September 17, 2025 • 55 mins
Tonight on The Brian Crombie Hour, Brian interviews Dan McCarthy and Murray Simser. Dan and Murray highlight the alarming rise of youth unemployment in their article Generation At Risk: Youth Jobs And Canada’s Economic Future. Statistics Canada reports this summer’s job market for returning students is the 3rd worst since 1976, with unemployment for students reaching 18% and some youth groups nearing 25%. Only 1997 and the Covid year of 2020 were worse. Factors driving this crisis include a weak economy, Trump tariffs, manufacturing layoffs, competition from foreign workers, and the impact of AI on entry-level jobs. Murray stresses the government’s response has been slow despite unprecedented levels of youth joblessness, while Dan notes programs like the Youth Employment Skills and Training Initiative fall far short of the scale required. With 920,000 young Canadians not engaged in education, training, or work, urgent action is needed. As Styx sang in Crystal Ball: “I wonder what tomorrow has in mind for me. Or am I even in its mind at all?” For today’s youth, that question is more sobering than ever.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
SAGA nine sixty am or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Brian Crimbie Radio AAR.
We've got a really interesting duo co authors to introduce
you to tonight. We've written, I think a really important
article about an issue that has got some attention, but
not nearly enough attention, and that is youth unemployment, which
I think is a real problem. I think, and I've
done a couple of shows on sort of intergenerational inequity
(00:38):
where we've really left a situation for our young people
that is really quite dire with housing prices and increasing
debt and climate change and AI and blah blah blah.
We could go on for a while, but youth unemployment
has skyrocketed of late, and so I think this is
a topic that we really need to think a little
bit about. And Dan McCarthy and Murray Simpser, who are
(00:59):
guests of author an article about this topic. Dan's got
what did you say, two decades of experience in politics,
if not more. You've been a civil servant, and you've
worked for different people and Mary Simpson has got experience
on Parliament Hill as a political staffer, but he's also
been very involved in the technology sector, both in the
(01:20):
United States and Canada, and so I think these two
gentlemen really come to this topic with a lot of background,
both in politics as well as in the civil service,
as well as in business, and so I think it's
an interesting conversation. So maybe Dan, we could turn to you.
What was the argument that your article was putting forward, sir.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Well, my argument generally is that we're in a crisis
situation visa the youth unemployment, and it's a situation that's
been building pretty much since twenty twenty two. That the
unemployment numbers that we're seeing recently for youth are not
simply the result of Trump or a week in economy.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
The numbers have been getting.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Worse in the last three years, and that the government
has frankly taken little action to address them.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
And that the job.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Market this summer, in particular for young people, whether you
define young people as age fifteen to twenty four, some
from age fifteen to twenty nine, depending on the definition,
it's been a very difficult job market for young people
and returning students in particular, and they're being hammered on
(02:35):
four fronts. One, you've got a week economy, so there's
just fewer jobs all around. You have the overlay of
the Trump tariffs all the uncertainty that that adds to
the job market, and you now see layoffs in the
manufacturing sector.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
In particular.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
And thirdly, you have the competition for foreign students and
workers brought in under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, the
International Mobility Program, and Canada literally added a million new
citizens every year for the last three years, perhaps not
(03:17):
citizens in terms of full citizenship, but bringing in new
workers that are competing with our with young Canadians for
increasingly scarce jobs. And then finally you have the Ai Revolution,
which longer term may well bring very real benefits, and
I would I would defer to murray on this point.
(03:39):
But then in the short term, the number of entry
level jobs is starting to decrease, and so there's fewer
jobs for those young people to find that lower rung
on the career ladder. So this summer you saw unemployment
rates for students for young people fourteen point five percent
(04:01):
in August, down slightly from fourteen point six percent in July.
But the unemployment rate for returning students was almost eighteen
percent this summer, and that's the third highest rate since
nineteen seventy six. So think about that, the third highest
rate in the ninth in the last forty nine years.
(04:23):
And we're not even technically in a recession, so things
could actually get worse for young people. And I guess
the purpose of the articles was to draw attention to
this problem, and the government's been extremely slow to act
on it.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Murray, why has the government not recognized this and been
slow to action?
Speaker 5 (04:44):
Well, I think you have a combination of factors. I
think that Dan elucidated the problem. Okay, We've got all
these buffeting forces that the government is trying to address.
I think, largely speaking, the government is involved in all
four of those elements that Dan's described in some way,
shape or form. But the truth is, when we say
(05:08):
the government is slow to act, you have to look
at it from the data point of view and not
the point of view. The data says that unemployment in
those groups of people are as high as they've ever been, Okay,
And if the government doesn't do something about that, whether
or not they intend to do it or they're trying
to do. It is kind of irrelevant. You have one
(05:30):
fifth of the young population that can't make ends meet,
and as a consequence, this has destabilizing effects right across
the economy and more importantly for potentially the future of
the economy.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Dan, and you know, I think it was two thousand
and eight, two thousand and nine, you would know the
statistics better than I obviously, But youth unemployment with skyrocketing
after the Great Recession or sort of as part of
the Great Recession, and there are numerous different government policies.
I thought that we're put in place to really help
young people. Are we not thinking about those today?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Well, I guess we probably have the same suite of
programs in effect. The government does have a program called
the Youth Employment, Skills and Training Initiative, and they provide
that provides about three hundred and fifty million dollars a
year for the Canada Summer Job Program, for youth training,
(06:28):
for mentorship programs through community organizations. But I just think
it's totally inadequate and it doesn't address the It doesn't
only not address the unemployment issue, but several different studies
have identified up to nine hundred and twenty thousand young
(06:48):
Canadians that are neither employed or in education or in training.
They've they've completely dropped out of the labor force and
they're not being assisted in any way to prepare for
any sort of job in the labor force. And so
we not only risk the term that's used by economists
(07:10):
is scarring. We're not only risk scarring those youth that
can't find jobs. There's literally almost another million. There's a
million young people that are not involved in a sense
engaged in society in a meaningful way through education, training
or the labor force.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Mary, I know you've participated in the writing of a
book about networking recently. You know, in two thousand and eight,
one of the things that was studied and spoken about
when there was high youth and employment at that point
in time is that young people didn't have that opportunity
of getting those first career experiences, and that if they
didn't get those first career experiences, they were negatively impacted
(07:51):
for the rest of their career, that the net present
value of their future earnings was substantially lessened because that
was where they made their contact, that's where they became
a mentor, that's where they got their references and recommendations,
that's where they got their first experiences, et cetera. And
so therefore it wasn't just that they lost a job
for a summer or year. It was that they were
(08:13):
negatively impacted the rest of their career. Is that an issue?
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Do you see that?
Speaker 5 (08:19):
Yeah, well, let's start with that as a concept. They
are hobbled in the way you described. If you think
about a career trajectory as this linear thing that you
start somewhere and you end up somewhere, and there are
these intervening steps in between. So for instance, the life
of a police officer or a fireman, a civil servant, you know,
(08:44):
these types of roles the government rules that say Dan
has taken on and some that I've played in which
I was never really good at because I couldn't follow
that rule. Results in people thinking if I missed the beginning,
I missed the end. And this is sort of the
old thesis of compounding interest being applied to a career.
(09:05):
The most important doubling is at the beginning, you know,
and as a consequence, you get that extra doubling at
the end, which hobbles in come. Yes it does, but
does it if you don't have to play in that sphere.
And I think one of the things that I added to,
and the reason Dan and I came to chat with
(09:25):
each other, was this issue. Does it hobble the students
because they've been kicked out of the process, They've missed
that first opportunity. And I would argue, and I think
this is what I tried to argue, and Dan and
I actually talked about it before he invited me to
contribute a little bit to this article, that if you
(09:46):
choose the career ladder and you think that's all there is,
by definition, you have hobbled yourself and limited yourself to
being harmed or scarred, as Dan described the economists use
this term, and therefore that reduces your potential income and
reduce your potential wealth, satisfaction, all of these sort of things.
And I believe that there's a fifth buffering factor in
(10:09):
society that was not listed in Dan's list, and that
is that entrepreneurship. Despite us thinking entrepreneurship is all over
the place today because we hear about it, it's on
these phones, it's there, entrepreneurship has never been so low
in the West and in Canada, in particular, and this
is a really important thing. You would think that today
(10:31):
it's easier to start a company, so there's more companies.
It's not true. There are more companies being created on
per capita basis the sixties, seventies, fifties, eighties. These also
coincide to the richest years this country ever had. And
so I think what I would say to you, to
answer your question directly is yes, it hurts you if
you are monolithic in your belief that the only thing
(10:52):
that you can do as a citizen of Canada when
you graduate university is to be caught, or even go
to university for that matter, Why bother? There are other choices,
and they pay more, they're better, they're stronger now, they're
higher risk, they take a lot more effort. They're not
as easy to deal with. And you need help, just
(11:13):
like somebody needs help to become a great civil servant
or a great fire person or a great police officer.
So do entrepreneurs need help at the beginning. And so
my answer to you is no. I think that students
and kids, and I'm the advocate for humans versus everyone,
I believe that kids are every bit as capable of
inventing things as adults, and there's no magic to invention.
(11:35):
Invention is an idea and then it's all about perspiration.
And if you can put perspiration into getting a plus
in school, you can certainly become an entrepreneur. I don't
put answers your question.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I don't buy it. If unemployment is fifteen to eighteen percent,
depending on whether it's you know, young people are returning
to students based on Dan's numbers, why wouldn't there be
more entrepreneurship, Like, you know, the need is there, the
threat of not making money, of having some identity in life,
of not having something to do, of not being able
(12:08):
to get out of your mother's basement. You know, why
wouldn't there be With high unemployment, there should be substantially
more entrepreneurship. So why isn't it happening?
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Well, because entrepreneurship is something that somebody chooses to do
because they don't have a choice. Who are the greatest
entrepreneurs in this country? If you actually get down to
the brass tacks of it, it were people that were
excluded in the thirties, forties and fifties that went on
to create the greatest engines of enterprise this country has.
Remember that unemployment is a trailing indicator for the economy,
(12:39):
but it's also an indicator that creates the pressure necessary
for somebody to take the leap into entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
So that therefore pressures there.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
Pressure's totally there now. In the nineteen nineties when I graduated,
I was the first generation of kids in nineteen ninety
five to coming to school, we were told by every
professor we had, the day's a permanent employment for a
corporation are over. You're never You're going to have a
job every year for the rest of your life, and
nobody's ever going to be stable ever. Again, that was
nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety four, Okay, And we invented
(13:13):
the Internet, we invented consulting as a concept. Do you
know that the largest group of entrepreneurs in this country
are independent consultants, are sole proprietors. Some good for them.
