Question Period Note: Opportunities For Canada’s Youth (Jobs)

Youth have been one of the demographic groups most impacted by the pandemic. What is the Government doing to help ensure young Canadians are prepared to take advantage of job opportunities now and into the future?

• Young Canadians have seen more job losses due to the COVID-19 pandemic than any other age demographic. This not only deprives them of income that could be used to pay for schooling, build their savings, or cover basic living expenses, but can also lead to long-term consequences from the start of their working lives.

• While employment in general has recovered to pre-pandemic levels, many youth continue to need support. In particular, those from under-represented groups, such as youth with disabilities, Indigenous youth, Black youth, and youth from other racialized groups.

• The Government remains committed to helping more youth improve skills and gain work experiences through the following programs:
o Student Work Placement Program: In 2022-2023, the Program will support the creation of up to 40,000 work placements opportunities for post-secondary students across various sectors, contributing to a growing and resilient economy.
o Canada Summer Jobs: In summer 2022, the Government supported over 100,000 jobs for youth.
o Youth Employment and Skills Strategy Program: in 2022-2023, the Program will support approximately 24,000 opportunities for youth to benefit from job placements and supports.

• Together, our actions will help ensure young Canadians have access to opportunities to develop the skills they need to succeed in today’s workforce, build their careers and contribute to Canada’s economy now and into the future.

• On April 19, 2021, the Government of Canada tabled Budget 2021: A Recovery Plan for Jobs, Growth and Resilience, which included reference to additional support for Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC)’s youth skills and employment programming.

Student Work Placement (SWP) Program

• The Student Work Placement (SWP) Program supports partnerships between industry and post-secondary institutions to create quality work placements for students in all disciplines so they can develop the work-ready skills required to secure meaningful employment upon graduation.

• Placements are work-integrated learning (WIL) opportunities that help post-secondary students to bring together academic learning and applied work experience, and can include co-ops, internships, and mentorship programs, as well as other non-traditional experiences like hackathons, boot camps, and micro-internships.

• The SWP Program helps post-secondary students to develop work ready skills, employers to recruit and develop talent, and post-secondary institutions to adapt to changing labour market needs.

• Additional investments in 2020 and 2021 have contributed to increasing the total number of placements supported to over 100,000 since the creation of the Program in 2017.

Youth Employment and Skills Strategy (YESS)

• The YESS aims to ensure that young people (aged 15-30), particularly youth facing barriers, gain the skills, work experience and abilities they need to make a successful transition into the labour market. YESS is delivered by ESDC in partnership with 11 other federal government departments, agencies and Crown Corporations.

• Through Budget 2021’s investment of $109.3 million in 2022-2023, an additional 7,000 youth will benefit from job placements and supports.

• The measures outlined in Budget 2021 are in addition to the $575.3 million to create 45,300 job placements for youth over two years that was announced in the 2020 Fall Economic Statement (FES).

• As well, in June 2020, the Government announced additional funding ($187M for the YESS partners, including $40M for ESDC) for the creation of 9,500 additional work opportunities in 2020-2021 for young Canadians in critical and high-demand sectors (e.g., health, community services, and information technology).

Canada Summer Jobs (CSJ)

• The Canada Summer Jobs (CSJ) program is delivered by ESDC under YESS. The program provides wage subsidies to employers from not-for-profit organizations, the public sector, and private sector organizations with 50 or fewer full-time employees, to create quality summer work experiences for young people aged 15 to 30 years.

• In total, Budget 2021 committed $371.8 million in new funding for CSJ in 2022-2023 to create an additional 75,000 jobs, for a total of 220,000 jobs over two years.

• Budget 2021 built on the previous investments outlined in FES 2020 to support up to 120,000 CSJ placements in 2021-2022, and included the extension of program flexibilities in response to the pandemic (e.g., hiring outside of the summer months, part-time jobs).

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