On October 7, 2025, PERT Executive Director Nicholas Salter & Director of Policy & Research Morgan Gagnon addressed the House of Commons Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities (HUMA) in regards to their urgent study on youth employment in Canada. This study was created following the adoption by the committee of a motion to undertake and prioritize an urgent study on employment in Canada, especially since youth employment has reached its lowest level of in 25 years and young people continue to face barriers in accessing employment insurance, which increases their vulnerability.

Opening Remarks

Good morning, Mr. Chair, Vice-Chairs, and honourable members of the Committee.

Thank you for the invitation to appear today and contribute to this discussion on youth employment in Canada. My name is Nicholas Salter; I am the Executive Director of the Provincial Employment Roundtable, otherwise known as PERT. I am joined by my colleague, Morgan Gagnon, our Director of Policy and Research.

PERT is a nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving the economic and employment outcomes of Québec’s English-speaking communities through evidence-based research and policy recommendations. I am here today to establish that our community’s youth – and PERT’s work to understand and serve them – are case studies for the types of targeted support that diverse groups of Canadian youth need to flourish in the labour market. One-size-fits-all solutions will not get the job done; responsive interventions, designed and delivered by community organizations, are key.

Let me explain what I mean. In Québec, English-speaking youth sit at the intersection of two vulnerable populations in the workforce – youth and official language minorities. They experience the same labour market detachment, uncertainty, and instability that many young Canadians face, while also carrying the added weight of language barriers.

We recently received funding from Canadian Heritage to dig deeper into the employment issues facing English-speaking youth. We conducted focus groups with over 50 youth and surveyed 200 more, then paired our findings with data from the 2021 census to build a more robust statistical portrait. We broke down the youth cohort into specific age brackets to understand the different issues each group faces. Together, these sources offer a detailed and, frankly, concerning picture of how English-speaking youth fare in the provincial labour market.

Allow me to share three of our core findings:

First, English-speaking youth in Québec are starting their careers at a disadvantage. They are struggling to break into and remain in the labour force compared to their French-speaking counterparts. This is evident in their labour force participation rates, which lag behind those of French speakers by more than six percentage points. Their unemployment rate is almost double: 13.1% compared to 7.8%, and that gap widens among those under 25: 17.4% vs. 10.9%. Among youth in rural and remote regions of Québec, these gaps are wider still: English-speaking youth in Gaspésie-Îles-de-la-Madeleine and Côte-Nord, for example, have unemployment rates of 27.7% and 21.8%, respectively. 

Our second key finding helps to contextualize the data. Three out of four youth in our survey described the job market as discouraging. Despite strong confidence in both their technical and soft skills, many expressed doubt that their skills would be enough to secure meaningful employment. Over half of all respondents identified French proficiency as a barrier to employment; one that limits not only their job opportunities but also their ability to build professional connections and access the information needed to secure meaningful employment. Given this finding, it’s not surprising that when we launched a linguistic mentorship program, Circonflexe, last year, the vast majority of interested mentees were young people.

Third and finally, our research shows that these issues are compounded by a lack of institutional support. We surveyed English language employment service providers and regional community organizations about their experiences with the federal Youth Employment and Skills Strategy (YESS) measures and the provincial Jeunes en mouvement vers l’emploi program. Not one had received support from the Jeunes en mouvement program. What this all really means is that a generation of English-speaking youth is left waiting for the support they need.

This brings me back to my original point: English-speaking youth need – and deserve – programs that truly reflect their reality, initiatives that integrate French language learning and networking alongside job search support. 

The same is true across Canada: immigrant youth, Francophone youth in other provinces, Indigenous youth, youth in rural and remote areas, youth with disabilities, and so many others need supports tailored to their lived experiences. 

Furthermore, these efforts must be led by local organizations that have the direct expertise to create responsive programs, and the networks to ensure these programs actually reach and engage youth. PERT’s work offers a model for how this can be achieved: we bring community organizations together with stakeholders and experts to implement evidence-based programs, and coordinate them to ensure adherence to best practices and consistent evaluation. 

We implore the government to invest in and scale this type of model across the country, meeting the needs of our youth, as well as those across Canada. We therefore urge this committee to consider the following recommendations:

1. Stronger federal–provincial coordination to deliver on youth employability programming, and in our case, with specific commitments to Quebec’s English-speaking communities and organizations to ensure adequate distribution of resources,
2. Implementation of programs that are accessible when and where youth need them, and 
3. A renewed recognition of the linguistic and regional realities they live every day.

We are confident that with this targeted support, we can reverse the trends we’re seeing today: not only in the employment data, but in the discouragement youth are reporting. They want to contribute: empower us to empower them. 

Je vous remercie encore une fois de m’avoir donné l’occasion de partager ces résultats. Je me ferai un plaisir de répondre à vos questions, en anglais ou en français, selon votre préférence.

Session Information

The session is viewable here.

Upcoming Research

And a special thanks to Adrienne Winrow and Y4Y Québec. We were able to cite our research project with them in our testimony. We look forward to sharing the full results of that study soon.