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Results: 1 - 15 of 84
View Corey Tochor Profile
CPC (SK)
Thank you very much.
Minister, the seniors I have been meeting with tell a different story. You brag about the increase of over $1,000 for last year, over the different buckets of money that you made one-time payments for, but the seniors I've been talking to read reports in the news about 40,000 15-year-olds getting approved for CERB at $2,000 a month—not yearly but monthly. They hear about over 92,000 16-year-olds who have been approved and about 17-year-olds living at home.
There were 184,000 kids getting CERB last year. Do you think that's fair?
View Deb Schulte Profile
Lib. (ON)
One of the things our government will not do is pit one group against another. We made sure not only that CERB was there for youth who could not work and who were potentially unable to get the income they needed for their studies and to continue on with their education but also that seniors were able to access CERB. Even if they had their pensions, their CPP and OAS, they could still qualify for CERB as long as they had a loss of employment income because of the COVID pandemic or because they had to stay home because they were isolating because of risk factors.
View Corey Tochor Profile
CPC (SK)
Minister, with respect, you should be ashamed of the decisions in this budget. You're saying we're pitting one against the other, but these are the decisions the Liberals made. We've had hundreds of thousands of kids living at home getting approved for emergency relief, while seniors have gotten a pittance, an increase of just over $1,000 for the year over all the programs.
I shudder to think of what you're hearing from the seniors you've been talking to. What I'm hearing is that you are pitting one segment against the other.
View Deb Schulte Profile
Lib. (ON)
I think it's really unfortunate that the seniors you're talking to have had their information twisted so that they are basically saying the youth who have lost their jobs don't deserve to be supported.
Listen, I'm the minister for seniors and not the minister for youth, but I can tell you from the youth that I know in my community that it has been very tough on them. They would normally be able to have a summer job at a local restaurant or a carnival. Normally, they would be working in the service industry, which has really shut down, and they don't have the ability now to earn the funds they need to be able to carry on with their education. There may be some who accessed it who shouldn't have, and that will be determined in time through the CRA.
Right now, we were there to support youth. We were there to support seniors, Canadians and businesses, and I'm proud that we were there to support them. That's helped us get through—
View Corey Tochor Profile
CPC (SK)
If you're wondering where they're getting their information from. I'll just read this quickly. It's from the National Post, a pretty reputable national news outlet. It says:
The documents show that 40,630 15-years-olds were approved for the benefit. The government paid out $81.2 million for that group. There were 92,784 16-year-olds approved, receiving nearly $186 million, and 184,576 17-year-olds received $369 million.
That's where they're getting their news from or information, as you call it.
It's concerning. It's concerning that we would not help seniors out during this crisis at the same level as we were helping out students living at home.
I'm going to switch gears just briefly on the dollar amounts you talked about, the $5 billion here and the $10 billion there that the Liberals like to gloat about. It's all printed money. It's all money that is printed, and when regimes across the world have tried to print money to get out of their fiscal crisis, it has ended poorly for society.
I am wondering if you think seniors are worried about inflation right now.
View Deb Schulte Profile
Lib. (ON)
I think everybody's worried about inflation, but more than anything people are worried about getting through the pandemic, and they need supports to do that.
I want to go back. When I was young, I needed a job to help pay for my family. We were not well off, and we all ended up working. I was working at 15. There are a lot of young people in this country who are supporting themselves, their families and their education. You might say 15 is a little early to be supporting your education, but you need a lot of funds to live, to pay for your food and clothes. These are things that families sometimes need to rely on their younger teenagers to help with.
Cory, it's really unfortunate that you're making a judgment call that all youth are somehow in a position to have excess. That is not true and I think it's unfortunate. Maybe it's because of a different upbringing, but I can tell you that I really appreciated my job. If I had lost it when I was 15, it would have made things very difficult for me. I know that is the story of young people across the country.
Let's go back to seniors, because we are not doing one versus the other. Seniors were able to access the same supports as youth and other Canadians. If they worked, lost their income and were making over $5,000 a year, they would have been able to access benefits as well.
It is important that we are fair and are treating everybody well.
View Leah Gazan Profile
NDP (MB)
I know you mentioned women, but what other groups are more likely to be excluded from claiming EI benefits and what kinds of barriers do they face? Are there any other specific groups that are falling through the cracks?
Hassan Yussuff
View Hassan Yussuff Profile
Hassan Yussuff
2021-03-09 16:29
Well, workers of colour and young people are the two other groups we should be very concerned about.
Prior to the pandemic, we finally got youth unemployment into the single digits. Now it's back up in the double digits, and we don't want this to be another lost generation that doesn't come back. Equally, I think in many urban centres, workers of colour who have been on the front line providing services to Canadians during this pandemic—and I think we have seen this in the statistics that StatsCan has been providing every month—are not doing so well in the recovery and are not doing so well in the unemployment levels of this country. We're going to have to take that into consideration if we want to lift those communities out of poverty and equally ensure that people aren't falling further behind because they end up being on employment insurance because they've lost their job.
View Raquel Dancho Profile
CPC (MB)
I know that youth employment, particularly in the tourism sector in summer, is pretty big. How are the youth doing in P.E.I.?
Carl Pursey
View Carl Pursey Profile
Carl Pursey
2021-03-09 17:25
Not too bad, with all these programs; it's great that the federal government has been there with the money and has handed it out to people as quickly as they have. I know that some of the other people in Ottawa figure there's too much money being handed out and we've got to cut everybody back. That is not the way to go. I think we have to help people out through these hard times. I think that's why these other programs and changes to EI would help people out in hard times.
