True Patriot Love - Canada's Youth Unemployment Problem ft. Tristin Hopper

00:00:00.000 I mean, this has been brought up in Bank of Canada reports.

00:00:02.600 This has been brought in TV economics reports

00:00:04.920 where they're saying the nature of the immigration

00:00:07.240 coming into Canada.

00:00:08.960 The reason, you know, we have been

00:00:11.040 such a successful immigration story

00:00:12.760 is because of our screening.

00:00:13.920 We were really, up until very recently, 0.98

00:00:16.960 we were very uptight about who we brought into the country. 1.00

00:00:19.200 So, you know, you have to have skills,

00:00:20.920 you have to speak the language,

00:00:21.800 points-based immigration system.

00:00:25.480 But 2021, that's all completely out the window.

00:00:30.000 well the news canadian youth unemployment numbers are sending some mixed signals

00:00:36.840 and uh of course uh in light of 99 000 new full-time jobs it seems that our youth employment

00:00:44.740 is down at an abysmal rate and to talk to us more about that the guy who wrote don't be canada

00:00:50.680 how one country did everything wrong tristan hopper and by the way don't expect a tip

00:00:56.400 here's tristan hopper how's it going man good good thank you for having me back on your podcast

00:01:02.120 well delighted how's the book going uh book's doing well uh it is sold uh well it's it's weird

00:01:09.760 because uh you know working in the video and podcast and you know writing space uh i mean

00:01:15.620 hopefully if you write a good article it'll get you know 200 000 plus viewers i mean i've written

00:01:22.260 articles that have done 1 million I've written social media posts that have gotten north of 50

00:01:26.300 million so you'll get a call from your book publisher and it'll be like oh smash hit amazing

00:01:31.040 amazing sales uh and I'll say well how many were sold and they'll say well more than 5,000 so which

00:01:37.840 sounds like a criminally low number but uh I guess you know it's different levels of you know someone's

00:01:43.540 buying it they're picking it up they're reading it they're sharing it with their friends um so it's

00:01:49.160 it's sort of this trade-off between yeah you can write a you can write a social media post that

00:01:52.760 has 80 90 million views but the level of engagement is different than someone who actually

00:01:58.600 picks up a book and spends their entire day reading it and you know potentially discussing

00:02:03.880 it with their friends so you're trading mass appeal for you know very dedicated appeal yeah

00:02:10.440 no and i actually i uh commend you for for noting that because and by the way the publishers are

00:02:15.640 excited because 5,000 now means they extrapolate that into 100,000 over time. I'm sure that's

00:02:22.080 their math methodology, but you're right. For somebody to actually engage and go through your

00:02:27.960 entire thought process on a book, well, that's a real fan base. So, well, congratulations on that.

00:02:34.440 You know, I love your take on Canada on the whole because you point out some stuff that

00:02:39.060 many of us kind of think is an obvious, but it seems to be missed by traditional media by and

00:02:45.360 large and missed sometimes by our own governments and ourselves. But this one is hard to miss.

00:02:52.320 As I pointed out, just as we started here, 99,000 full-time jobs and still we're at 14%

00:03:01.480 unemployment among youth in Canada. This is a time in your life where getting a job is

00:03:08.220 really important i think and learning how to handle uh being employed and manage money and

00:03:14.820 manage the job in the workplace and all of that and here we are don't forget just socialization

00:03:20.520 i often say that uh you know i'm a tall rich kid who thinks he's better than everybody else so

00:03:25.740 very similar to vc premier david eby i think there's uh an alternate course fortunately i

00:03:31.340 just got a bunch of entry-level jobs in my early 20s where it was just you know hairy guys named

00:03:36.060 mic screaming at me to shut up and you know put me on a more realistic course making me the man i

00:03:41.180 am today if that had not existed it's very possible i could be uh you know gluing myself to a highway

00:03:47.900 somewhere uh so just just culturally a population of kids that are you know working at uh you know

00:03:55.340 age 16 forward i think that makes for a healthier population but yeah yes um i mean you speak to

00:04:01.020 anybody the next time uh you're around someone under the age of 25 and you're looking for a

00:04:05.820 conversation starter ask them how impossible it is uh to find a job because this is this is pretty

00:04:11.580 uniform this is just um you know summer opens up um either they're an undergraduate or they're a

00:04:17.100 high school student and i'm gonna make some money and yeah just dozens and dozens of resumes wholly

