Kevin Lamoureux

“Mr. Speaker, I rise today on behalf of the great people of Bowmanville—Oshawa North to discuss the urgent and important matter of youth unemployment. There are a lot of statistics that get referred to when we talk about this issue, and those statistics are very important, but I also want to spend some time talking about the people and the lives behind those numbers. To paint a broad picture, as a country, we have lost, in the last two months, 110,000 jobs, and in September, 70% of the jobs lost were lost by young workers. That is 48,000 jobs lost in one month by workers under the age of 25. This number is startling and alarming. It is a reminder that policy makers and legislators here in Ottawa must take this problem seriously and be looking for solutions. I have the privilege and honour of representing a riding and a community home to two post-secondary schools, Durham College and Ontario Tech University. There are wonderful opportunities for me to not only feel old regularly, because when I speak to students I am reminded of just how much time flies by, but also to be reminded of all the incredible, dynamic, wonderful young people we have in this country. To give a perspective on the student population of my home community, we have 13,000 full-time students at Durham College, as well as 30,000 part-time and continuing education students. At Ontario Tech University, we have over 14,000 graduate and undergraduate students. I have the opportunity to go to campus and hear how their lives are going, hear how they are experiencing this economy and see from their point of view how the Prime Minister’s decisions affect their generation and the prospects they have to build a life, build a career, buy a home one day and move forward with their dreams. Recently, I was able, with the help of a fantastic professor, Ms. Keri-Ellen Walcer, who is at the faculty of business at Durham College, to bring together a group of student leaders to share their experiences and give me their feedback on how the economy is affecting them, their peers and their families. We got together with heads of the Durham College students’ union and the Ontario Tech students’ union, as well as the Durham College student business club, the Durham College blogging club and the Durham College makers and shakers club. What really became clear to me from these conversations is that, if we want to tackle the youth unemployment problem, we have to be cognizant of how the economy is affecting the young entrepreneur. The young entrepreneur is the person who is going to build the economy of the future. The young entrepreneur is going to create jobs for not only himself or herself, but also for his or her peers and the broader community. If we are going to make a dent in these alarming numbers that indicate that job losses are acutely affecting young workers, we are going to have to have a plan for the young entrepreneur to be empowered and supported. In the feedback that they shared with me, those students raised a number of issues that I think can paint a clear picture for members of the House to better understand how the future leaders of our economy are stressing and struggling with the current affordability crisis and the impact this has on job creation. I want to start by talking about their concerns over housing. What they made very clear to me was that, because they are just eking by every month to be able to pay rent, and because of how difficult it is for them to make ends meet, it leaves very little time at the end of every day, at the end of every week and at the end of every month to actually work on their businesses, and they have a very broad range of interests, from fashion design to manufacturing and restaurants. They have all sorts of things that they want to be working on, but because of the affordability crisis, they have very little time to access opportunity to work on those things. We know that in order to grow a business and in order to build an economy, young people need mentorship and they need networking. Especially if they want to start a business, they need mentorship and networking in the field that they want to work in, innovate in, create in and build in, but if someone is eking by every month, struggling just to get by day to day, then they have very little time to do the big picture thinking and planning to actually build those relationships to build that business and grow our local economy. This paints a very clear and logical picture, so when the government comes out and says, it has a program, and the government and the Prime Minister are very good at announcements, press releases, press conferences and standing at a podium, often with a manufactured design behind them to indicate that they are doing something constructive, it leads to a lot of questions, like, in the middle of an affordability crisis, how much time young people have to access these supposed announcements and programs. If young people are struggling to get by, where is the time at the end of the day to fill out government paperwork or talk in a government office about a program that is supposed to help their generation build for the future? This is even clearer if someone visits the Durham College campus. There they will see that, like many other campuses across the country, it has started a food bank on campus because of how bad affordability has become for the average student to get by. This not only paints a picture of a precarious situation for young entrepreneurs to be operating in, but paints a picture of the difficulty in having the time and focus to build the businesses of the future, in accessing mentorship and networking, in accessing programming and in doing the planning necessary to build. It also paints a picture of severe mental health crises. What people will hear if they talk to students, not just at Durham College and Ontario Tech University but at campuses across this country, is that they are dealing with an extreme amount of stress to complete their studies, plan for the future and build a career when they graduate to pay their bills and get by. This leads to very serious mental health concerns for many of their peers, and it leads to a lot of concern about whether there are appropriate resources and supports for young people on campuses and beyond. This is not just clinical support, but community support and the opportunity to build relationships, friendships and fellowship. These things are often lacking in the lives of young people today as they struggle with the affordability crisis. All in all, if we are to recognize, as I believe we should, that young entrepreneurs are critical to resolving the youth unemployment problem, then we also must understand the circumstances they are growing up in, the circumstances they are studying in and the circumstances they are working in. My belief is that if we are to take this problem seriously, then every time we see a statistic come out in a StatsCan report or a jobs number get released in the news, we should think about young people like the business leaders I mentioned at Durham College and Ontario Tech and the students all across this country who are bearing the brunt of an economy that simply does not work. I recall that just a couple of years ago, members of an earlier iteration of the Liberal government used to talk a lot about the idea of generational fairness. I remember that buzzword being used very often. However, when we visit students at campuses and hear from them, we hears that the government has not produced generational fairness. In fact, the government has produced a very imbalanced economy where those who already have a home or business and have already made their way do not feel the same consequences as those who dream and strive to have those very same things and who are trying to get those things in an environment where it is much more difficult. With my remaining time, I would like to highlight a plan that some of my Conservative colleagues have spoken about in the House today. It is a plan that Conservatives have put forward that we believe will make a difference for young workers and young entrepreneurs. It is a plan that will address many of the issues and concerns that I hear when I visit the students at Durham College and Ontario Tech. It is a plan that will address four particular pillars. The first pillar is unleashing the economy by cutting taxes and reducing red tape. This is economic growth 101, and it is mind-boggling that we even have to argue these points in the House, but we do. Number two is to fix the immigration system. There are too many people coming into our country. It is skewing the labour market and making the labour market worse for everybody. We have to address that. The only people who benefit from high levels of immigration are the large corporations that would like to see the wages of Canadian workers depressed. Number three, the Conservative plan mentions the Canada student financial assistance program, to make sure that taxpayer dollars are being marshalled toward supporting students to pursue fields where there are actual jobs and opportunities. Lastly, that plan is supporting workforce housing, which is very important, because as I mentioned, as young people struggle with affordability and the housing crisis, it makes it harder for them to get ahead and build their careers.”