Mr. Speaker, there is a small passage buried deep in budget 2025. It sits quietly on page 217. There is no headline, no press conference and no public debate, but for many young Canadians and for communities like mine, it matters a great deal, because in that short passage, the government signals its intent to eliminate student grants for students attending private educational institutions.
At first glance it might sound technical, even reasonable, to people who believe that everyone should strive for a university degree, but when we take a closer look, it reveals something much bigger. It reveals how the Liberal government values different kinds of work and whom it chooses to support. Frankly, it reveals a blind spot. I know something about that blind spot. I am proud to be both a goldsmith and a lawyer, a tradesperson and a professional. I have made my living doing each of them at different stages of my career. Some people would be surprised to learn which was a better way to support my family.
The stigma is real. When I introduce myself as a lawyer, people react one way. Yes, there are lawyer jokes, but there is also a measure of respect and deference. When I introduce myself as a goldsmith, as a tradesperson, the reaction changes. I do not need to explain it to the tradespeople watching from home. There is less credibility, as if one path were more serious, more worthy and more important.
I have lived in both these worlds. Doors closed to me when I crossed from the class of people who shower in the morning to those who shower when they get home from work. That is why this issue matters to me, because what is buried in the budget is not just a funding change. It is a signal. It says that some forms of education are more worthy of public support than others. It says that the path through a university lecture hall is valued more than the path through a workshop, a training lab or a hands-on program. That is a mistake.
There is an old fable many of us learned as children, the story of the lion and the mouse. The lion, powerful and confident, laughs at the mouse for being small and insignificant. What possible value could something so small have? However, later the lion is caught in a net, and it is the mouse, the one dismissed as unimportant, who gnaws through the ropes and sets the lion free. The lesson is simple: Strength takes many forms, and what some dismiss can turn out to be essential.
When we need to build at speeds not seen in a century, we need not just lawyers. We need carpenters, scaffolders, welders and Cat operators, including those who got their certificate at private college. If we are facing a rupture, we need all hands on deck.
In ridings like Nanaimo—Ladysmith, this is not an abstract debate. It is real life. We are a community built by people who work with their hands as well as their minds: tradespeople, technicians, care workers and small business owners. These are people who fix things, build things and keep our local economy moving.
I was lucky to participate last weekend in a repair café, where people came together, with no problem, to help fix things together. Many of us got there not through traditional university degrees. Many of us went to private career colleges. We took focused, practical programs. We learned specific skills that led directly to jobs, in programs in fields like health care support, early childhood education, welding, construction trades, information technology and personal services.
These are not backup plans. They are essential pathways to work, and for many young people they are the most direct routes into the workforce. That matters right now more than ever. We are living through a time of high youth unemployment. Young Canadians are struggling to find their footing. They are looking for a way in. They are looking for a way to build a life. They are motivated by money, and they want to find the fastest pathway to earning an income that will allow them to have at least some of the things their parents have.
At the same time, employers across this country are struggling to find skilled workers. We hear it from construction companies. We hear it from health care providers. We hear it from small businesses trying to grow. There is a gap, a real one. One would think that the role of the government would be to help close that gap, to support the pathways that connect young people to real jobs as quickly and as effectively as possible. Instead, what does the government do? It narrows those pathways.
Under this change, a student attending a public university remains eligible for means-tested grants, but a student attending a private career college, even if they are in a program that leads directly to a job, loses access to the same support. There is the same financial need, the same ambition and the same desire to contribute, but there is different treatment. Why? It is because of the type of institution they chose. That is not fairness. That is picking winners and losers, and it ignores the reality of how our education system has evolved.
Public universities play an important role. Of course they do. We need strong universities. We need research. We need professional training in fields like medicine, law and engineering. However, universities are not designed to meet everything we need. They are not built for rapid job-specific training. They are not always flexible enough to respond quickly to local labour shortages. They do not offer the full range of hands-on programs that many industries depend on.
That is where private career colleges come in. They are smaller, more focused, more nimble and more mouse-like. They can launch programs quickly. They can tailor training to local employers. They can provide targeted, shorter pathways. They get people into the workforce in months, not years. For many students, especially those who cannot afford to spend four years out of the workforce, that matters.
Let us imagine a young person in Nanaimo—Ladysmith. Maybe they cannot leave their community to attend a university. Maybe they need to work while they study. Maybe they are looking for a program that gets them into a job as quickly as possible. They find a program at a local private college. It fits their life. It fits their goals. It leads directly to employment, and they might even be able to work part-time while they are in school. However, under this budget, they lose access to grants. What happens then? They take on more debt, they work more part-time hours, they delay their training, or they abandon the path altogether. That is not helping young people. That is closing doors, and it is happening at the same time the government claims to be focused on youth employment.
That is the contradiction at the heart of this policy. On one hand, we hear about investments in job programs and skills training. There is press conference after press conference. On the other hand, we see a quiet decision buried deep in a budget that makes it harder for young people to access some of the most direct routes into those very jobs. It does not line up, and it reflects something deeper. It reflects a mindset that assigns more value to one type of work than to another. It reinforces class differences that I thought we were trying to dismantle.
Canadians know that dignity does not come from the type of institution printed on one's diploma. It comes from the work itself. It comes from building a home, from caring for a patient, from fixing a piece of equipment, from running a small business, from mastering a craft. I have seen that in my own life. There is a precision in goldsmithing that rivals any profession. There is discipline, creativity and skill. There is pride in producing something tangible and lasting, and yet too often these paths are treated as second-tier.
This policy risks reinforcing that divide. It is not the message we should be sending. If we are serious about addressing youth unemployment, we should be supporting all credible pathways to work, whether they run through a university campus or a small vocational college. We should be asking a simple question: Does this program help a young person get a job? If the answer is yes, then we should be finding ways to support it, not pulling support away.
The lion in the fable did not think it needed the mouse, but when the moment came, it turned out that what seemed small was in fact essential. We should not make the same mistake in public policy. Unless and until the government is willing to fund these programs through public universities, private programs like these are essential to our economy. They are essential to giving young Canadians a real chance to succeed.