They make a great living that was created after the
last time the world went shit. And this is the
sort of nature of the ballgame now is how do
we respond to these now pressure systems? Now, Remember, pressure
(13:39):
is what creates entrepreneurs. So Dan wants to go into
high risk. I mean, unless they're trained from childhood to
do it.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Dan, what's your answer, Why isn't there more entrepreneurship right now?
The pressure, I would think, is there if there's fifteen
to eighteen percent youth unemployment. If the pressure is there,
why aren't they taking action? No?
Speaker 4 (13:57):
I agree, you know what.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I think that my experience were different from Murray's because
I'm not an entrepreneur. I had a salary job my
whole career, but I did work earlier in my career
for two property developers in the in the in Atlanta, Canada,
both of whom were pull up their bootstraps entrepreneurs, one
from a one from overseas, one native born New Brunswicker.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
And my sense is that entrepreneurs.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Are either born or developed, and those that are born
entrepreneurs will will pursue that career path with little motivation.
They just they're just driven to get out there and
do things there. But in terms of developing entrepreneurs, I
don't think we do a very good job of that.
And I think that I think that Murray, people like
Murray and and the book that he's participated in a
(14:47):
participated in authoring, are very important and that we need
to better support those community organizations that work with young
people and help provide them with the skills where they
can go out start a small business. And that small
business could be you know, beginning landscaping or gardening in
(15:11):
your neighborhood, or some other small job that then grows
into a larger venture. But what the feedback that I've
received from a couple of people that work with young people,
particularly those who haven't finished high school, that are marginal
students for whatever reason, come from disadvantaged economic backgrounds. They
(15:34):
don't know how to do this. That's right, not be
natural born entrepreneurs, but they're not. We don't provide them
with a framework or a program in which to develop
an interest like that, build those skills, mentor them, connect
(15:54):
them with entrepreneurs so that they can take that final step.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Right. Fascinating. So we've got high youth unemployment fifteen to
eighteen percent, depending on what the designation is, whether it's
all youth or whether it's returning students that you're analyzing,
which has got to be what four to five times
the national average, So it's significantly high. You say it's
the highest within the three highest times in sort of
(16:24):
the last forty fifty years, sixty years, I guess based
on the members that you were telling and well, government's
got some programs, it doesn't seem to be, you know,
close to the top of the agenda today, and I
think it clearly needs to, because I think it's a
massive issue. I think it's impacting their net present value
of future earnings, their career path if you accept sort
(16:47):
of you're going to get a job in work scenario.
And I think it's impacting, as Murray said, entrepreneurship. Even
though the threat is there and therefore the incentive to
get out and be an entrepreneur should be there, for
some reason, it's not happening. I think one of the
other topics that's worth thinking about is what is it
doing from a political standpoint, And I've had a couple
of shows recently on the disengagement of young people and
(17:09):
how a lot of young particularly young males, are turning
right and being attractive to right wing politics and populists,
and so I think that that's potentially impacting. And some
people have argued that it's impacting young men, particularly psychologically,
because they're stuck in their mother's basements and they don't
(17:30):
have the sense of identity, the cultural integration, the opportunities
that they may have had in the past, and so
I think this is going to be a really interesting
conversation tonight. Stay with us everyone. We're going to take
a break for some messages and be back in just
two minutes with Dan McCarthy and Mary Simpster talking about
an article they've written in Ottawa Life magazine about youth unemployment,
(17:50):
how big it is and what we're gonna do about it.
Stay with us, everyone, Back into the time.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Stream us live at SAGA nine s am dot Ca.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Welcome back everyone to the Brian Crombie Radio AAR. I've
got a really interesting topic to talk about this evening,
youth unemployment and an article that my two guests have
written co authored in Ottawa Life magazine. Dan McCarthy has
got a really interesting background. I got to tell you
a little bit about this gentleman who's one of the
co authors one of my guests tonight. He's been an
advisor to five ministers, including chief of staff to three
(18:37):
ministers and senior policy advisor to another. He was important
files including the Environment Canada, Human Resources Development Canada, the
Department of Justice, Industry Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans,
and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. What have you not done?
Like you've been everywhere. You've been talking about amendments to
(19:01):
the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, climate change initiatives, reducing sulfur
less levels in gasoline, Children's Agenda, National child Benefit, Early
childhood development, and Canada's response in the wake of nine
to eleven terrorist attacks. What an incredible experience you've got, sir.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Yeah, you know what. I had a fascinating career. I think.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Some people would say I wasn't able to hold a
job given the number of positions, but I would also
say I never reached the pinnacle. I never got a
job in the Prime Minister's office.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Is that something you'd like to do?
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Oh? I think I would have liked to have done that.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
Yes, yeah, so they'll be calling you.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
No, Mark Carney should call you up and ask you
to be the unemployment Zar.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
So you recently also traveled across the country from Tafino
to Nova Scotia, and you you posted about that and
about your trip. Why'd you do that?
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Yeah, you know what. It was actually a family situation.
My brother in law had a health issue on the
west coast. He lives in Nova Scotia, had to fly
home and left his car there, and I told him
that I would go get his car and drive it back,
as long as he didn't mind if I took a
few weeks to do it. And I'd never driven across
the country before. I'd flown across several times, taken the train.
(20:21):
But it was a fascinating drive. And I picked up
the car near Victoria, but I went to Fino because
I wanted to dip my foot in the Pacific Ocean
and then drive it right through to the south shore
of Nova Scotia.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
And it was a fantastic drive and it was it really.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I don't know that people need this from time to time,
but to reaffirm my Canadian citizenship. We have an amazing
country and there's something almost surreal about seeing it from
ground level for seven thousand, seven hundred and ninety kilometers
or something like that.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
You wrote an opinion piece in the Global Mail about
about I don't know whether it's about this trip, but
that MPs need to take the trip across Canada. Why
did you do that, sir?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Well, you know what I had the years of experience
on Parliament Hill and I was always I was always
very interested in new MPs coming to the Hill, being
intimately familiar with their ridings and their regions, but a
lot didn't really know the rest of the country, and
(21:31):
it was interesting to watch the evolution in their thinking
as they as they got out and about the country
and also interacted with their colleagues from other parts of
the country. And it struck me, particularly after the election
of the Truro government of twenty fifteen, that there were
a number of new ministers and social media had become
(21:52):
a thing.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
By then.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
When I was a staffer, social media was not a thing.
It didn't exist to a large extent, and it just
struck me the number of ministers that were posting when
they visited Saint John's or visited Edmonton or Grand Prairie
that how wonderful it was to be in this place
for the first time, and they couldn't believe how beautiful
(22:15):
it was. And Canada was, in my mind, you know,
becoming defined. And then we needed a way to bridge
those devides, and one way was to rather than wait
for a five to seven year ten year evolution.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
In their thinking, let's grab them right off the bats, stick.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Them in a bus, liberals with block and conservatives with
NDP ers, and have them travel the country and get
us sense of the country right off the bat.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So in my day job, I'm a real estate developer
and I have the opportunity to travel across country because
my company has got developments right across the country, and
it's i think a unique experience that not a lot
of people have. I travel frequently, not only you know Montreal, Toronto,
Ottawa Circuit, but to Windsor uh To, to northern Saskatchewan,
(23:07):
to northern Alberta, to the Fort McMurray, uh to numerous
different places in British Columbia, et cetera. Regrettably, not a
lot in the land of Canada. So I don't come
out to uh to dip my toe in the Atlantic
Ocean in Canada, which I'd like to do. And I've
really treasured that opportunity to meet people and to have
dinner with them on a repeated basis, because I go
(23:28):
and visit them on a fairly regular basis and get
to know them and get to know the communities and
and thinking about real estate development, I got to really
get to know the communities because I got to go
in and analyze and understand, you know, what the market
opportunities are. I really thought about Katimavik and UH and
and Pierre Elliott Trudeau's UH you know proposal to get
young people across the country participating in UH in seeing
(23:52):
their country and as you say, meeting people that are
different than them. I did have an opportunity as a
young person to UH to study French in Quebec as
another example, given your experience about how rewarding it was,
Given my experience about traveling the country and the challenge
you've identified with youth unemployment, should we have a Peace
(24:13):
Corps like the United States has? Should we have a
team of it like a pure Elia Truder recommended? Is
there is there an opportunity to do something very different
with young people in regards to getting to know our country?
Speaker 4 (24:25):
Yeah? Me first, or murray or go ahead? Oh okay, Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
We currently have a program called the Canada Core and
has run through the Employment Department Employment and Employment Development Canada.
But it's a very small program and probably less than
five thousand or so participants per year. Team of it
is no longer around and I think yes, that we
(24:54):
should have some sort of a whether some people are
actually putting forward proposals now to have a mandatory program
of national service. Some say that it should be voluntary,
but I think at the very least that there should
be some broader emphasis place on allowing young people some
(25:15):
avenue to get out there and get to know another
part of the country and not just a one or
two weeks stay. But that's similar to what was done
with Katimovik, where you went you lived in a community
for three months or six months or perhaps even longer,
and you worked on a project in that community, and
you really got to know the people and the culture
(25:35):
of that area. And I think, yes, that that the
government should really start to seriously explore that concept again.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
But I think that I think it would be very.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Important to ensure that there's sort of an educational training
component to the program, that it's not simply be a
touchy feely, get to know your fellow Canadian type of initiative.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
How do you make sure that there's an educational component
rather than a touchy pheely And you know, I've got
to I got to ask you about and you undoubtedly
have read if not studied this issue of there being
a huge group of particularly young men, that are are
feeling lost in our current society. And maybe it's because
(26:25):
they don't have a job, but you know, lots of
people have commented about not only they don't have a job,
but be uh, they don't have dates, they don't have
marriage opportunities, they're not building relationships, they are living in
basements playing video games. Is there something that we need
to do to get them out and involved in society more.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
That's a tough question.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
That's a tough, cush question, and I'm not a sociologist,
but you know what I think at the end of
the day that the solution is jobs, jobs, jobs. We
just need more jobs in the economy, and we need
we need jobs in those if we're talking about young
men in particular, we need jobs in those sectors that
(27:07):
young men traditionally worked in. That we need an emphasis
on our resource sectors, on our transportation sectors, on our
infrastructure sectors. And I know that the government's moving in
that direction, particularly with the Major Projects initiative, but we've
ignored those in recent years. Growing up in the Maritimes
in the nineteen seventies, the Alberta oil patch was a
(27:31):
natural almost pressure valve reliever for unemployment and particularly for
young men. And for a number of factors, that pressure
valve reliever no longer exists. That unemployment issues in Alberta
are severe as are elsewhere in the country. But I
(27:52):
really think that the government first and foremost, he's a
jobs and growth agenda with jobs at the forefront and
jobs for everyone and opportunities for all, and that they
need to really run every priority through a person. If
it doesn't create growth or a job, then it shouldn't
be a priority.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So I'd like to come back to this job's growth
agenda in a couple of minutes, but maybe I could
turn to you Murray for a second. So Dan's got
this incredible experience with government and all the different jobs
that he's had. You've almost got the opposite experience, where
you know, you were at the zenith of a political
involvement on Parliament Hill, but then you went into the
(28:35):
technology sector and you've worked in the West Coast and
in Toronto, and you've been an entrepreneur on numerous different times.