Josée Bégin
View Josée Bégin Profile
Josée Bégin
2021-02-23 15:37
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, members of the committee. Thank you for inviting Statistics Canada to speak today as part of the study on employment insurance.
Statistics Canada has many data sources, such as the Labour Force Survey, or LFS, and employment insurance, or EI, statistics, that are used to paint a more complete portrait of labour market-related events. Many of the indicators I will cite today are drawn from these sources. Each data source has its benefits and drawbacks, for example, in terms of coverage, sample size and how quickly data are published.
The pandemic has caused unprecedented job losses in Canada. Total employment fell by more than three million during the worst of the crisis in March and April. Within three months, the unemployment rate almost tripled, reaching 13.7% in May. Although the labour market has improved since then, most labour market indicators have not yet returned to pre-pandemic levels. Their recovery has been slowed by the public health measures in place.
In January 2021, the unemployment rate stood at 9.4%, compared with 5.7% in February 2020. The number of long-term unemployed workers, in other words, people who have been looking for work or on temporary layoff for 27 weeks or more, remained at a record high of 512,000.
New experimental data show that COVID-19 has significantly impacted groups designated as visible minorities. In January, the unemployment rate of Black Canadians was 5.3 percentage points higher than a year earlier, versus an increase of 3.7 percentage points for Canadians who did not identify as indigenous or did not belong to a group designated as a visible minority. This more precarious labour market situation for population groups designated as visible minorities is partly due to the higher concentration of these workers in some of the sectors most affected by the COVID-19 economic crisis, such as accommodation and food services.
Looking at age groups, youth employment in January 2021 was the furthest, -14%, from the pre-pandemic levels of February 2020, when compared with other demographic groups, particularly employment among young women, -17%.
Last December, 1.3 million Canadians were receiving regular EI benefits, almost triple the number from February 2020, which was 446,000.
The results of the LFS show that 1.8 million people were unemployed in December, including 1.5 million who were looking for work and 300,000 who had a connection to a job, either because they had been laid off temporarily or because they had arrangements to start a new job in the near future.
There is always a proportion of unemployed who are not eligible for EI benefits. Some unemployed people have not contributed to the program because they have not worked in the past 12 months or because their job was not insured. Others contributed to the program, but they do not meet the eligibility criteria.
In December, 13% of all regular EI beneficiaries were eligible as a result of temporary changes made to the eligibility rules in September 2020. This proportion was higher in Quebec and in the Atlantic provinces than in the other provinces.
The December LFS results revealed that the industries where employment remained furthest from pre-pandemic levels included accommodation and food services, information, culture and recreation, and what is known as other services, including personal services and laundry services. The challenges facing these industries are reflected in the profile of regular EI beneficiaries. For example, in December, more than one in four regular EI beneficiaries had last worked in one of these three sectors.
The uneven impact of COVID-19 across industries, combined with relaxation of the rules for accessing the EI program, has also driven the proportion of women who receive regular benefits upward, which rose from 37% in February to 48% in December.
My colleague Vincent and I would be happy to answer any of your questions.
This concludes my presentation, Mr. Chair. I hope this overview of the Canadian labour market will be useful to the committee.
View Louise Chabot Profile
BQ (QC)
Today, we received additional data that bolsters the facts mentioned, particularly with respect to youth—who represent 24% of those in need of housing—single-parent families, and unattached individuals.
These are pretty significant statistics. It would be interesting to break them down them according to the environment, that is to say urban, rural or northern, since this is the subject of our study. There is also the whole issue of homelessness that comes into play, especially when it comes to youth. In urban areas, we know that homelessness is a significant phenomenon.
How can we improve this data to better monitor and show the changes that may be affecting youth who are experiencing homeless, in particular?
Caroline Nicol
View Caroline Nicol Profile
Caroline Nicol
2021-02-16 17:23
I can say a few words about this.
In terms of data, our main source of information was the 2016 census. We would need more recent data, such as that provided in the next census or from any other more recent source. We need to take into account that the real estate market is changing rapidly. Also, as Mr. Giroux mentioned, demographics are a big factor.
With regard to the detail of the data, an even more precise regional breakdown would allow us to have a much broader picture, particularly in terms of territories and rural areas. These are data that would also be useful in the census.
Census or other available data sources are quite limited in scope due to confidentiality requirements. In my opinion, the picture we have in terms of age is relatively good compared to other aspects, as there are quite a lot of these data. So the picture for young people and older people is good.
View Kate Young Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Kate Young Profile
2021-02-04 16:20
As you know, we also have a real problem with youth homelessness in London. We have some really innovative ideas. You have been down to London to see what Youth Opportunities Unlimited, or YOU, has done in building youth housing.
Is that one of the key features of this?
View Adam Vaughan Profile
Lib. (ON)
Youth aging out of care and custody in the child welfare system are referred to as being on the superhighway to homelessness.
If you're homeless at 16, the chances you will be homeless at 28 is close to 80%. As kids age out of care, if we don't have supportive housing to move them from the provisional housing they have had in the child welfare system to independence—if we don't have that hop, skip and a jump to a higher quality of life—those kids will end up as the chronically homeless we have to deal with in a generation.
Focusing on youth, and in particular gay, lesbian, two-spirit and queer youth, is fundamental to this. During COVID, one of the highest jumps and spikes in population has been kids in that community as they get kicked out of their homes because their sexuality or their gender presentation presents a challenge to their families.
The homeless encampments in Toronto in particular are seeing a much higher count of racialized youth and queer youth, so building intentional housing in that space is fundamentally important to ending homelessness.
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