00:04:22.940 different from uh when i was a kid uh when you know in the 1990s i live in a tourist town you

00:04:29.020 could find something most people who could find a job could find something and yeah the consensus

00:04:34.700 which is backed up by the data even as so unemployment is as you probably as your viewers

00:04:42.140 probably know unemployment means you're trying to get a job but you can't get one and then often

00:04:46.620 what you'll have is you'll just have teenagers just exiting the job market and saying well I'm

00:04:51.260 not going to find a job screw this yeah I'll just take up our debt or whatever or so even with lots

00:04:58.060 of teenagers becoming disillusioned in under 20s becoming disillusioned in exiting the job market

00:05:02.940 It's something that usually brings the unemployment rate down.

00:05:05.700 We still have record high unemployment.

00:05:08.700 So it's one of many things when I'm trying to explain

00:05:13.300 Canada to non-Canadians or people who have no

00:05:18.060 who are confused by the way we run ourselves.

00:05:20.820 I'll often say, well, the impacts of our policies are very disparate.

00:05:25.540 So someone who thinks Carney is doing a great job and, you know,

00:05:29.260 if you're on the front lines and you can see the problems,

00:05:32.500 you can see the decline, you can see the various things that need to be fixed in Canada. It can seem

00:05:36.900 baffling that we have a prime minister pursuing all these and he still has an approval rating and

00:05:41.780 60% plus. And I asked them to consider there are large swaths of this country that never have to

00:05:47.940 see the things that you're seeing. They don't go down town, so they don't see the tent cities.

00:05:53.140 They're retired. All they've seen is their real estate values are going up as a result of a 0.96

00:05:59.940 dysfunctional uh economy um they're not the ones looking for entry-level jobs so you'll actually

00:06:05.380 see these employment reports and it'll be among the 50 plus set unemployment is going down as it

00:06:10.900 skyrockets uh for youth so what younger people um are experiencing is just a complete 180 uh

00:06:20.100 from what older people are experiencing in a way that's never really existed before

00:06:25.700 well tristan you pointed it out when when we were kids i mean i had two summer jobs there was an

00:06:30.980 there was an abundance of summer jobs i worked at the beer store during the day and i worked

00:06:35.860 fairly drunk as a waiter in the evenings it's neither here nor there but i was a painter and

00:06:40.260 a waiter yeah there was a it was a there's a plentitude of availability come summertime and

00:06:46.340 employers knew that there was going to be these students available they planned work accordingly

00:06:51.380 they plan scheduling accordingly it offset tourism potentially now you just said something that

00:06:58.900 tweaked me i was like yeah these are entry-level positions we used to call them summer jobs

00:07:05.700 summer employment positions student employment now we call them entry-level jobs

00:07:13.060 yeah uh well i guess i'm using the term to just mean low-skilled jobs i'll be honest with you

00:07:18.740 interesting it comes up in the stats defined that way so now we're looking at if you look at it

00:07:25.780 statistically and i i i guess i come off like a real math brain to everybody but even to a layman

00:07:31.940 like me statistically speaking those jobs have been amalgamated now what was an entry-level job

00:07:39.220 and a summer job are now all in the same silo yes um so in terms of why this is happening i'm sure

00:07:46.660 everybody's just screaming at uh you know whatever device they used to get their podcast they're

00:07:51.780 yelling at it right now and saying well many devices yeah it's it's an it's an it's driven

00:07:55.700 by immigration and that's not that's i mean i everybody has had this thought you're like okay

00:08:01.220 the youth can't get jobs uh the last five fast food places i've gone to you know seem to be a

00:08:06.100 recent immigrant behind the counter this seems to be driven by immigration now sometimes um you know

00:08:11.780 you can get that sense and you know maybe it's not backed up by the numbers or whatever but in

00:08:16.180 In this case, there's any number of serious minded economists,

00:08:20.280 whether it's CIBC reports or TV reports, and they'll just say,

00:08:24.140 well, look at the stats.

00:08:25.520 Canada has always had, well, not always,

00:08:27.680 but ever since the Harper era, there's been sort

00:08:29.880 of a low level of temporary foreign workers coming.

00:08:32.440 The temporary foreign worker program was devised as a result

00:08:35.640 of you had crazy oil booms in Alberta. 0.98

00:08:39.340 You know, anybody who can, you know, open both eyes

00:08:43.280 and sometimes even not, was able to get a job in the oil sands, you know, starting at $25 an hour.

