Garnett Genuis

[Business of Supply, September 23rd, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to put something to my hon. friend and get his feedback on it.

I think all of us agree in the House that human rights are important. We also agree that ideas about human rights are contestable. They are a matter of public debate, so things the member sees as being the implications of a belief in human rights might be different from what I or other members see as the implications of human rights. The reason our Constitution has section 33 is to affirm that the ultimate arbiter of questions that are contestable in the domain of human rights should be the elected legislature. This is what preserves the essential nature of a parliamentary democracy. Parliament, not courts, has the ultimate say on where we should go in defending human rights. The problem with—

[Business of Supply, September 23rd, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, the factum that we are discussing today from the federal government is notable in that it explicitly says that it is not about Bill 21 but rather about section 33. The government chose to intervene solely on the issue of its arguments with respect to section 33.

I wonder if the member could explain why the federal government made that choice.

[Fertility Rates, September 22nd, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, a couple of years ago, an Angus Reid survey for Cardus asked families about the number of children they wanted. The Canadian women surveyed wanted, on average, 2.2 children, coincidentally right around the replacement level. After that survey, the actual fertility rate in Canada hit an all-time low of 1.26 children, which means there is a gap between the desire and the outcome of almost one child per woman. For the first 15 years of this century, fertility rates in Canada held steady between about 1.5 and 1.6 births per woman but have dropped precipitously since 2015. The Angus Reid data confirms that people did not just become less interested in children after 2015. Financial concerns played a major role in their decision to have fewer children than desired.

It seems unsurprising that policies that put jobs and homes out of reach are forcing delayed family formation and leading to fewer kids. One of the many consequences of lower fertility rates is greater loneliness for seniors who do not have the same human contact with the shrinking next generation. A shifting population age distribution also makes social programs for the elderly harder to sustain.

All of us need to work together to rebuild an economy where it is easier for people to have kids.

[Business of Supply, September 22nd, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, the Trudeau Liberals, who were very much the same as these Liberals, passed Bill C-48, which was explicitly designed to block pipelines from going to northern B.C.

Would the member have supported Bill C-48 had he been in the House at that time?

[Business of Supply, September 22nd, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, the approach of the Prime Minister on energy issues is much the same as the approach of Justin Trudeau, which was to feign interest in energy development and, at the same time, pile on barriers to make it effectively very difficult, if not impossible, for projects to move forward.

The member asked what our plan would be. When Conservatives were in government, we had major pipelines move forward, and we had a fifth, the northern gateway project, approved. The government passed Bill C-48, which was designed to kill that project. It piled additional regulations never seen before on any project on the energy east pipeline, which were designed to prevent that project from going forward. Then it acted surprised when the private sector pulled back in response to the additional burden it imposed.

Is this not just more of the same Liberal approach to energy, which is to feign interest but pile on things, such as a production cap, that make it nearly impossible to move forward?

[Employment, September 18th, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, the minister is so busy congratulating herself for I do not know what that she has not actually listened to the numbers we heard from Statistics Canada today. The situation is truly dire when it comes to unemployment: a 12% increase for women aged 25 to 54 in one month alone and a 23% increase year over year. Unemployment has been going up steadily for three years. Youth unemployment is at recession levels. We have the worst youth employment numbers in over 25 years.

This is not the time for self-congratulation. This is the time to change the policy.

[Employment, September 18th, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, that was truly a striking answer from the minister. My colleague pointed out that EI claims have gone up by 12% among women in that age group in just one month, and the minister's response was, "At least we have jobs. At least the Liberals are still here." They should think less about themselves and their own jobs, and more about women and people of all ages who have been negatively affected by their policies.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer said the labour market sucks and wages are not going up. The Liberals are presiding over an employment disaster. When will they reverse course?

[Prime Minister of Canada, September 17th, 2025]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Prime Minister promised change. Like Liberals before him, he is breaking his promises. He promised the fastest-growing economy in the G7. He has actually delivered the fastest-shrinking economy in the G7. He promised to “build, baby, build”, but he continues to support Bill C-69, the block, baby, block act. He promised to double the pace of construction, but homebuilding is actually declining. He promised jobs and opportunity and then delivered an unemployment crisis. He promised less spending, but he is spending more. He promised elbows up and then he put his elbows down.

The Prime Minister said the things he thought Canadians wanted to hear during the election, and then he did the opposite. During his time as a temporary foreign worker in the United Kingdom, the Prime Minister was famously called the “unreliable boyfriend”. Six months into this relationship, Canadians are starting to see why. Canada, it turns out that “he is just not that into you”.

[Employment, September 16th, 2025]

Madam Speaker, the parliamentary secretary presented government subsidy through the Canada summer jobs program as the solution to this youth unemployment crisis, but let us talk about some numbers.

Canada has over two million post-secondary students. The jobs numbers from Statistics Canada show that about one in five returning students was unemployed this summer, so we are talking about probably more than 400,000 students. The government's response is to say that it proposes to subsidize 6,000 new positions. Many of those positions are actually for eight weeks, so we are talking about a problem, for returning students alone, of over 400,000 positions, and its response is a public subsidy for 6,000 positions.

I think these numbers underline that we cannot subsidize our way out of a bad economy. The government needs to fix the underlying problems.

[Employment, September 16th, 2025]

Madam Speaker, I very much appreciate having the opportunity this evening to speak about the metastasizing unemployment crisis that is facing this country. We have seen over the course of the summer that new reports demonstrate a continuously worsening situation, although I think it is important to say as well that this is the continuation of a three-year trend. It is not as if things were rosy and then all of a sudden unemployment got bad; this is the continuation of a running trend of worsening employment numbers. The unemployment rate overall is at 7.1%.

Things are getting worse for people of all ages. I want to be clear that it is not only young people who are facing this challenge, but it is particularly acute for them. The employment rate for young people in Canada is now at a more-than-25-year low. We have to go back to before the year 2000, which I think is three Liberal prime ministers ago, to find a situation where the youth employment rate was lower than it is now outside of the acute phase of the COVID pandemic. We are clearly in a situation where, for young people, we are already at recession levels of employment. This is a concern for many reasons. It is a concern because of the pain that young people are experiencing. The combination of housing being so difficult to access, out of reach for most, and a situation where employment is increasingly out of reach is leading to a lot of frustration and even despondency in the next generation.

Adding to that, youth unemployment, I think, is an indicator of broader problems in the economy. When companies are pessimistic about the future, their first step is not to let go of senior staff but to not give as many opportunities to those who are just entering the workforce. I think that is a reality, so the youth unemployment rate is a concern in its own right and also for what it indicates about the health of the economy.

We see also how the cost of living crisis is contributing to the unemployment situation. The latest report from Statistics Canada outlines how more people are working multiple jobs because they need the extra money to get by. More people are asking for additional hours from their employer, again because they need the income to pay for basic expenses. The fact that people are struggling because of the cost of living crisis is contributing to more pressure on the labour market, so we have these interconnected, compounding problems. This really is the outworking of a number of different policy failures.

For 10 years we have had a Liberal government that has not been able to support the moving forward of major infrastructure projects that our economy needs. It has put in place Bill C-48, Bill C-69, a production cap and an industrial carbon tax; these policies are blocking development that would help young people get to work. We have seen increasing red tape and other barriers put in front of small businesses that make it harder for them to do business in Canada and to create jobs for young people. We have seen immigration failures, and that is why Conservatives have proposed essential reforms, so that young people can get back to work. We see policy failures contributing to the cost of living crisis, as well as poor alignment with respect to training policy. Many different policy failures have led to the situation.

We need to see a plan from the government, a plan that involves reversing some of these failures. Where is the plan?