I've read the chapter that you wrote in the book
Ripple Effect, and it's interesting because I didn't realize this.
You came from very humble beginnings and you really saw
getting involved in politics and some of the mentors that
(28:57):
you had and some of the interactions you had that's
critically important in giving you the access to entrepreneurial opportunities
and technology opportunities. Is that something that people, young people
aren't availing themselves of today is they're not that sort
of example that you've provided of getting out there. You know,
and this may not be the best example or the
(29:18):
best person to quote, but whatdy Allen said, eighty percent
of life is just showing up. I don't think people
are showing up to the extent they need to anymore.
What can we do about that?
Speaker 5 (29:28):
Well, if you read the chapter you know about my
showing up, I showed up with lots of places and
wasn't welcome, but I kept showing up. And to your point,
you'll eventually find your people. But that's predicated on a desire,
a bit of confidence, somebody trying to motivate you by
pushing you there. And what I believe is causing this
(29:51):
now problem that we have is that we are delaying
the socialization of children to an age that's early twenties. Okay,
the first socialization that a lot of kids get these
days away from helicopter parenting and the fact that they're
completely dependent on their parents as through upbringing, not because
(30:12):
they have to be. This concept that we're not enabling twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen year olds to be baked into society, I think
fundamentally alters the potential for children to succeed. The simple
fact of the matter is everything I've achieved in life
started at age ten or eleven when I was delivering
(30:35):
flyers in a newspaper, and then I had a Toronto
Star paper route. And then I worked at McDonald's, and
then I worked at pharmacy, delivering prescriptions and carrying one
thousand dollars in cash in my pocket to make change
at these very young ages, Contracting with people, negotiating selling,
these are all things that kids don't get today. And
(30:56):
what I mean by that is that's just the regular stuff.
What about the formal stuff. I had youth groups in
my church where the adults in that church would take
care of all the teenage kids and bring them together.
Then they would teach us things. So, for instance, I
was taught Saint John's ambulance, how to save somebody in
this youth group thing. We got training on this stuff.
The next time, we had another speaker come in and
(31:17):
talk about entrepreneurship, and then police and fire military. The
simple fact of the matter is I was baked into
society much younger than kids are today, and at the
end of it, now that we don't have those things
present anymore, and children come out of university with I
would argue an absence of a lot of skills that
(31:37):
would have traditionally been there, combined with the five things
that are buffeting their employment chances. If we don't start
to invest in those kids, you're not going to get
motivation to exist in their heads, and you're never going
to get an entrepreneur to like me who's so desirous
of succeeding. I had a poster and I was a
(31:58):
kid that said justification for higher education. It was Lamborghinis
and big houses. I mean, it sounds kitsch now, but
that was the eighties. Okay, that was the motivation. We
don't seemingly have that level of ambition anymore, but any moreover,
they not only don't have the ambition and the belief
in themselves to do it, which is I think the
only thing I had. If you've read my chapter, they
(32:23):
don't believe they can't, they don't believe they're worthy, and
they don't have any outlets to be able to achieve it.
And I think that is a crying shape.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You know it's us, Mary, because I read your chapter,
and yes, ambition comes through. When your stick toidness and
your resilience and you know, just keeping on going, it
clearly comes out. But the other thing is sort of
the chance encounters you had with people that ended up
becoming mentors to you. And I guess I worry that
(32:53):
people either don't have an aren't availing themselves with those opportunities,
either at all or as much. And I wonder you know, Covid,
you know I've talked to as you probably have, both
of you. You know, high school graduates or university graduates
that spent three or four years without a lot of
those experiences that were so critically important in your experience
(33:13):
and in my experience frankly, where you know, being involved
in student politics, playing on the football team, socialization, you know,
residents where you'd meet a ton of people that end
up becoming lifelong you know, contacts and friends. People that
were during for four years of high school or four
(33:35):
years of university didn't have those contacts because of COVID.
I think we're extremely negatively impacted. And then social media
today that tells us that you can just sit there
on the telephone and your smartphone interact with people and
not go to a political event like you did and
meet people. I really worry that we've lost social capital,
(33:55):
social interaction, the opportunity to interact with people.
Speaker 5 (33:58):
What do you guys think, mister McCarthy.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Yes, I guess we have. I mean I have.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
I have two sons age twenty seven, age thirty two.
They're a little bit out of that youth age now.
But I believe that the yeah, there's perhaps it comes
down the motivation of the individual, the desire to get
out there and meet new people. Yeah, I do think
(34:32):
it's an issue, But to be honest, it's not an
area that I've given a huge amount of thought to.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Well, you know, you said jobs of the solution. Frankly,
a lot of people said the most important social program
is getting a job, and I think, you know, having
a roof over your head and getting a job is
critically important. We're going to take a break for some
messages and I'm going to come back in two minutes
with our two guests, Dan McCarthy and Mary Simpser, and
I'm going to talk about how bad it really is
and what we need to do. Because what Dan a
(35:00):
couple of minutes ago was we needed growth and prosperity agenda.
I really worry that we just don't have that, and
maybe we've got the beginnings of it. But Dan, with
his experience, you know, in all these different portfolios he had,
and also I think in the Liberal Coccus Bureau at
one point in time, probably knows more than almost anyone
(35:22):
else what it takes to get a growth and prosperity
agenda put in place. So stay with us. One back into.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Minute No Radio, No Problem stream is live on SAGA
ninety sixty am dot CL.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Welcome back everyone to the Brian Cromby Radio are talking
tonight with Dan McCarthy Murray Simpster about an article that
they wrote just a week ago September fifth, twenty twenty
five in the Autawa Life magazine called Generation at Risk, Youth,
Jobs and Canada's economic future. And let me quote here
(36:09):
from Dan McCarthy's Post Statistics. Canada's Labor Force Survey reported
yesterday that this summer's job market for returning students was
the third worst since set nineteen seventy six, forty nine
years ago. The only years worse were nineteen ninety seven
and COVID year twenty twenty. Overall unemployment numbers for some
groups hover around twenty five percent. Canada has to do
(36:34):
better and take action on several fronts. Those of us
of a certain vintage. I love that you went to Styx,
he said. We'll recall Styx's crystal Ball quote. I wonder
what tomorrow has in mind for me, or am I
even in its mind at all? Unquote A sobering thought
for youth today, Dan, you talked about a growth and
(36:57):
prosperity agenda. Some people have said that the last government
didn't have a growth in prosperity, a judgment at all,
that we weren't worried about prosperity, we weren't worried about productivity. Certainly,
Mark Karney and what some people think is a new government.
Other people have suggested it's just the fourth liberal government.
But you know, have have more of an attitude toward
(37:18):
that recently has come out with these big infrastructure projects.
But these massive infrastructure projects are going to be hiring
experienced trades people aren't going to be hiring young people necessarily.
You've mentioned already, you know, the the Trump tariff issues.
You've talked about foreign student workers. You've talked about about
immigration and that that may have stolen some jobs from
(37:40):
young people. Other people just said we need more growth
that you know, we're potentially one quarter in negative GDP growth,
so we may already be in a recession. We just
haven't declared it. What do you think we need to do?
You've you've had numerous different portfolios in the federal government.
I understand from your resume that you actually were in
(38:01):
the Liberal Caucus Bureau at some point in time. If
we needed to have a growth, prosperity, jobs agenda, Dan McCarthy,
what would we have to do?
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Well, that's a huge question, Brian, if i'm asking this
mart sorry, that's why I'm asking the smart guy. Yes, yeah, no,
you know what I think that, first of all, that's
a mindset of the government that for all their for
all their faults on the economic front, the the government
of Justin Trudeau had different priorities.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
You can agree with them or disagree with.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Him, but but economic growth was not one you mentioned.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Productivity has suffered in Canada. We've had anemic.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
Growth for several years, exacerbated by the pandemic and now
further worsened with the threat of the Trump tariffs. But
generally speaking, Canada has been limping along for the better
part of a decade now with with very anemic growth.
And so first of all, we need to new there
is a new mindset with this government. I think that
(39:09):
the Carney government is really adopting an economy first mindset.
They've initiated the Major Project's Office. Obviously we need more
than an office. We need project We need shovels in
the ground. But the government needs to get those, get
the larger projects approved. You approved some of those larger projects,
(39:31):
you immediately put to work two thousand and five thousand
people on the project. You've got an equal number working
in a steel plant producing the steel for the project.
You've got the truck drivers driving the steel to that
well work site. You've got workers and bulldozers and trucks
actually building the project. So you start with major projects.
(39:57):
I think the Bank of Canada will help out starting
next week, hopefully with a twenty five percent basis point
cut in the interest rate. There's thought that they would
then cut a further twenty five percent basis point in October,
but that the government needs from all departments to adopt
(40:20):
that job's first mentality. One of the key moments in
my career was the nineteen ninety three campaign and Jean
Pettiganna talked job, jobs, jobs, and he used a very
simplistic some people call it simplistic, simplistic example of the
trucks rolling up and down the street. When people see
those trucks moving, they'll start spending. And that a rising
(40:42):
tide will float all boats. You get the economy moving,
you'll create jobs for all Canadians, not just young Canadians.
But that if you increase the number of jobs, reduce
some employment, people have more money to spend. Hopefully the
government will take steps on the on the monetary front
(41:03):
to further tame inflation. People will feel more confident about
consumer spending. Retail sales will go up, restaurants sales, hospitality, tourism.
You'll just generally get more employment. And if you get
employment in the resource sectors, transportation, warehousing, retail, hospitality. You'll
(41:25):
employ more young people and that's where it starts. It's
not going to happen overnight, but I think it just
begins with a new mindset of a new government and
they have to have a singular focus on that and
they can't waiver that. They can't retreat back to.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
The priorities largely enunciated by the by the Turtle government.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Some people have suggested that the Turtle government was primarily
about redistribution and not about growth and prosperity and productivity.