00:08:50.000 So in that situation, you basically have like A&Ws and marshals and whatever multi-positions,

00:08:56.680 nobody could find work under any circumstances whatsoever. So essentially had them petitioning

00:09:02.080 the federal government to say, well, can we bring in, you know, a student, they're here for six

00:09:07.520 months, they make a higher wage, they send it home, you know, go back to, you know, it's something

00:09:12.740 that's happened in canada for 400 years you used to bring scots in they'd they'd work entry entry

00:09:16.980 little bookkeeping at the hbc fort and then they'd go back to scotland uh with their earnings so can

00:09:22.180 we so this is where it started and then you saw a massive explosion not just of the temporary foreign

00:09:27.060 worker program that's the one that gets all the heat that's the one everybody hates um but i mean

00:09:31.780 if you look at the charts it's like temporary migration and then right around 2021 massive

00:09:37.060 spike right so a million people uh per year uh over the course of three years the highest surge

00:09:43.700 in immigration certainly among any developed countries in that time period um so even

00:09:49.540 compared to all the other western countries that kind of have migration issues canada was well

00:09:54.980 beyond them in terms of raw percentage i mean there was years i think it was 2022 where in terms

00:10:00.820 just in terms of migration canada matched the united states i mean person for person and we're

00:10:06.180 one-tenth the population of the United States.

00:10:08.400 So you just have this massive surge 1.00

00:10:09.880 of low-skilled migrants coming in, 1.00

00:10:12.780 not only through TFWs,

00:10:14.500 but also through foreign students

00:10:17.500 was another big one.

00:10:18.500 So just massively expanded visas.

00:10:20.100 And then if you're a foreign student,

00:10:21.080 you can get a job while you're here.

00:10:26.420 Proportionally, it's less,

00:10:27.300 but we also had record numbers

00:10:28.720 of asylum seekers come in.

00:10:29.980 If you're an asylum seeker,

00:10:30.900 you can also get a work permit.

00:10:34.080 So you just all of the various temporary streams where you can get a job in Canada just exploded completely unchecked.

00:10:41.400 And although you talk to the government has realized this was a massive mistake and they're making big bones about bringing down the numbers.

00:10:50.300 But the problem is we don't actually know of that massive surge that entered the country.

00:10:54.640 We do not know how many are leaving, even if their visas are canceled, even if they extended.

00:10:59.500 So you essentially dropped two to three to four million people into the country competing for entry level jobs.

00:11:10.300 So it's just it's basic arithmetic that's no one.

00:11:14.700 And it's visually it's visually obvious. Right.

00:11:17.520 Like you go to Tim Hortons or you go to, I don't want to name too many places, but, you know, Tim Hortons tends to get the brunt of this attention for hiring mainly foreign new immigrants to Canada, foreign students and things like that, and leaving, you know, Canadian citizen kids behind.

00:11:37.080 Tim Hortons will say, they'll say like, well, 3%. 0.95

00:11:39.120 And there was, I forget what the limitation is, but you're not allowed, you can't just have 100% of your staff or TFWs.

00:11:45.460 Right. So what people may be noticing when Tim Horton says, well, it's only three percent of our employees are TFWs. 0.95

00:11:50.880 I mean, you may also be noticing foreign students, people on these other migration streams or their full citizens who just happen to have an accent. 0.51

00:11:59.800 That's also what Tim Horton says. Now, that's the that's the other thing.

00:12:02.720 And I saw something beautiful the other day.

00:12:04.560 I saw one of the independent medias go really south on a report trying to reveal that Tim Hortons is only hiring, you know, immigrant and temporary and asylum-seeking Canadians or immigrants to Canada.

00:12:20.640 And the reaction, even from the public outside, was, how do you know they're not citizens?

00:12:26.480 How do you know they just don't have an accent and they're new to Canada and they're struggling to be here?

00:12:30.360 And I think that's the other side of that coin that we talked about.

