into the workforce, not for lack of desire but for lack of opportunity. There are a number of reasons for this. One of them is the economic climate that businesses and business owners face right now.
This, contrary to what the Liberals, I am sure, are going to say, is not something we can lay at the feet of the United States. This is the consequence of 11 years of Liberal government policy, taxes, regulations, red tape, bureaucracy and high-cost inflation, all of which makes it more difficult, if not impossible, for businesses, especially small and medium-sized businesses, to invest in talent, to hire people. If someone talks to small business owners, they increasingly find themselves working the equivalent of two, three or four full-time jobs because they cannot afford, especially with their margins, to hire. Whenever a decision is made to hire or not to hire, it is often that young entry-level worker who is going to be the one missing out on that opportunity.
They have been doing it recklessly, to the point where now young people are being displaced from job opportunities because of an abundance of temporary foreign workers who are occupying a lot of service positions, because the government said they could. The Liberal government said they could. This is something that everyone sees in this country. Everyone knows that, except for the Liberals, or at least they choose not to acknowledge it. If we do not get rid of this program, we are going to see more and more of what we have been describing tonight take hold. More and more young people will be unable to enter the job market.
We have put forward, as some of my colleagues have shared tonight, a number of concrete steps, things the Liberal government could do right now that would start righting the ship after this disastrous record of theirs over the last 11 years. However, I want to take the opportunity to give a voice to the people who have been the most directly affected by this, young people who have been reaching out to me and continue to reach out to me because of the lives that they are forced to live, because of what is happening.
Then we also have immigration. Now, the Liberals have tried to do this very dishonest thing whenever we raise this issue by saying that we are blaming immigrants for Canada's economic woes, when the reality could not be further from that. We are blaming the Liberal government, which has for 11 years held the keys to the country and decided exactly how many people are permitted to enter the country and work in the country. That is the Liberal government's prerogative as government, and for 11 years the Liberals have been doing this.
Logan writes, “I am at rock bottom. I lost my car due to a weather-related accident. Since then I was forced to quit my job as I was in school. I have not been able to find a job since. Almost every day, I am applying and actively seeking a job. Still with no vehicle, I am running out of time and money. The money I saved lasted me up until now, as I am paying for rent on my own and food.” Benjamin writes, “I cannot find a good job despite multiple degrees.” Tyler writes, “Recently, I've started my last term of schooling to become a licenced plumber. For the last two terms I've been at school, I received a grant at the end of it, which helped me get things to further my career, like tools and textbooks. As of March 2025, the federal government has taken that away from me and all other apprentices.” I am glad the Liberals finally acknowledged that when we talked about the importance of this, because this was so disruptive to students. Tyler continued to write, “Raise this matter in the House. We need Canadian-trained, skilled labour to help build this country.”
We have Candace. I read a little bit of a letter she sent me in question period last week. Despite the minister responsible for jobs saying that she would welcome the opportunity to correspond with Candace, I asked for consent to table the letter and the Liberals shouted it down. Candace, a 25-year-old mother of a 17-month-old daughter at the time she wrote this, was laid off from her job because of the economic downturn and has applied for 500 positions. She says she has tailored multiple versions of her résumé for different industries. She has written personalized cover letters. She has actually made searching for a job her full-time job and has received only a handful of interviews. She has seen companies that she applied to hire temporary foreign workers instead. This is the reality facing young people.
The Liberal government needs to stop being dismissive of this, understand this, listen to this and work with us to deliver the solutions that are going to right this ship, that are going to give these young people who I represent, who all of us in this House represent, the chance at the future that we all had when we were their age.