Do you agree, Dan?
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I agree, yeah, definitely. I think that the Turo government
had some major successes. Increases to the child benefit lifted
hundreds of thousands of young Canadians of kids out of poverty.
That was a good thing, But at the same time,
they didn't pursue any sort of a growth agenda that
was actually going to pay for it. We boosted old
(42:19):
age pensions significantly in recent years. That's a good thing
for lower income seniors. But frankly, they gave it to
people like me too, that don't need it, that shouldn't
be getting it.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
And they.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
They were great on spending the money. They weren't so
great on finding the ways to pay for it, and hence,
even if you lead aside the pandemic years, our deficits
the last several years have just been horrendous and unfortunately
think the Carney government is going to be continuing that
(42:54):
simply because you can't ratchet back fifty sixty eighty billion
dollars in depth of spending one year, Murray.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Business investment in Canada is one of the lowest in
the G seven. In investment in R and D, investment
in innovation is very low. You know, historically not this year,
but historically investment in real estate was high. But this
year it looks like we're gonna have the lowest number
of building starts in more than two decades. But other
(43:24):
than in the last year, Canadians invested in real estate,
but they didn't invest in productivity. They didn't invest in innovation,
They didn't invest in entrepreneurship, they didn't invest in in
materials in business, in business, what's wrong? Why don't we
have an innovative economy. You're an entrepreneur, You've raised money.
Why don't businesses invest more in R and D, in
(43:44):
innovation and machinery.
Speaker 5 (43:47):
Well, the answer is they do just not in Canada. Okay,
and this is really important to understand. Dam's right. If
you look at any measure, it falls off the cliff
in twenty fifteen, Okay. And what I'm by that is
an absolute drop in foreign direct investment, in entrepreneurship, in
business starts, in employments, employment from non governmental sources, et cetera.
(44:10):
All of those numbers get absolutely wiped off the map
in favor of a government that takes up an increasingly
large percentage of the total GDP. Remember GDP is consumer
spending plus business spending plus government spending plus the difference
between what we import in extport. Roughly speaking, Okay, I'm
oversimplifying it, because that's the simple GDP equation. If you
(44:33):
increase one or the other, if you increase the g
components of it in any way, that that's government spending.
You reduce C and I, which is a consumer and
business spending by definition, because your crowd out the available cap. Remember,
the government is not the state, it's just the government.
(44:54):
And so when the.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Government you're you're agreeing with Ronald Reagan that government's the problem.
Speaker 5 (44:58):
Well, I'm not listen, I'm I'm not a get rid
of a state kind of guy, But I am a
person who believes in progressive state politics with very rationally
and well controlled fiscal policy. And that means that a
government occasionally spends beyond it me its means when necessary,
but when the economy's flying, like during the Trudeau years
(45:21):
before covid that there was no excuse for that type
of spending, and so as a consequence, we got the
economy that they developed. We had the exact same growth
and productivity and all the rest through all of history
with the United States more or less, plus or minus
a little bit right up until twenty fifty. And that's
not an accident. It coincides with the same thing that
(45:42):
happened in the seventies when Pierre Trudeau came along and
implemented largely the same type of what i'll call crowding
fiscal policies. And the solution to this problem is not
more government. The solution to this problem is what Dan said,
We need more jobs, okay. And the simple fact of
the matter is for every dollar invested by the government
(46:02):
in the economy that they've taken from somebody, there's a
cost to spending that money. But for every dollar an
entrepreneur or an individual spends in the economy, the multiplier
effect and the velocity of that money is significantly higher
than the value you get out of government spending. So
if you want to understand why Canada has the problems
it has, take the equation I just gave you, and
(46:23):
you'll see exactly why the economy is producing absolutely no growth,
no real growth since twenty fifty I think one percent
real growth, okay, adjusted for inflation. The solution is entrepreneurship.
And I mean this. I don't mean that in the
short term the government can't do all the programs we've
discussed today. I believe in those things because they are
(46:44):
a means to an end. Cap Cain's was very clear
about this government to spend when nobody else can. But
long term that's untenable because there's a cost. There's a
correlation between the percentage of government spending in an economy
and its productivity. If you look at France, which is
a country twice our earth one and a half times
our size, maybe a little more than that, but we've
(47:07):
got an economy almost exactly the same size as there. Okay,
So if you think about the consequences of seventy percent
government controlled and economy, which is France. Okay, you end
up with an economy that produces nothing. Canada, the number
is sixty five percent. That means sixty five percent of
all of the components of GDP are g and that
(47:30):
is that is a really loony number if you want
to be a capitalist economy that's generating jobs, because by definition,
almost two thirds of all the money in the economy
is not productively creating the next generation of economics and
jobs necessary. And we're now paying the price, and the
(47:53):
kids are the ones that are going to pay it most.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
So are you suggesting that we need Elon Musk and
Doge coming to Canada.
Speaker 5 (48:00):
I don't think that they did a very good job. Look,
we're Canadians, not Americans. We don't do things in a
cuckoo wee. Okay, we'd like to think properly and be
rational about it. But would we would We would be
remiss if we didn't ask the question why has government
spending exploded? And what I mean by that is by
any measure, Okay, we are spending more on defense and
(48:21):
we have no more defense capability. We are spending more
on civil service, and our service levels are going down.
We have more employees in every department of the government,
and arguably people are more frustrated with government across the board.
We're paying more, we're getting less. It's crowding out anybody
with initiative. Anybody with initiative in this country just gets
(48:42):
pounded by everybody else.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Okay, so you are Reagan. Government's the problem. We're going
to take a break for some messages. We're going to
come back in two minutes. I'm going to ask Dan McCarthy,
if you had a chance to sit down with Mark Kearney,
what would you tell them to do? Say? Is everyone
back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Stream us live at SAGA nine sixty am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
A welcome back everyone to the Brian Crimey Radio. I've
got Murray Simpser, who's a long term entrepreneur, and Dan McCarthy,
who's a long term civil servant and policy expert in
(49:25):
the federal government with us tonight. They've been co authors
of a really interesting article in Autawa Life magazine about
youth unemployment and the challenge we're faced. And we've had
a good discussion about the problem and we've touched on
some of the potential solutions, But I don't think enough really,
Dan McCarthy, you're an expert. You've been in the civil service,
You've you've been in policy bureaus, you've been advising ministers.
(49:48):
But you said you haven't had a chance to be
in the PMO. So I'm going to give you the
chancellor to be in the PMO if you were in
the PMO tomorrow morning. And Mark Carney said, Okay, Dan,
you've identified the problem. What's the solution. What do I
got to go out next week and talking about it?
What do I got to have in the budget? What
do I got to have in my next speech from
the throne? What would you tell the Prime Minister sir?
What's your advice?
Speaker 4 (50:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (50:08):
I think I think that I would. I would speak
to him on about a multi layered plan, particularly to
address youth unemployment. The first thing is and the government
is taking some steps on this right now, but I
really do think that, notwithstanding his initial reaction to the question,
they need to really severely tighten up the temporary form
worker program.
Speaker 4 (50:30):
That despite attempts to.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
Ratchet down the number of temporary form workers and the
issuing of foreign student work permits, you still have literally
over a million foreign students having work permits in this country,
either through the temporary form Workers program or the temporary
(50:55):
or the student work permit program, and they're in competition
with young Canadians for those scarce jobs. I think the
second thing is he sits down with corporate Canada and
reminds them of their responsibility to the nation, not simply
their shareholders, that those workers that are not being employed
right now are their future customers and in fact, the
(51:18):
future Canada. I think that the government needs to seriously look,
as I mentioned, have a serious examination of some sort
of a national service program. I think that they need
to better fund the Youth Employment Services program, that they
need to expand the reach of that program to include
(51:41):
things like Murray's been talking about in terms of entrepreneurship.
They need to, I think, better empower new ministers like
Evan Solomon or AI minister, that he needs to focus
not just on AI as an innovative tool, but for apps.
Follow the leader of the United States, and I didn't
(52:02):
think that Donald Trump was a leader on anything, but
in the summer the White House issued an AI action Plan,
and in that action.
Speaker 4 (52:10):
Plan was a series of measures on.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Raising awareness on AI among high school students and university students,
college students, and actually implementing with the States new training
programs to ensure that people can take advantage in the
new technology. New technologies are not simply besides white by them.
So there's immediate term initiatives that the government could take
(52:36):
and longer term ones, but that they need to look
at this in a holistic way and address these issues
from a number of different perspectives.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
I think it really is a critically important issue, and
I thank you two gentlemen for writing this article. You know,
I think that youth unemployment is a massive problem, and
I agree with you, but I think it goes beyond that.
I think that we've talked about debt and deficits. Our
debt is I think, and our deficit is at unsustainably
high levels. Housing. We have made our housing you know
system unaffordable for the vast majority of young Canadians where
(53:09):
it takes you know, fifteen times income to afford a house,
when it was three to five times when I graduated
from university. So housing is unaffordable. Climate change is an
issue that I believe is not addressed and is going
to come back to haunt us. I think that you
know the fact that there's going to be more people
(53:30):
over the age of eighty than have ever been over
the age of eighty that are going to have to
be supported by pensions and healthcare. And while our pensions
may be pre funded, our healthcare is not. And we're
going to have this coming tsunami of people in need
of homes, and the people that are going to be
funding that are going to be the people that are
younger and are working. And on top of all that,
(53:51):
you've got AI which may be taking away jobs. And
so I think our young people have been given a
pretty challenging situation. And I think we need to give
a lot of thought to the generational inequity that every
other generation in history is passed to the next generation
a better future. And we got to ask ourselves, are
we passing on a better future to our kids or not?
(54:13):
And if we're not, you know, that's not pretty that's
not a pretty good evaluation of the job that we've
done for our kids. And I think that's a real problem.
So Murray Simpster, Dan McCarthy, thank you so much for
joining us. I really appreciate it. I recommend this article
to you Autowa Life magazine about youth unemployment, authored by
Dan McCarthy with Murray Simpster as well, and gentlemen, thanks
(54:34):
for your efforts and Dan, I hope you get that
audience with the Prime Minister. Thanks very much, Brian, good night, everybody,
thank you for joining. I remind you in mind every
minded through Friday at six o'clock on nine to six am.
You can stream online even from Ottawa Sir at TRIBLEW
SAGA nine sixty am dot
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Good Night, stream US live at SAGA nine six am
dot CA
The views expressed in the following program are those of
the participants and do not necessarily reflect the views of
SAGA nine sixty am or its management.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to the Brian Crimbie Radio AAR.