00:12:34.260 you know that yeah so i will see it yeah i mean there'll be real concerns with tfws and all the

00:12:41.060 issues we've brought up but then you'll have uh you know someone mouthing off against someone who's

00:12:45.940 who who came here uh by legal streams you know came here as a student got an extension 0.95

00:12:51.220 passed the citizenship test uh but they got an accident so you know they seem like a foreigner

00:12:56.740 um so it's it's easy to get those two uh construed absolutely and that's also a way to

00:13:01.860 just sort of shut down debates. I mean, Tim Horton sort of did that. They're like, well,

00:13:05.880 you know, you just don't, you don't like the color of our staff. That's why you don't like our 0.95

00:13:09.700 massive expansion. It's a very difficult discussion to have when it comes from that

00:13:15.220 heated bullet, I think for certain, you know, but then, okay, so let's extend it a little further.

00:13:21.940 We talk about those immigration numbers. Well, those are people that are going to need jobs.

00:13:26.740 those are people with kids who are going to want summer jobs as well just the increase in population

00:13:33.020 must have had an effect on this and particularly that it's low skilled so this is this is something

00:13:38.760 i've cited if you're properly prepared i could actually you know be pulling up these these

00:13:43.480 reports on the screen imagine a report on the screen now yeah yeah so i mean this has been

00:13:48.840 brought up in bank of canada reports this has been brought in tv economics reports where they're

00:13:53.500 saying the nature of the immigration coming into Canada. Uh, the reason, you know, we have been

00:13:59.300 such a successful immigration story is because of our screening. We were really up until very

00:14:04.020 recently, uh, we were very uptight about who we brought into the country. So, you know, you have 1.00

00:14:08.580 to have skills, you have to speak the language, points-based immigration system. Um, uh, but,

00:14:14.460 uh, 2021, that's all completely out the window. That's where you're going to see stories, uh,

00:14:18.680 whether it's in the star, whether it's in the Globe and Mail, everybody is pretty unified on

00:14:22.760 the fact that this has been a massive mistake and headache for the country um you just saw 0.99

00:14:27.400 an expansion of you know young men coming in with limited language skills uh limited professional 1.00

00:14:33.880 skills um so the nature of the type of immigrant you were bringing in just changed um you know

00:14:39.400 before you were ringing in and you were legitimately bringing in engineers and

00:14:42.760 doctors i know that's kind of a slur uh in the u.s that they used to make fun of um no but that

00:14:47.640 that was part of that was that was the case in Canada yeah we had a really stringent screening

00:14:52.620 process against who we needed to advance the country yeah so you took uh you suddenly have

00:15:00.480 hundreds of thousands of people who are just competing for and I mean remember you started

00:15:05.440 seeing this I'd say one of the most conspicuous um manifestations of this was around 2022 in the

00:15:11.760 Toronto area there would be a small job fair like a grocery store would be hiring like five people

00:15:16.640 and there would be a lineup around the block.

00:15:19.580 And you even had left-wing media

00:15:22.000 interviewing people in line like,

00:15:24.240 what's up with this?

00:15:25.480 I mean, we haven't seen anything like this.

00:15:27.760 And they were all international students.

00:15:29.540 So they'd come in, they were running out of money,

00:15:32.380 they were assured, you go to Canada,

00:15:33.860 you just get a job at a grocery store,

00:15:35.360 you know, it's no problem.

00:15:36.960 But what they didn't tell them is,

00:15:38.360 oh, we're gonna let everybody else in the world

00:15:40.040 do this as well.

00:15:40.980 So you're gonna be part of, you know,

00:15:43.980 we used to bring in 250,000 student visas

00:15:46.340 per year now we're going to triple that overnight so you're among this glut of people all competing

00:15:50.820 for the same jobs um so you saw pretty noticeably as early as 2022 um that's a job that used to just

00:15:59.860 be filled by teens looking for summer work suddenly there's hundreds of people who need

00:16:04.740 that to live to continue their studies uh in canada so and also from an employer perspective

00:16:10.660 there if you if there's been sort of a change of public opinion on the tfw program

00:16:16.240 um i would credit and we don't know who this person is there was like one programmer who

00:16:21.420 set up i think lmia scams so obviously they're yes yeah but to get a temporary foreign worker

00:16:27.640 you have to take a labor market impact assessment so this is where you say well we couldn't find a 0.55

00:16:31.360 local worker so that's why we have to get a foreigner to do this job and this is just a 0.91

00:16:35.160 database it's all over reddit it's all over social media and again not among the sort of

00:16:40.340 right wing parts of social media this is sort of permeated almost everywhere and this is where you

00:16:45.700 can pull up an interactive map of look at the businesses in your area that have applied for

00:16:50.160 LMIAs and this isn't this is really resonated with people because you're living in Courtney BC

