Madam Speaker, I very much appreciate having the opportunity this evening to speak about the metastasizing unemployment crisis that is facing this country. We have seen over the course of the summer that new reports demonstrate a continuously worsening situation, although I think it is important to say as well that this is the continuation of a three-year trend. It is not as if things were rosy and then all of a sudden unemployment got bad; this is the continuation of a running trend of worsening employment numbers. The unemployment rate overall is at 7.1%.
Things are getting worse for people of all ages. I want to be clear that it is not only young people who are facing this challenge, but it is particularly acute for them. The employment rate for young people in Canada is now at a more-than-25-year low. We have to go back to before the year 2000, which I think is three Liberal prime ministers ago, to find a situation where the youth employment rate was lower than it is now outside of the acute phase of the COVID pandemic. We are clearly in a situation where, for young people, we are already at recession levels of employment. This is a concern for many reasons. It is a concern because of the pain that young people are experiencing. The combination of housing being so difficult to access, out of reach for most, and a situation where employment is increasingly out of reach is leading to a lot of frustration and even despondency in the next generation.
Adding to that, youth unemployment, I think, is an indicator of broader problems in the economy. When companies are pessimistic about the future, their first step is not to let go of senior staff but to not give as many opportunities to those who are just entering the workforce. I think that is a reality, so the youth unemployment rate is a concern in its own right and also for what it indicates about the health of the economy.
We see also how the cost of living crisis is contributing to the unemployment situation. The latest report from Statistics Canada outlines how more people are working multiple jobs because they need the extra money to get by. More people are asking for additional hours from their employer, again because they need the income to pay for basic expenses. The fact that people are struggling because of the cost of living crisis is contributing to more pressure on the labour market, so we have these interconnected, compounding problems. This really is the outworking of a number of different policy failures.
For 10 years we have had a Liberal government that has not been able to support the moving forward of major infrastructure projects that our economy needs. It has put in place Bill C-48, Bill C-69, a production cap and an industrial carbon tax; these policies are blocking development that would help young people get to work. We have seen increasing red tape and other barriers put in front of small businesses that make it harder for them to do business in Canada and to create jobs for young people. We have seen immigration failures, and that is why Conservatives have proposed essential reforms, so that young people can get back to work. We see policy failures contributing to the cost of living crisis, as well as poor alignment with respect to training policy. Many different policy failures have led to the situation.
We need to see a plan from the government, a plan that involves reversing some of these failures. Where is the plan?