We've got a really interesting duo co authors to introduce
you to tonight. We've written, I think a really important
article about an issue that has got some attention, but
not nearly enough attention, and that is youth unemployment, which
I think is a real problem. I think, and I've
done a couple of shows on sort of intergenerational inequity
(00:38):
where we've really left a situation for our young people
that is really quite dire with housing prices and increasing
debt and climate change and AI and blah blah blah.
We could go on for a while, but youth unemployment
has skyrocketed of late, and so I think this is
a topic that we really need to think a little
bit about. And Dan McCarthy and Murray Simpser, who are
(00:59):
guests of author an article about this topic. Dan's got
what did you say, two decades of experience in politics,
if not more. You've been a civil servant, and you've
worked for different people and Mary Simpson has got experience
on Parliament Hill as a political staffer, but he's also
been very involved in the technology sector, both in the
(01:20):
United States and Canada, and so I think these two
gentlemen really come to this topic with a lot of background,
both in politics as well as in the civil service,
as well as in business, and so I think it's
an interesting conversation. So maybe Dan, we could turn to you.
What was the argument that your article was putting forward, sir.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Well, my argument generally is that we're in a crisis
situation visa the youth unemployment, and it's a situation that's
been building pretty much since twenty twenty two. That the
unemployment numbers that we're seeing recently for youth are not
simply the result of Trump or a week in economy.
Speaker 4 (02:03):
The numbers have been getting.
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Worse in the last three years, and that the government
has frankly taken little action to address them.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
And that the job.
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Market this summer, in particular for young people, whether you
define young people as age fifteen to twenty four, some
from age fifteen to twenty nine, depending on the definition,
it's been a very difficult job market for young people
and returning students in particular, and they're being hammered on
(02:35):
four fronts. One, you've got a week economy, so there's
just fewer jobs all around. You have the overlay of
the Trump tariffs all the uncertainty that that adds to
the job market, and you now see layoffs in the
manufacturing sector.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
In particular.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
And thirdly, you have the competition for foreign students and
workers brought in under the Temporary Foreign Workers Program, the
International Mobility Program, and Canada literally added a million new
citizens every year for the last three years, perhaps not
(03:17):
citizens in terms of full citizenship, but bringing in new
workers that are competing with our with young Canadians for
increasingly scarce jobs. And then finally you have the Ai Revolution,
which longer term may well bring very real benefits, and
I would I would defer to murray on this point.
(03:39):
But then in the short term, the number of entry
level jobs is starting to decrease, and so there's fewer
jobs for those young people to find that lower rung
on the career ladder. So this summer you saw unemployment
rates for students for young people fourteen point five percent
(04:01):
in August, down slightly from fourteen point six percent in July.
But the unemployment rate for returning students was almost eighteen
percent this summer, and that's the third highest rate since
nineteen seventy six. So think about that, the third highest
rate in the ninth in the last forty nine years.
(04:23):
And we're not even technically in a recession, so things
could actually get worse for young people. And I guess
the purpose of the articles was to draw attention to
this problem, and the government's been extremely slow to act
on it.
Speaker 2 (04:38):
Murray, why has the government not recognized this and been
slow to action?
Speaker 5 (04:44):
Well, I think you have a combination of factors. I
think that Dan elucidated the problem. Okay, We've got all
these buffeting forces that the government is trying to address.
I think, largely speaking, the government is involved in all
four of those elements that Dan's described in some way,
shape or form. But the truth is, when we say
(05:08):
the government is slow to act, you have to look
at it from the data point of view and not
the point of view. The data says that unemployment in
those groups of people are as high as they've ever been, Okay,
And if the government doesn't do something about that, whether
or not they intend to do it or they're trying
to do. It is kind of irrelevant. You have one
(05:30):
fifth of the young population that can't make ends meet,
and as a consequence, this has destabilizing effects right across
the economy and more importantly for potentially the future of
the economy.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Dan, and you know, I think it was two thousand
and eight, two thousand and nine, you would know the
statistics better than I obviously, But youth unemployment with skyrocketing
after the Great Recession or sort of as part of
the Great Recession, and there are numerous different government policies.
I thought that we're put in place to really help
young people. Are we not thinking about those today?
Speaker 3 (06:07):
Well, I guess we probably have the same suite of
programs in effect. The government does have a program called
the Youth Employment, Skills and Training Initiative, and they provide
that provides about three hundred and fifty million dollars a
year for the Canada Summer Job Program, for youth training,
(06:28):
for mentorship programs through community organizations. But I just think
it's totally inadequate and it doesn't address the It doesn't
only not address the unemployment issue, but several different studies
have identified up to nine hundred and twenty thousand young
(06:48):
Canadians that are neither employed or in education or in training.
They've they've completely dropped out of the labor force and
they're not being assisted in any way to prepare for
any sort of job in the labor force. And so
we not only risk the term that's used by economists
(07:10):
is scarring. We're not only risk scarring those youth that
can't find jobs. There's literally almost another million. There's a
million young people that are not involved in a sense
engaged in society in a meaningful way through education, training
or the labor force.
Speaker 2 (07:29):
Mary, I know you've participated in the writing of a
book about networking recently. You know, in two thousand and eight,
one of the things that was studied and spoken about
when there was high youth and employment at that point
in time is that young people didn't have that opportunity
of getting those first career experiences, and that if they
didn't get those first career experiences, they were negatively impacted
(07:51):
for the rest of their career, that the net present
value of their future earnings was substantially lessened because that
was where they made their contact, that's where they became
a mentor, that's where they got their references and recommendations,
that's where they got their first experiences, et cetera. And
so therefore it wasn't just that they lost a job
for a summer or year. It was that they were
(08:13):
negatively impacted the rest of their career. Is that an issue?
Speaker 4 (08:18):
Do you see that?
Speaker 5 (08:19):
Yeah, well, let's start with that as a concept. They
are hobbled in the way you described. If you think
about a career trajectory as this linear thing that you
start somewhere and you end up somewhere, and there are
these intervening steps in between. So for instance, the life
of a police officer or a fireman, a civil servant, you know,
(08:44):
these types of roles the government rules that say Dan
has taken on and some that I've played in which
I was never really good at because I couldn't follow
that rule. Results in people thinking if I missed the beginning,
I missed the end. And this is sort of the
old thesis of compounding interest being applied to a career.
(09:05):
The most important doubling is at the beginning, you know,
and as a consequence, you get that extra doubling at
the end, which hobbles in come. Yes it does, but
does it if you don't have to play in that sphere.
And I think one of the things that I added to,
and the reason Dan and I came to chat with
(09:25):
each other, was this issue. Does it hobble the students
because they've been kicked out of the process, They've missed
that first opportunity. And I would argue, and I think
this is what I tried to argue, and Dan and
I actually talked about it before he invited me to
contribute a little bit to this article, that if you
(09:46):
choose the career ladder and you think that's all there is,
by definition, you have hobbled yourself and limited yourself to
being harmed or scarred, as Dan described the economists use
this term, and therefore that reduces your potential income and
reduce your potential wealth, satisfaction, all of these sort of things.
And I believe that there's a fifth buffering factor in
(10:09):
society that was not listed in Dan's list, and that
is that entrepreneurship. Despite us thinking entrepreneurship is all over
the place today because we hear about it, it's on
these phones, it's there, entrepreneurship has never been so low
in the West and in Canada, in particular, and this
is a really important thing. You would think that today
(10:31):
it's easier to start a company, so there's more companies.
It's not true. There are more companies being created on
per capita basis the sixties, seventies, fifties, eighties. These also
coincide to the richest years this country ever had. And
so I think what I would say to you, to
answer your question directly is yes, it hurts you if
you are monolithic in your belief that the only thing
(10:52):
that you can do as a citizen of Canada when
you graduate university is to be caught, or even go
to university for that matter, Why bother? There are other choices,
and they pay more, they're better, they're stronger now, they're
higher risk, they take a lot more effort. They're not
as easy to deal with. And you need help, just
(11:13):
like somebody needs help to become a great civil servant
or a great fire person or a great police officer.
So do entrepreneurs need help at the beginning. And so
my answer to you is no. I think that students
and kids, and I'm the advocate for humans versus everyone,
I believe that kids are every bit as capable of
inventing things as adults, and there's no magic to invention.
(11:35):
Invention is an idea and then it's all about perspiration.
And if you can put perspiration into getting a plus
in school, you can certainly become an entrepreneur. I don't
put answers your question.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
I don't buy it. If unemployment is fifteen to eighteen percent,
depending on whether it's you know, young people are returning
to students based on Dan's numbers, why wouldn't there be
more entrepreneurship, Like, you know, the need is there, the
threat of not making money, of having some identity in life,
of not having something to do, of not being able
(12:08):
to get out of your mother's basement. You know, why
wouldn't there be With high unemployment, there should be substantially
more entrepreneurship. So why isn't it happening?
Speaker 5 (12:17):
Well, because entrepreneurship is something that somebody chooses to do
because they don't have a choice. Who are the greatest
entrepreneurs in this country? If you actually get down to
the brass tacks of it, it were people that were
excluded in the thirties, forties and fifties that went on
to create the greatest engines of enterprise this country has.
Remember that unemployment is a trailing indicator for the economy,
(12:39):
but it's also an indicator that creates the pressure necessary
for somebody to take the leap into entrepreneurship.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
So that therefore pressures there.
Speaker 5 (12:50):
Pressure's totally there now. In the nineteen nineties when I graduated,
I was the first generation of kids in nineteen ninety
five to coming to school, we were told by every
professor we had, the day's a permanent employment for a
corporation are over. You're never You're going to have a
job every year for the rest of your life, and
nobody's ever going to be stable ever. Again, that was
nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety four, Okay, And we invented
(13:13):
the Internet, we invented consulting as a concept. Do you
know that the largest group of entrepreneurs in this country
are independent consultants, are sole proprietors. Some good for them.
They make a great living that was created after the
last time the world went shit. And this is the
sort of nature of the ballgame now is how do
we respond to these now pressure systems? Now, Remember, pressure
(13:39):
is what creates entrepreneurs. So Dan wants to go into
high risk. I mean, unless they're trained from childhood to
do it.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Dan, what's your answer, Why isn't there more entrepreneurship right now?
The pressure, I would think, is there if there's fifteen
to eighteen percent youth unemployment. If the pressure is there,
why aren't they taking action? No?