00:16:56.420 you can't get a job to save your life you pull up the map and you're like oh I'm within walking

00:17:01.500 distance of 10 businesses and it's always some insanely high number of businesses that said

00:17:10.000 they could not hire a local under any circumstances and that's why. And then you'll also look at the

00:17:14.900 jobs and you'll say restaurant manager at $38 an hour. That sounds awesome. I would love to do

00:17:19.560 that. But they claimed, oh, we couldn't find anybody. That's what we need, a foreigner to

00:17:25.020 do it. So you can imagine from a employer's perspective, what kind of worker would you 1.00

00:17:33.720 prefer um a 18 that wants time off for prom uh is you know 16 and sort of erratic all of the

00:17:42.600 you know there's there's there's benefits to hiring uh you know young go-getters but

00:17:47.480 uh when i'm when i delivered pizza um back in the sort of you know pre-tfws everywhere era uh it was

00:17:55.560 me a 16 year old you know ex-cons uh guys showing a pie or whatever so you can imagine from an

00:18:02.040 employer's perspective well i can either hire locally and deal with the problems that every

00:18:06.840 small business has dealt with since the beginning of time in canada or if you bring in a temporary

00:18:12.360 foreign worker um you have someone who does not have a social network who exists in canada only

00:18:18.840 to work this job so night shifts extra shifts uh that's no problem and if they step out of line

00:18:25.080 they do not have full rights and if they lose this this you know that's so that that's why

00:18:30.760 you'll also see among progressive circles for a long time all the way back in the harper era

00:18:36.040 saying that tfws are an exploitative system because if you don't want to work a 12 or shift

00:18:43.720 you potentially lose your job and then you lose your status in canada you know i wonder

00:18:47.400 if there's a waiting problem uh when i say waiting i mean waiting problem in canada for

00:18:51.880 where people settle because i just did a trip across the country to the west where you are

00:18:57.480 from ontario doing shows along the way and one of the stops was regina and i said to everybody how's

00:19:02.680 the unemployment here and their response was well there's work if you want it and i said uh is there

00:19:09.480 a surplus of work yes there is well where are you getting the workers from and the response that i

00:19:15.800 got two or three times from different employers there was that they had uh temporary foreign

00:19:21.480 workers working for them that then when they settled into canada could not wait to leave

00:19:26.440 regina and head to ontario or head to the so i wonder if one of the issues that we have with

00:19:35.160 migration to canada and employment is that people are competing for jobs in the major centers and

00:19:41.800 not really interested in living in other parts of canada uh where they might be able to build a

00:19:47.560 career long term oh yeah um i would agree and it's baffling to me because uh um i mean you go to a

00:19:57.400 smaller center uh you know you can afford houses uh there's no traffic so i it's confusing to me

00:20:04.600 that anybody would choose to live in uh toronto or a toronto suburb rather than any of our nice

00:20:10.920 smaller communities in Canada. You'd be much happier. And you would think that's the dream

00:20:17.920 that we can offer people coming to Canada. You can have a clean environment, you know, small

00:20:23.240 community, become part of the community. Now, for whatever reason, the desire is to leave those

00:20:29.880 communities where immigration has landed these various individuals and they want to leave. And

00:20:36.640 and to me baffling as well but it does leave jobs open in parts of the country where you know this

00:20:44.600 is the case uh yeah so i i think um i'd be interested to see uh the disparate impact

00:20:51.960 although lmia's um i guess the reason they sort of took off as i was mentioning is because i think

00:20:59.080 people assume this was just sort of a big city thing and it's certainly more noticeable in the

00:21:03.100 big cities, but I think it was people realizing the extent to which you did have smaller communities

00:21:09.640 with high unemployment rates. So this is where you saw a bunch of social media posts, either from

00:21:15.040 influencers, there was a couple of conservative MPs who did this, who they would say, well,

00:21:19.380 there's, you know, according to the LMIA map, you have this BC community right here with,

00:21:27.820 as of our last, the unemployment rate was above the national average,

00:21:32.100 and they're claiming they can't find anybody to work a restaurant manager job now you could argue

00:21:37.600 uh that um the people who are unemployed they're trained engineers or something and you know they

00:21:44.600 can't raise their family on a 38 an hour um restaurant job so there is some disparity

00:21:49.860 between the two um but i think it sort of resonated because you had people um actively

