Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join the debate on Bill C-12.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister spoke to young people. This might have been an opportunity for him to apologize for the 10 years of Liberal failures that have led to historically high unemployment for young people. We are now at a point where the employment rate for young people is the worst it has been in over 25 years. Youth unemployment is approaching half a million young people. It is approaching a rate of 15%.
What is the response of the government to this catastrophe created by its own policy decisions? It is to tell young people that they need to give up more, that they need to sacrifice more. This is the framing we see from the Prime Minister. It is not to take responsibility for the failures of the Liberals over the last 10 years, but to blame the victims of bad Liberal policies. The Liberal approach is to constantly frame the problems we face as a country as if they are somebody else's fault and somebody else needs to take action other than the people who made the policies that got us there in the first place.
We have put forward a Conservative youth jobs plan to reverse the harm done by the Liberals. We have invited them to adopt that plan, but not only have they failed to adopt our jobs plan; they have not even put forward a plan of their own. Their policies attacking energy and job creation, which are pushing the essentials of life out of reach, are making young people increasingly worried about their future.
I was at Concordia University in Montreal yesterday speaking to young people about the situation, asking them whether they were better or worse off than the previous generation. Many young people are worried about their future. They have already suffered so much, yet the Prime Minister, rather than taking responsibility for 10 years of Liberal failures, is telling them that they will have to sacrifice even more. It is time for the government to stop blaming others and take responsibility for its own failures.
As we talk today about Bill C-12, the same is true when it comes to public safety and criminal justice. The government is constantly trying to externalize the source of these problems, yet we know that rates of violent crime were dropping prior to the current government coming into office and began increasing as soon as the government came into office. This is because the Liberal government made policy choices around more generous bail for repeat violent criminals. It made policy choices that got us here.
We will certainly study the provisions in Bill C-12 in detail. We look forward to the study that will take place at committee. However, there has been a complete failure by the Liberal government over the last 10 years to take public safety and crime seriously. It has not recognized that it is Liberal bail, Liberal policy choices and bills proposed and passed by the government that got us into this situation in the first place. Rather than calling on other people to make sacrifices, the government should have the humility to recognize its own policy failures and how the choices it has made on the economy, on crime, on immigration and in many areas have led to a situation where young people are more pessimistic about the future than they used to be.
We are here in this House to talk about restoring opportunity for young people and about restoring hope. I believe our country can have a bright future, but it is in the hands of the members of this House to make that future happen. It is not by sticking our heads in the sand like an ostrich that we make a future better for young people. It is by confronting the real data and real challenges when it comes to public safety and youth unemployment and making things better.
We call on the Liberals to adopt Conservative jail, not bail legislation and to adopt the Conservative youth jobs plan. Those are the solutions we need.