Speaker 4 (13:57):
I agree, you know what.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I think that my experience were different from Murray's because
I'm not an entrepreneur. I had a salary job my
whole career, but I did work earlier in my career
for two property developers in the in the in Atlanta, Canada,
both of whom were pull up their bootstraps entrepreneurs, one
from a one from overseas, one native born New Brunswicker.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
And my sense is that entrepreneurs.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Are either born or developed, and those that are born
entrepreneurs will will pursue that career path with little motivation.
They just they're just driven to get out there and
do things there. But in terms of developing entrepreneurs, I
don't think we do a very good job of that.
And I think that I think that Murray, people like
Murray and and the book that he's participated in a
(14:47):
participated in authoring, are very important and that we need
to better support those community organizations that work with young
people and help provide them with the skills where they
can go out start a small business. And that small
business could be you know, beginning landscaping or gardening in
(15:11):
your neighborhood, or some other small job that then grows
into a larger venture. But what the feedback that I've
received from a couple of people that work with young people,
particularly those who haven't finished high school, that are marginal
students for whatever reason, come from disadvantaged economic backgrounds. They
(15:34):
don't know how to do this. That's right, not be
natural born entrepreneurs, but they're not. We don't provide them
with a framework or a program in which to develop
an interest like that, build those skills, mentor them, connect
(15:54):
them with entrepreneurs so that they can take that final step.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Right. Fascinating. So we've got high youth unemployment fifteen to
eighteen percent, depending on what the designation is, whether it's
all youth or whether it's returning students that you're analyzing,
which has got to be what four to five times
the national average, So it's significantly high. You say it's
the highest within the three highest times in sort of
(16:24):
the last forty fifty years, sixty years, I guess based
on the members that you were telling and well, government's
got some programs, it doesn't seem to be, you know,
close to the top of the agenda today, and I
think it clearly needs to, because I think it's a
massive issue. I think it's impacting their net present value
of future earnings, their career path if you accept sort
(16:47):
of you're going to get a job in work scenario.
And I think it's impacting, as Murray said, entrepreneurship. Even
though the threat is there and therefore the incentive to
get out and be an entrepreneur should be there, for
some reason, it's not happening. I think one of the
other topics that's worth thinking about is what is it
doing from a political standpoint, And I've had a couple
of shows recently on the disengagement of young people and
(17:09):
how a lot of young particularly young males, are turning
right and being attractive to right wing politics and populists,
and so I think that that's potentially impacting. And some
people have argued that it's impacting young men, particularly psychologically,
because they're stuck in their mother's basements and they don't
(17:30):
have the sense of identity, the cultural integration, the opportunities
that they may have had in the past, and so
I think this is going to be a really interesting
conversation tonight. Stay with us everyone. We're going to take
a break for some messages and be back in just
two minutes with Dan McCarthy and Mary Simpster talking about
an article they've written in Ottawa Life magazine about youth unemployment,
(17:50):
how big it is and what we're gonna do about it.
Stay with us, everyone, Back into the time.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Stream us live at SAGA nine s am dot Ca.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
Welcome back everyone to the Brian Crombie Radio AAR. I've
got a really interesting topic to talk about this evening,
youth unemployment and an article that my two guests have
written co authored in Ottawa Life magazine. Dan McCarthy has
got a really interesting background. I got to tell you
a little bit about this gentleman who's one of the
co authors one of my guests tonight. He's been an
advisor to five ministers, including chief of staff to three
(18:37):
ministers and senior policy advisor to another. He was important
files including the Environment Canada, Human Resources Development Canada, the
Department of Justice, Industry Canada, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans,
and the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. What have you not done?
Like you've been everywhere. You've been talking about amendments to
(19:01):
the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, climate change initiatives, reducing sulfur
less levels in gasoline, Children's Agenda, National child Benefit, Early
childhood development, and Canada's response in the wake of nine
to eleven terrorist attacks. What an incredible experience you've got, sir.
Speaker 4 (19:20):
Yeah, you know what. I had a fascinating career. I think.
Speaker 3 (19:24):
Some people would say I wasn't able to hold a
job given the number of positions, but I would also
say I never reached the pinnacle. I never got a
job in the Prime Minister's office.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Is that something you'd like to do?
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Oh? I think I would have liked to have done that.
Speaker 5 (19:38):
Yes, yeah, so they'll be calling you.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
No, Mark Carney should call you up and ask you
to be the unemployment Zar.
Speaker 4 (19:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
So you recently also traveled across the country from Tafino
to Nova Scotia, and you you posted about that and
about your trip. Why'd you do that?
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Yeah, you know what. It was actually a family situation.
My brother in law had a health issue on the
west coast. He lives in Nova Scotia, had to fly
home and left his car there, and I told him
that I would go get his car and drive it back,
as long as he didn't mind if I took a
few weeks to do it. And I'd never driven across
the country before. I'd flown across several times, taken the train.
(20:21):
But it was a fascinating drive. And I picked up
the car near Victoria, but I went to Fino because
I wanted to dip my foot in the Pacific Ocean
and then drive it right through to the south shore
of Nova Scotia.
Speaker 4 (20:33):
And it was a fantastic drive and it was it really.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
I don't know that people need this from time to time,
but to reaffirm my Canadian citizenship. We have an amazing
country and there's something almost surreal about seeing it from
ground level for seven thousand, seven hundred and ninety kilometers
or something like that.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
You wrote an opinion piece in the Global Mail about
about I don't know whether it's about this trip, but
that MPs need to take the trip across Canada. Why
did you do that, sir?
Speaker 3 (21:11):
Well, you know what I had the years of experience
on Parliament Hill and I was always I was always
very interested in new MPs coming to the Hill, being
intimately familiar with their ridings and their regions, but a
lot didn't really know the rest of the country, and
(21:31):
it was interesting to watch the evolution in their thinking
as they as they got out and about the country
and also interacted with their colleagues from other parts of
the country. And it struck me, particularly after the election
of the Truro government of twenty fifteen, that there were
a number of new ministers and social media had become
(21:52):
a thing.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
By then.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
When I was a staffer, social media was not a thing.
It didn't exist to a large extent, and it just
struck me the number of ministers that were posting when
they visited Saint John's or visited Edmonton or Grand Prairie
that how wonderful it was to be in this place
for the first time, and they couldn't believe how beautiful
(22:15):
it was. And Canada was, in my mind, you know,
becoming defined. And then we needed a way to bridge
those devides, and one way was to rather than wait
for a five to seven year ten year evolution.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
In their thinking, let's grab them right off the bats, stick.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Them in a bus, liberals with block and conservatives with
NDP ers, and have them travel the country and get
us sense of the country right off the bat.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
So in my day job, I'm a real estate developer
and I have the opportunity to travel across country because
my company has got developments right across the country, and
it's i think a unique experience that not a lot
of people have. I travel frequently, not only you know Montreal, Toronto,
Ottawa Circuit, but to Windsor uh To, to northern Saskatchewan,
(23:07):
to northern Alberta, to the Fort McMurray, uh to numerous
different places in British Columbia, et cetera. Regrettably, not a
lot in the land of Canada. So I don't come
out to uh to dip my toe in the Atlantic
Ocean in Canada, which I'd like to do. And I've
really treasured that opportunity to meet people and to have
dinner with them on a repeated basis, because I go
(23:28):
and visit them on a fairly regular basis and get
to know them and get to know the communities and
and thinking about real estate development, I got to really
get to know the communities because I got to go
in and analyze and understand, you know, what the market
opportunities are. I really thought about Katimavik and UH and
and Pierre Elliott Trudeau's UH you know proposal to get
young people across the country participating in UH in seeing
(23:52):
their country and as you say, meeting people that are
different than them. I did have an opportunity as a
young person to UH to study French in Quebec as
another example, given your experience about how rewarding it was,
Given my experience about traveling the country and the challenge
you've identified with youth unemployment, should we have a Peace
(24:13):
Corps like the United States has? Should we have a
team of it like a pure Elia Truder recommended? Is
there is there an opportunity to do something very different
with young people in regards to getting to know our country?
Speaker 4 (24:25):
Yeah? Me first, or murray or go ahead? Oh okay, Yeah. Yes.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
We currently have a program called the Canada Core and
has run through the Employment Department Employment and Employment Development Canada.
But it's a very small program and probably less than
five thousand or so participants per year. Team of it
is no longer around and I think yes, that we
(24:54):
should have some sort of a whether some people are
actually putting forward proposals now to have a mandatory program
of national service. Some say that it should be voluntary,
but I think at the very least that there should
be some broader emphasis place on allowing young people some
(25:15):
avenue to get out there and get to know another
part of the country and not just a one or
two weeks stay. But that's similar to what was done
with Katimovik, where you went you lived in a community
for three months or six months or perhaps even longer,
and you worked on a project in that community, and
you really got to know the people and the culture
(25:35):
of that area. And I think, yes, that that the
government should really start to seriously explore that concept again.
Speaker 4 (25:48):
But I think that I think it would be very.
Speaker 3 (25:51):
Important to ensure that there's sort of an educational training
component to the program, that it's not simply be a
touchy feely, get to know your fellow Canadian type of initiative.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
How do you make sure that there's an educational component
rather than a touchy pheely And you know, I've got
to I got to ask you about and you undoubtedly
have read if not studied this issue of there being
a huge group of particularly young men, that are are
feeling lost in our current society. And maybe it's because
(26:25):
they don't have a job, but you know, lots of
people have commented about not only they don't have a job,
but be uh, they don't have dates, they don't have
marriage opportunities, they're not building relationships, they are living in
basements playing video games. Is there something that we need
to do to get them out and involved in society more.
Speaker 4 (26:46):
That's a tough question.
Speaker 3 (26:47):
That's a tough, cush question, and I'm not a sociologist,
but you know what I think at the end of
the day that the solution is jobs, jobs, jobs. We
just need more jobs in the economy, and we need
we need jobs in those if we're talking about young
men in particular, we need jobs in those sectors that
(27:07):
young men traditionally worked in. That we need an emphasis
on our resource sectors, on our transportation sectors, on our
infrastructure sectors. And I know that the government's moving in
that direction, particularly with the Major Projects initiative, but we've
ignored those in recent years. Growing up in the Maritimes
in the nineteen seventies, the Alberta oil patch was a
(27:31):
natural almost pressure valve reliever for unemployment and particularly for
young men. And for a number of factors, that pressure
valve reliever no longer exists. That unemployment issues in Alberta
are severe as are elsewhere in the country. But I
(27:52):
really think that the government first and foremost, he's a
jobs and growth agenda with jobs at the forefront and
jobs for everyone and opportunities for all, and that they
need to really run every priority through a person. If
it doesn't create growth or a job, then it shouldn't
be a priority.