00:21:56.860 seeing these in their communities and saying well that's something i would gladly do i am unemployed

00:22:01.400 I'm unable to find a job, but I'm finding out that I'm within a walking distance of some place that

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00:22:34.360 priority shop now at lesslethal.ca maybe let's just talk about the impact on on youth like we did

00:22:43.560 we did touch on it but i do think that there is uh this is a big deal you know for for youth

00:22:51.880 oh yeah i mean this is uh well there's a there's a few things uh this is bad for so if you have

00:22:59.080 uh youth who are chronically unemployed in their prime years i mean there's there's study uh but

00:23:05.800 before it became king uh you know there's the prince of wales charities or something and this

00:23:10.600 is right when the beginning right when we started to see an uptake in youth unemployment uh so this

00:23:15.400 you know large report comes out um with stock images of etc and they're and then and they're

00:23:21.240 saying in this report uh well if you have someone who's chronically underemployed or unemployed

00:23:26.200 from the ages of 17 to 21 i mean there's sort of a learning loss there that follows them throughout

00:23:31.240 the rest of their professional career because as we mentioned we were reminiscing uh about our own

00:23:36.840 jobs uh whether in the restaurant sector uh you know having a hairy guy named mike screaming at

00:23:41.960 you uh it's to to shut up and you know get something done on time to mop it up you know

00:23:47.880 there's several tons of impacted flooding to the dining room that needs to be dealt with in the

00:23:53.480 the next 30 seconds or you're fired these are very good life lessons uh to be taught to someone in

00:23:58.440 their late teens or early 20s now if you have an entire generation that is being denied those

00:24:03.960 lessons that's going to have consequences for the rest of their career and you also risk a brain

00:24:09.000 drain um so someone who is ambitious uh wants wants to be making money uh wants to be getting

00:24:15.640 out there if there's any i mean there's there's a poll i remember uh this is about a year ago so

00:24:21.720 So this is right at the height of elbows up, you know,

00:24:24.760 screw the US, I'm flying, I don't know how a flag works,

00:24:28.400 but I'm going to try and fly it.

00:24:30.600 So the peak of elbows up, there was a poll,

00:24:33.160 and I wish I had the right numbers, but it was asking,

00:24:36.460 I think it was, you know, would you, if you could,

00:24:40.340 would you become a, I think the question was,

00:24:43.360 and someone will correct me,

00:24:44.140 someone will probably know this with the poll.

00:24:45.920 If, would you accept annexation of the US or something,

00:24:50.180 uh you know if you could be you could transfer your money into u.s dollars uh and you could be

00:24:56.660 assured mobility rights within the u.s so would you accept some kind of arrangement which the u.s

00:25:01.780 could do unilaterally i mean there's the u.s could the u.s could just say anybody under 18

00:25:06.020 you're a u.s citizen now i think the uk does something with ireland i think that's a passive

00:25:10.020 aggressive thing if you're irish you can just automatically work in the uk because right maybe

00:25:14.980 i'm making this up this is no i do believe that that is correct and i think like well you never

00:25:18.660 left so you can come back whenever you want ireland um so the americans could do something

00:25:24.100 like that in this particular poll uh everyone said that's outrageous no we would never accept

00:25:28.980 any kind of union with the united states and i think it was if not majority support plurality

00:25:34.180 support among the younger set so you have a large number of canadian youth who already knew they

00:25:42.020 weren't going to be able to afford a home yeah now they can't find a job they have no idea what the

00:25:48.420 future holds for them career-wise and then they're staring at um you know unlimited growth cheap

00:25:53.780 housing uh etc obviously a better economy in almost every way currently let's see how it goes um but

00:26:01.540 it's an option that they almost are forced to keep open for themselves uh you know in in their mind

00:26:07.060 that might even be the the future that that they desire you know even if it's only them thinking

00:26:13.940 yeah, I need to even have an option to be able to go to the U.S., but the brain drain thing isn't

00:26:19.360 something I hadn't really thought of. It's a really good point. You know, the other thing

00:26:22.800 that came up, we had a guest on recently, Tristan, I think you might find this interesting,

00:26:27.160 who is building AI interactive software so that engineering students in university

00:26:32.040 can learn how to socialize in the workplace because they have no ability and they hit the

00:26:39.980 uh the process of trying to get a job and in the interview process it crumbles on them because they

00:26:46.060 it's obvious to the employer that they don't have the means of communication they don't have the

00:26:50.620 ability to work with others and uh actually have the ability to advance themselves within the

00:26:57.900 company of their own volition and so now they're giving people ai friends and colleagues and bosses

00:27:04.620 so that they can even just understand

00:27:07.560 people's facial reactions to things,

00:27:11.980 people's tone on certain topics

00:27:14.180 because they're not familiar with it.

