Mr. Speaker, Canada faces a deepening youth unemployment crisis, and I am rising today to request that the House of Commons hold an emergency debate on this crisis.
Parliament has not sat since June, and in that time we have had three new reports from Statistics Canada that underline the dire situation facing Canadian young people. The unemployment rate has gone to 7.1% overall. For youth, it has hit 14.5%. Clearly, youth unemployment is already at recession levels, and it continues to get even worse.
Incredibly, about one in five returning students was unemployed this summer. In August alone, the drop in jobs, if we combine employed and self-employed, was 109,000. Effectively, that is 109,000 fewer jobs. This was in just one month. That is an emergency, and that emergency calls for an emergency debate.
We have been trying to get the government to take this crisis seriously. Before the summer began, we proposed a summer study on youth unemployment at the human resources committee; Liberals blocked that study. When the July numbers came out, we again sought emergency hearings, but the Liberals refused to bring the committee back to work.
This summer, even while Liberals refused this work, I and other Conservative members criss-crossed the country to meet with young people, employers and Canadians of all backgrounds to gather feedback on the jobs crisis. The Liberals spent two and a half more months sitting on their hands.
Now Parliament is back, and the delays must end. Our youth cannot wait anymore. I have talked to young people who have put in over a thousand applications—that is over a thousand applications—and are still looking.
Liberal policies got us here. Liberal policies continue to block economic development. Liberal policies wrecked our immigration system. Liberal policies have created a cost of living crisis. They should stop dithering and start working.
Many Canadians are struggling. Many are asking their employers for additional hours and many are working two and three jobs just to get by, and this is putting further pressure on the labour market. The jobs crisis is biting more and more Canadians.
Parliament is back. Let us finally get back to work. Let us have this vitally important emergency debate. Let us confront this generational challenge so that our young people can work again.