Speaker 2 (28:14):
So I'd like to come back to this job's growth
agenda in a couple of minutes, but maybe I could
turn to you Murray for a second. So Dan's got
this incredible experience with government and all the different jobs
that he's had. You've almost got the opposite experience, where
you know, you were at the zenith of a political
involvement on Parliament Hill, but then you went into the
(28:35):
technology sector and you've worked in the West Coast and
in Toronto, and you've been an entrepreneur on numerous different times.
I've read the chapter that you wrote in the book
Ripple Effect, and it's interesting because I didn't realize this.
You came from very humble beginnings and you really saw
getting involved in politics and some of the mentors that
(28:57):
you had and some of the interactions you had that's
critically important in giving you the access to entrepreneurial opportunities
and technology opportunities. Is that something that people, young people
aren't availing themselves of today is they're not that sort
of example that you've provided of getting out there. You know,
and this may not be the best example or the
(29:18):
best person to quote, but whatdy Allen said, eighty percent
of life is just showing up. I don't think people
are showing up to the extent they need to anymore.
What can we do about that?
Speaker 5 (29:28):
Well, if you read the chapter you know about my
showing up, I showed up with lots of places and
wasn't welcome, but I kept showing up. And to your point,
you'll eventually find your people. But that's predicated on a desire,
a bit of confidence, somebody trying to motivate you by
pushing you there. And what I believe is causing this
(29:51):
now problem that we have is that we are delaying
the socialization of children to an age that's early twenties. Okay,
the first socialization that a lot of kids get these
days away from helicopter parenting and the fact that they're
completely dependent on their parents as through upbringing, not because
(30:12):
they have to be. This concept that we're not enabling twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
fifteen year olds to be baked into society, I think
fundamentally alters the potential for children to succeed. The simple
fact of the matter is everything I've achieved in life
started at age ten or eleven when I was delivering
(30:35):
flyers in a newspaper, and then I had a Toronto
Star paper route. And then I worked at McDonald's, and
then I worked at pharmacy, delivering prescriptions and carrying one
thousand dollars in cash in my pocket to make change
at these very young ages, Contracting with people, negotiating selling,
these are all things that kids don't get today. And
(30:56):
what I mean by that is that's just the regular stuff.
What about the formal stuff. I had youth groups in
my church where the adults in that church would take
care of all the teenage kids and bring them together.
Then they would teach us things. So, for instance, I
was taught Saint John's ambulance, how to save somebody in
this youth group thing. We got training on this stuff.
The next time, we had another speaker come in and
(31:17):
talk about entrepreneurship, and then police and fire military. The
simple fact of the matter is I was baked into
society much younger than kids are today, and at the
end of it, now that we don't have those things
present anymore, and children come out of university with I
would argue an absence of a lot of skills that
(31:37):
would have traditionally been there, combined with the five things
that are buffeting their employment chances. If we don't start
to invest in those kids, you're not going to get
motivation to exist in their heads, and you're never going
to get an entrepreneur to like me who's so desirous
of succeeding. I had a poster and I was a
(31:58):
kid that said justification for higher education. It was Lamborghinis
and big houses. I mean, it sounds kitsch now, but
that was the eighties. Okay, that was the motivation. We
don't seemingly have that level of ambition anymore, but any moreover,
they not only don't have the ambition and the belief
in themselves to do it, which is I think the
only thing I had. If you've read my chapter, they
(32:23):
don't believe they can't, they don't believe they're worthy, and
they don't have any outlets to be able to achieve it.
And I think that is a crying shape.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
You know it's us, Mary, because I read your chapter,
and yes, ambition comes through. When your stick toidness and
your resilience and you know, just keeping on going, it
clearly comes out. But the other thing is sort of
the chance encounters you had with people that ended up
becoming mentors to you. And I guess I worry that
(32:53):
people either don't have an aren't availing themselves with those opportunities,
either at all or as much. And I wonder you know, Covid,
you know I've talked to as you probably have, both
of you. You know, high school graduates or university graduates
that spent three or four years without a lot of
those experiences that were so critically important in your experience
(33:13):
and in my experience frankly, where you know, being involved
in student politics, playing on the football team, socialization, you know,
residents where you'd meet a ton of people that end
up becoming lifelong you know, contacts and friends. People that
were during for four years of high school or four
(33:35):
years of university didn't have those contacts because of COVID.
I think we're extremely negatively impacted. And then social media
today that tells us that you can just sit there
on the telephone and your smartphone interact with people and
not go to a political event like you did and
meet people. I really worry that we've lost social capital,
(33:55):
social interaction, the opportunity to interact with people.
Speaker 5 (33:58):
What do you guys think, mister McCarthy.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Yes, I guess we have. I mean I have.
Speaker 3 (34:09):
I have two sons age twenty seven, age thirty two.
They're a little bit out of that youth age now.
But I believe that the yeah, there's perhaps it comes
down the motivation of the individual, the desire to get
out there and meet new people. Yeah, I do think
(34:32):
it's an issue, But to be honest, it's not an
area that I've given a huge amount of thought to.
Speaker 2 (34:38):
Well, you know, you said jobs of the solution. Frankly,
a lot of people said the most important social program
is getting a job, and I think, you know, having
a roof over your head and getting a job is
critically important. We're going to take a break for some
messages and I'm going to come back in two minutes
with our two guests, Dan McCarthy and Mary Simpser, and
I'm going to talk about how bad it really is
and what we need to do. Because what Dan a
(35:00):
couple of minutes ago was we needed growth and prosperity agenda.
I really worry that we just don't have that, and
maybe we've got the beginnings of it. But Dan, with
his experience, you know, in all these different portfolios he had,
and also I think in the Liberal Coccus Bureau at
one point in time, probably knows more than almost anyone
(35:22):
else what it takes to get a growth and prosperity
agenda put in place. So stay with us. One back into.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Minute No Radio, No Problem stream is live on SAGA
ninety sixty am dot CL.
Speaker 2 (35:48):
Welcome back everyone to the Brian Cromby Radio are talking
tonight with Dan McCarthy Murray Simpster about an article that
they wrote just a week ago September fifth, twenty twenty
five in the Autawa Life magazine called Generation at Risk, Youth,
Jobs and Canada's economic future. And let me quote here
(36:09):
from Dan McCarthy's Post Statistics. Canada's Labor Force Survey reported
yesterday that this summer's job market for returning students was
the third worst since set nineteen seventy six, forty nine
years ago. The only years worse were nineteen ninety seven
and COVID year twenty twenty. Overall unemployment numbers for some
groups hover around twenty five percent. Canada has to do
(36:34):
better and take action on several fronts. Those of us
of a certain vintage. I love that you went to Styx,
he said. We'll recall Styx's crystal Ball quote. I wonder
what tomorrow has in mind for me, or am I
even in its mind at all? Unquote A sobering thought
for youth today, Dan, you talked about a growth and
(36:57):
prosperity agenda. Some people have said that the last government
didn't have a growth in prosperity, a judgment at all,
that we weren't worried about prosperity, we weren't worried about productivity. Certainly,
Mark Karney and what some people think is a new government.
Other people have suggested it's just the fourth liberal government.
But you know, have have more of an attitude toward
(37:18):
that recently has come out with these big infrastructure projects.
But these massive infrastructure projects are going to be hiring
experienced trades people aren't going to be hiring young people necessarily.
You've mentioned already, you know, the the Trump tariff issues.
You've talked about foreign student workers. You've talked about about
immigration and that that may have stolen some jobs from
(37:40):
young people. Other people just said we need more growth
that you know, we're potentially one quarter in negative GDP growth,
so we may already be in a recession. We just
haven't declared it. What do you think we need to do?
You've you've had numerous different portfolios in the federal government.
I understand from your resume that you actually were in
(38:01):
the Liberal Caucus Bureau at some point in time. If
we needed to have a growth, prosperity, jobs agenda, Dan McCarthy,
what would we have to do?
Speaker 3 (38:14):
Well, that's a huge question, Brian, if i'm asking this
mart sorry, that's why I'm asking the smart guy. Yes, yeah, no,
you know what I think that, first of all, that's
a mindset of the government that for all their for
all their faults on the economic front, the the government
of Justin Trudeau had different priorities.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
You can agree with them or disagree with.
Speaker 3 (38:38):
Him, but but economic growth was not one you mentioned.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Productivity has suffered in Canada. We've had anemic.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
Growth for several years, exacerbated by the pandemic and now
further worsened with the threat of the Trump tariffs. But
generally speaking, Canada has been limping along for the better
part of a decade now with with very anemic growth.
And so first of all, we need to new there
is a new mindset with this government. I think that
(39:09):
the Carney government is really adopting an economy first mindset.
They've initiated the Major Project's Office. Obviously we need more
than an office. We need project We need shovels in
the ground. But the government needs to get those, get
the larger projects approved. You approved some of those larger projects,
(39:31):
you immediately put to work two thousand and five thousand
people on the project. You've got an equal number working
in a steel plant producing the steel for the project.
You've got the truck drivers driving the steel to that
well work site. You've got workers and bulldozers and trucks
actually building the project. So you start with major projects.
(39:57):
I think the Bank of Canada will help out starting
next week, hopefully with a twenty five percent basis point
cut in the interest rate. There's thought that they would
then cut a further twenty five percent basis point in October,
but that the government needs from all departments to adopt
(40:20):
that job's first mentality. One of the key moments in
my career was the nineteen ninety three campaign and Jean
Pettiganna talked job, jobs, jobs, and he used a very
simplistic some people call it simplistic, simplistic example of the
trucks rolling up and down the street. When people see
those trucks moving, they'll start spending. And that a rising
(40:42):
tide will float all boats. You get the economy moving,
you'll create jobs for all Canadians, not just young Canadians.
But that if you increase the number of jobs, reduce
some employment, people have more money to spend. Hopefully the
government will take steps on the on the monetary front
(41:03):
to further tame inflation. People will feel more confident about
consumer spending. Retail sales will go up, restaurants sales, hospitality, tourism.
You'll just generally get more employment. And if you get
employment in the resource sectors, transportation, warehousing, retail, hospitality. You'll
(41:25):
employ more young people and that's where it starts. It's
not going to happen overnight, but I think it just
begins with a new mindset of a new government and
they have to have a singular focus on that and
they can't waiver that. They can't retreat back to.
Speaker 4 (41:44):
The priorities largely enunciated by the by the Turtle government.
Speaker 2 (41:48):
Some people have suggested that the Turtle government was primarily
about redistribution and not about growth and prosperity and productivity.
Do you agree, Dan?
