Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a great honour to rise in this House and represent the people of Timmins—James Bay. I will be sharing my time with my colleague, my very close neighbour from the great riding of Abitibi—Témiscamingue.
As honoured as I am to stand here, I find it unfortunate to watch the Liberals and Conservatives use a program for giving young people opportunities as a proxy for a culture war and to see them talking about freedom and totalitarianism. The Liberals are using their full-progress agenda, when we are talking about organizations that do an incredible amount of work in each of our communities to help young people. That is the focus of what we should be dealing with here.
I want to say that the Canada summer jobs program in my region of Timmins—James Bay does extraordinary work. My riding is bigger than Great Britain, and as an MP, I am very involved in making sure that the program is accessible, right across the region, to ensure a balance so that communities in the far, isolated reserves of James Bay can have young people hired and that in the isolated farming communities, students who come home can get work. It is for the Franco-Ontarian community to make sure that all the cultural organizations have representation and for the great groups like the YMCA, the Heart and Stroke Foundation, and Science Timmins.
This is an incredible program. What I find very unfortunate in this debate is the undermining of that program, by both the Liberals and the Conservatives, and the undermining of people of religious faith who believe that they can access this program.
At the outset, for me the issue of a woman's right to choose is non-negotiable. It is a fundamental principle, but it is not the issue we tend to deal with when we are hiring for Canada summer jobs. However, there have been abuses, and I am glad to see that the Liberal government recognized that there were abuses.
In my riding, every year a group I never heard of before, called Priests for Life, got on the list to get Canada summer jobs. I had never heard of Priests for Life, so I checked them out on their website. They have an American flag. They have the White House. It is a militant, right-wing, anti-abortion organization. It should not be getting money for young people in my region. I looked it up to see what kind of work young people do. They actually have on their page a special link to Real Estate for Life. It is promoting real estate agents for life. Talk about the money changers in the temple. That is an organization that should never have gotten the money.
An abuse like that could have been easily fixed by the Liberal government stating that if an organization uses the funds to promote an extremist agenda, it will not be eligible. However, the Liberals, being Liberals, came up with a very ham-fisted response.
Call me cynical, but the Liberals love culture wars. They made a values test that was unnecessary for all the organizations that sign up. Now they are trying to do damage control by saying that they did not really mean that. The Conservatives, of course, love this kind of culture war and are jumping on it.
What is really concerning to me is that all the good religious groups that apply year after year are being given the impression that they are no longer eligible because of the abuse of the process by one, two, or three extremists groups across Canada that should never have been eligible in the first place.
I learned my politics in the church. I remember as a young kid the priests organizing for the grape boycott and learning about Cesar Chavez. Growing up we thought that like not eating fish on Friday, eating grapes was some kind of mortal sin, because there was a major international boycott to defend the farm workers. We learned that in our parishes. We learned about standing up for the poor. We learned about public service.
As I grew older, I continued my work. I was a youth leader in our church. The work we did in our church was helping kids from all backgrounds, kids who never went to church, kids of any faith who had no place else to go, and offering them summer events. I see in my region that faith groups are still doing that. That is good, important work. I want to say that we value that work. We value it across the faith spectrum of the groups that are doing social justice, the groups that are helping and encouraging young people. That is where we need to focus. We need to talk about the role Canada summer jobs can play in offering young people opportunities.
In a region as big as mine, we see youth outmigration as one of the fundamental problems facing our communities. If young people want post-secondary education, they have to leave home to go to university. Many of them are so loaded with student debt that coming home is not an option. Just as we lose our trees, just as our hydro leaves, just as our copper, our gold, and our nickel heads south to help Queen's Park, so do our young people.
It has been an fundamental principle for me in using the Canada summer jobs program to make sure that a young person in Matachewan gets an opportunity for employment, that young people in Timmins are able to get good work experience working with excellent organizations, like the Heart and Stroke Foundation, and that the kids in Fort Albany are able to save money, especially the ones who have to leave to go to school.
That is the kind of vision we have to have for the Canada summer jobs program. What we have seen from the Liberal government is a completely ham-fisted, over-the-top response that was completely unnecessary. In doing so, it has rattled public confidence in the Canada summer jobs program. I think it has unfairly politicized the Canada summer jobs program and made people in the faith community believe that they are not eligible and are going to have to go through some kind of bizarre test that the Conservatives are talking about to prove their worthiness. All that was needed was a simple check to make sure that those extremist organizations were not abusing the program. Shame on the Conservatives for telling the faith communities across Canada that they are no longer eligible.
As a member of Parliament, I take my work on the Canada summer jobs program extremely seriously. I am involved with Service Canada in laying out what the priorities are for our region. For me, it is the importance of isolated, rural communities; making sure that people get good experience in the non-profit sector; and the work of cultural organizations in our region, particularly in a rural, francophone region. These are organizations that play a vital role.
It is my role as an MP to be part of that. It is my responsibility as a member of Parliament to make sure that we are getting the maximum amount. By the way, we get record funding year after year in Timmins—James Bay. I just want to say that we are making sure every year that the maximum dollars that are eligible come into our riding and are best used.
This is the conversation we need to have. I would implore the Liberal government to realize that their ham-fisted responses are not the best way to solve things that could be solved in a straightforward manner and to reassure Canadians. I ask my colleagues in the Conservative Party, as well, to stop the fear game. Faith communities of all faiths are still very much a central part of helping in public service, of ensuring that young people get opportunities, and of doing the front-line work making our communities better and safer and giving young people hope.
This is our fundamental role, giving young people a belief that Canada is a land of opportunity and giving them a reason to hope. We can use the Canada summer jobs program in such an important and valuable way. I am here to say that we will work as New Democrats to defend the Canada summer jobs program and keep it from the nasty culture wars the Liberals and Conservatives love to engage in whenever they get the opportunity. Shame on them for using the Canada summer jobs program to fight their proxy wars.
