Human Resources committee  I'll start with the apprenticeships. Quite often, it seems to me that apprenticeships are a second-best option for a lot of families. We think of it as a career pathway that we channel people into who maybe don't do too well at school. I think there needs to be a rethinking. Ther

Human Resources committee  If you don't mind, I want to quickly do a shout-out to the housing volunteering program that Luisa Atkinson spoke about. It seems to me that this is the kind of volunteering program where there is an immediate benefit to those who volunteer, in terms of developing housing that th

Human Resources committee  There are two things. Don't make it a summer program. Make it a Canada youth employment program and have it run. Young people want to work. We know that. Often when we look at young people, we're looking at the old south and sweatshops, but young people want to be out working. It

Human Resources committee  That is a very important question. Of course, apprenticeship is one of these forgotten transition pathways in Canada but is one that offers tremendous opportunities. As it happens, some of my other research is about apprenticeships. I have done interviews with young apprentices,

Human Resources committee  There's potentially two ways to answer this question. One of them might be that a lot of young people come to university with less than well-informed career goals. What I see in my research, and just casually talking—I teach first-year courses—to students, is that everybody wants

Human Resources committee  I'll attempt an answer. I don't know because we don't follow people, track people, in that way. We don't know how skills are being used. I think it's correct that universities have become important feeder schools for colleges—not just in the trades but also in the diploma program

Human Resources committee  If I may, in the 15-odd-years that I've been writing reference letters for students and looking at student resumés, I haven't seen a single student who has not volunteered. They don't just volunteer at one place, either; they volunteer at 20 places. These resumés are astounding.

Human Resources committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair and distinguished committee members, for giving me the opportunity to speak today about my research and how it relates to the issue of youth transitions and the role of extracurricular experiences or experiential learning experiences in this transit