Speaker 3 (41:57):
I agree, yeah, definitely. I think that the Turo government
had some major successes. Increases to the child benefit lifted
hundreds of thousands of young Canadians of kids out of poverty.
That was a good thing, But at the same time,
they didn't pursue any sort of a growth agenda that
was actually going to pay for it. We boosted old
(42:19):
age pensions significantly in recent years. That's a good thing
for lower income seniors. But frankly, they gave it to
people like me too, that don't need it, that shouldn't
be getting it.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
And they.
Speaker 3 (42:33):
They were great on spending the money. They weren't so
great on finding the ways to pay for it, and hence,
even if you lead aside the pandemic years, our deficits
the last several years have just been horrendous and unfortunately
think the Carney government is going to be continuing that
(42:54):
simply because you can't ratchet back fifty sixty eighty billion
dollars in depth of spending one year, Murray.
Speaker 2 (43:01):
Business investment in Canada is one of the lowest in
the G seven. In investment in R and D, investment
in innovation is very low. You know, historically not this year,
but historically investment in real estate was high. But this
year it looks like we're gonna have the lowest number
of building starts in more than two decades. But other
(43:24):
than in the last year, Canadians invested in real estate,
but they didn't invest in productivity. They didn't invest in innovation,
They didn't invest in entrepreneurship, they didn't invest in in
materials in business, in business, what's wrong? Why don't we
have an innovative economy. You're an entrepreneur, You've raised money.
Why don't businesses invest more in R and D, in
(43:44):
innovation and machinery.
Speaker 5 (43:47):
Well, the answer is they do just not in Canada. Okay,
and this is really important to understand. Dam's right. If
you look at any measure, it falls off the cliff
in twenty fifteen, Okay. And what I'm by that is
an absolute drop in foreign direct investment, in entrepreneurship, in
business starts, in employments, employment from non governmental sources, et cetera.
(44:10):
All of those numbers get absolutely wiped off the map
in favor of a government that takes up an increasingly
large percentage of the total GDP. Remember GDP is consumer
spending plus business spending plus government spending plus the difference
between what we import in extport. Roughly speaking, Okay, I'm
oversimplifying it, because that's the simple GDP equation. If you
(44:33):
increase one or the other, if you increase the g
components of it in any way, that that's government spending.
You reduce C and I, which is a consumer and
business spending by definition, because your crowd out the available cap. Remember,
the government is not the state, it's just the government.
(44:54):
And so when the.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Government you're you're agreeing with Ronald Reagan that government's the problem.
Speaker 5 (44:58):
Well, I'm not listen, I'm I'm not a get rid
of a state kind of guy, But I am a
person who believes in progressive state politics with very rationally
and well controlled fiscal policy. And that means that a
government occasionally spends beyond it me its means when necessary,
but when the economy's flying, like during the Trudeau years
(45:21):
before covid that there was no excuse for that type
of spending, and so as a consequence, we got the
economy that they developed. We had the exact same growth
and productivity and all the rest through all of history
with the United States more or less, plus or minus
a little bit right up until twenty fifty. And that's
not an accident. It coincides with the same thing that
(45:42):
happened in the seventies when Pierre Trudeau came along and
implemented largely the same type of what i'll call crowding
fiscal policies. And the solution to this problem is not
more government. The solution to this problem is what Dan said,
We need more jobs, okay. And the simple fact of
the matter is for every dollar invested by the government
(46:02):
in the economy that they've taken from somebody, there's a
cost to spending that money. But for every dollar an
entrepreneur or an individual spends in the economy, the multiplier
effect and the velocity of that money is significantly higher
than the value you get out of government spending. So
if you want to understand why Canada has the problems
it has, take the equation I just gave you, and
(46:23):
you'll see exactly why the economy is producing absolutely no growth,
no real growth since twenty fifty I think one percent
real growth, okay, adjusted for inflation. The solution is entrepreneurship.
And I mean this. I don't mean that in the
short term the government can't do all the programs we've
discussed today. I believe in those things because they are
(46:44):
a means to an end. Cap Cain's was very clear
about this government to spend when nobody else can. But
long term that's untenable because there's a cost. There's a
correlation between the percentage of government spending in an economy
and its productivity. If you look at France, which is
a country twice our earth one and a half times
our size, maybe a little more than that, but we've
(47:07):
got an economy almost exactly the same size as there. Okay,
So if you think about the consequences of seventy percent
government controlled and economy, which is France. Okay, you end
up with an economy that produces nothing. Canada, the number
is sixty five percent. That means sixty five percent of
all of the components of GDP are g and that
(47:30):
is that is a really loony number if you want
to be a capitalist economy that's generating jobs, because by definition,
almost two thirds of all the money in the economy
is not productively creating the next generation of economics and
jobs necessary. And we're now paying the price, and the
(47:53):
kids are the ones that are going to pay it most.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
So are you suggesting that we need Elon Musk and
Doge coming to Canada.
Speaker 5 (48:00):
I don't think that they did a very good job. Look,
we're Canadians, not Americans. We don't do things in a
cuckoo wee. Okay, we'd like to think properly and be
rational about it. But would we would We would be
remiss if we didn't ask the question why has government
spending exploded? And what I mean by that is by
any measure, Okay, we are spending more on defense and
(48:21):
we have no more defense capability. We are spending more
on civil service, and our service levels are going down.
We have more employees in every department of the government,
and arguably people are more frustrated with government across the board.
We're paying more, we're getting less. It's crowding out anybody
with initiative. Anybody with initiative in this country just gets
(48:42):
pounded by everybody else.
Speaker 2 (48:44):
Okay, so you are Reagan. Government's the problem. We're going
to take a break for some messages. We're going to
come back in two minutes. I'm going to ask Dan McCarthy,
if you had a chance to sit down with Mark Kearney,
what would you tell them to do? Say? Is everyone
back in two minutes.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Stream us live at SAGA nine sixty am dot CA.
Speaker 2 (49:03):
A welcome back everyone to the Brian Crimey Radio. I've
got Murray Simpser, who's a long term entrepreneur, and Dan McCarthy,
who's a long term civil servant and policy expert in
(49:25):
the federal government with us tonight. They've been co authors
of a really interesting article in Autawa Life magazine about
youth unemployment and the challenge we're faced. And we've had
a good discussion about the problem and we've touched on
some of the potential solutions, But I don't think enough really,
Dan McCarthy, you're an expert. You've been in the civil service,
You've you've been in policy bureaus, you've been advising ministers.
(49:48):
But you said you haven't had a chance to be
in the PMO. So I'm going to give you the
chancellor to be in the PMO if you were in
the PMO tomorrow morning. And Mark Carney said, Okay, Dan,
you've identified the problem. What's the solution. What do I
got to go out next week and talking about it?
What do I got to have in the budget? What
do I got to have in my next speech from
the throne? What would you tell the Prime Minister sir?
What's your advice?
Speaker 4 (50:08):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (50:08):
I think I think that I would. I would speak
to him on about a multi layered plan, particularly to
address youth unemployment. The first thing is and the government
is taking some steps on this right now, but I
really do think that, notwithstanding his initial reaction to the question,
they need to really severely tighten up the temporary form
worker program.
Speaker 4 (50:30):
That despite attempts to.
Speaker 3 (50:34):
Ratchet down the number of temporary form workers and the
issuing of foreign student work permits, you still have literally
over a million foreign students having work permits in this country,
either through the temporary form Workers program or the temporary
(50:55):
or the student work permit program, and they're in competition
with young Canadians for those scarce jobs. I think the
second thing is he sits down with corporate Canada and
reminds them of their responsibility to the nation, not simply
their shareholders, that those workers that are not being employed
right now are their future customers and in fact, the
(51:18):
future Canada. I think that the government needs to seriously look,
as I mentioned, have a serious examination of some sort
of a national service program. I think that they need
to better fund the Youth Employment Services program, that they
need to expand the reach of that program to include
(51:41):
things like Murray's been talking about in terms of entrepreneurship.
They need to, I think, better empower new ministers like
Evan Solomon or AI minister, that he needs to focus
not just on AI as an innovative tool, but for apps.
Follow the leader of the United States, and I didn't
(52:02):
think that Donald Trump was a leader on anything, but
in the summer the White House issued an AI action Plan,
and in that action.
Speaker 4 (52:10):
Plan was a series of measures on.
Speaker 3 (52:14):
Raising awareness on AI among high school students and university students,
college students, and actually implementing with the States new training
programs to ensure that people can take advantage in the
new technology. New technologies are not simply besides white by them.
So there's immediate term initiatives that the government could take
(52:36):
and longer term ones, but that they need to look
at this in a holistic way and address these issues
from a number of different perspectives.
Speaker 2 (52:46):
I think it really is a critically important issue, and
I thank you two gentlemen for writing this article. You know,
I think that youth unemployment is a massive problem, and
I agree with you, but I think it goes beyond that.
I think that we've talked about debt and deficits. Our
debt is I think, and our deficit is at unsustainably
high levels. Housing. We have made our housing you know
system unaffordable for the vast majority of young Canadians where
(53:09):
it takes you know, fifteen times income to afford a house,
when it was three to five times when I graduated
from university. So housing is unaffordable. Climate change is an
issue that I believe is not addressed and is going
to come back to haunt us. I think that you
know the fact that there's going to be more people
(53:30):
over the age of eighty than have ever been over
the age of eighty that are going to have to
be supported by pensions and healthcare. And while our pensions
may be pre funded, our healthcare is not. And we're
going to have this coming tsunami of people in need
of homes, and the people that are going to be
funding that are going to be the people that are
younger and are working. And on top of all that,
(53:51):
you've got AI which may be taking away jobs. And
so I think our young people have been given a
pretty challenging situation. And I think we need to give
a lot of thought to the generational inequity that every
other generation in history is passed to the next generation
a better future. And we got to ask ourselves, are
we passing on a better future to our kids or not?
(54:13):
And if we're not, you know, that's not pretty that's
not a pretty good evaluation of the job that we've
done for our kids. And I think that's a real problem.
So Murray Simpster, Dan McCarthy, thank you so much for
joining us. I really appreciate it. I recommend this article
to you Autowa Life magazine about youth unemployment, authored by
Dan McCarthy with Murray Simpster as well, and gentlemen, thanks
(54:34):
for your efforts and Dan, I hope you get that
audience with the Prime Minister. Thanks very much, Brian, good night, everybody,
thank you for joining. I remind you in mind every
minded through Friday at six o'clock on nine to six am.
You can stream online even from Ottawa Sir at TRIBLEW
SAGA nine sixty am dot
Speaker 1 (54:50):
Good Night, stream US live at SAGA nine six am
dot CA
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