Increase the number of good quality, permanent jobs for younger workers.

What success looks like

Reduced youth unemployment, greater opportunities for work experience, and improved access to job supports for youth.

Government's narrative on progress

The government recognizes the importance of good quality jobs for younger workers. In Budgets 2016 and 2017, the government made significant incremental investments in the Youth Employment Strategy (YES). Thanks to these investments, the government will help more than 33,000 vulnerable youth develop skills to find work or go back to school, create 15,000 new green jobs for young Canadians, and over 1,600 new youth job opportunities in the heritage sector. For instance, the number of jobs supported under Canada Summer Jobs increased from approximately 34,500 in 2015 to just over 70,000 in 2018. Changes have also been made to Employment Insurance (EI) to remove the discriminatory New Entrants and Re-Entrants requirement, ensuring that young workers are treated fairly when they need to access job support through EI. In Budget 2018, the government provided an additional $448.5 million over five years, starting in 2018–19, to the YES. This funding will support the continued doubling of the number of job placements funded under the Canada Summer Jobs program in 2019-20 and provide additional resources for a modernized YES in the following years. In Budget 2019, the government proposes to invest an additional $49.5 million over five years, starting in 2019–20, to launch a modernized Youth Employment Strategy informed by the recommendations of the Expert Panel on Youth Employment and extensive engagement with youth, service delivery organizations and other stakeholders. The modernized YES will embrace a “no wrong door” approach with the aim of ensuring that all young people have access to the supports they need, including enhanced supports for young people facing more serious barriers to joining and staying in the workforce. This investment will support work placements, build partnerships with stakeholders, test pilot programs for hiring youth and improve program evaluation. It will also support the ongoing development of the Youth Digital Gateway—an online, interactive, user-friendly platform to help youth access federal supports, that is focused on outcome-based results. The government created more opportunities for co-op and work integrated learning for students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and business programs through multiple initiatives. The $73 million Student Work Placement (SWP) Program is creating up to 10,000 placements by 2021. Expanded federal support of $221 million for Mitacs, a not-for-profit organization that builds partnerships between industry and educational institutions, will fund over 44,000 placements by 2021-22. To support Canada's National Cyber Security Strategy, Budget 2018 included $8.3 million in additional funding for the Student Work Placement Program to support the creation of up to 1,000 student work placements in the cyber security sector. In the context of the G7, the government also announced an additional investment of $3 million over three years to support the creation of up to 500 new student work placements in the artificial intelligence field, including targeted support for students in underrepresented groups, including women in STEM. Together, these initiatives is creating close to 60,000 placements over five years. In addition, the government invested in the PromoScience program, which will support STEM learning activities for youth. Budget 2019 announced an expansion of the Student Work Placement program to give students outside of STEM – such as the arts, humanities and social sciences - access to work-integrated learning opportunities. Budget 2019 announced investments of $631.2 M over five years, starting in 2019-2020, to support up to 20,000 new work placements per year for post-secondary students across Canada, in all disciplines by 2021-22.This new funding will provide students with hands-on learning opportunities during their studies connecting them to potential employers and creating a talent pipeline for Canadian businesses. In addition, Budget 2019 is committing another $150M over 4 years, starting in 2020-21 to support partnerships with innovative businesses to create up to a further 20,000 work-integrated opportunities per year. To support the Business Higher Education Roundtable in creating an additional 44,000 work-integrated learning opportunities, Budget 2019 also provides the organization with $17 M over 3 years starting in 2019-20. Together, these efforts will, over time, help create 84,000 new student work-integrated learning opportunities by 2023-24.

Note: this is the government's own description, not an independent assessment.