00:27:16.400 If you eliminate jobs for youth,

00:27:20.580 it won't be long before everybody has to hook up

00:27:22.660 with AI to learn how to get a full-time job later in life.

00:27:27.040 I think you're right.

00:27:27.980 These skills where Mike is yelling at you.

00:27:29.920 You can tell.

00:27:31.060 I think you can almost see a cultural divide.

00:27:34.620 uh among i mean there's when you look at sort of the elite tiers of uh politics or sort of

00:27:39.980 non-profits you can definitely tell um that someone did not have a bunch of entry-level jobs

00:27:48.300 um as as a young person uh versus you know they were just in undergraduate and then they moved

00:27:53.500 from there into an internship and apprenticeship it's one of the main uh quarrels i have with uh

00:27:58.060 media if media has become more and more out of touch it's because they've been increasing legacy

00:28:03.100 media not you know the esteemed independent media but uh legacy media increasingly the pipeline got

00:28:09.260 more and more narrow uh where rather than the old style uh which was you you had someone who had

00:28:16.940 worked on a fishing boat and they had done various jobs and then they got a job as a copy boy they

00:28:21.420 took to it and then copy boy moved up and there was there was sort of more um you took you had 0.89

00:28:25.900 the smartest poor kids was the term now it's the dumbest rich kids it's um it's just you got a 0.68

00:28:31.340 four-year undergraduate degree at Ryerson then you got the the internship and then you transitioned 0.96

00:28:36.300 into a job in Legacy Media and you've never actually had a job in a you know you've never

00:28:43.260 stood behind a Tim Hortons counter as a tweaker comes in and you have to wonder if he starts

00:28:49.580 throwing a table what am I going to do you know the rest of my staff you know you've never had

00:28:54.380 contact uh with the real world and that's why um a lot of uh legacy journalism increasingly seems

00:29:02.380 out of touch i forget where i was going with this uh but uh yeah well you know just the the the

00:29:07.020 consequences of not having a a job market that is accessible uh to young canadians you know this is

00:29:14.700 where i made some of my best friends i'm still friends with the guys that i was a waiter with

00:29:19.260 uh in uh in high school we we see each other regularly we we built great bonds in those jobs

00:29:25.580 and went on and had other careers uh but those jobs are kind of what brought us together in the

00:29:31.740 first place you know let me ask you i i i feel a little i feel badly because as i say i've i've

00:29:38.300 been fortunate enough my kids managed to get some jobs along the way during the summer wasn't always

00:29:43.340 easy but they managed to do it and now they're in the job market uh as adults and and fortunately

00:29:48.940 have uh you know gone through the struggle i see it as more and more impossible every day um

00:29:56.780 what do you think kristen where does it where do we go with this and do you think there's

00:30:00.780 any solution that anybody's talking about i'm certainly not hearing any great ideas um i i

00:30:06.940 think yeah you just gotta get uh uh unfortunately it's if i just said well you just have to fix

00:30:12.700 the giant bulge of temporary immigration that was set into that's why immigration it's weird how we

00:30:17.740 don't pay uh and this is kind of true across most western countries it's just treated as

00:30:22.860 another file of government i think it's because it was managed so well for so long you're like

00:30:27.500 the government's not going to screw up immigration but immigration you can you can screw up the

00:30:32.940 country for years very quickly uh without anybody noticing uh i mean you can screw up the screening 0.99

00:30:40.940 for one visa and then suddenly you've let in an entire criminal gang and now the bishnoi gang 0.86

00:30:47.020 is holding up everyone across the country right and you know five bureaucrats screwing up uh you 0.99

00:30:53.900 know some particular thing has now unleashed an entire criminal gang across multiple time zones

00:31:00.060 um so i think uh the federal government i don't think they're doing nearly enough because we just

00:31:05.820 don't have the figures on it but they've realized um everything from housing to unemployment uh i

00:31:13.500 I mean, again, it's just a simple arithmetic problem.

00:31:15.740 If you pack in 3 million people overnight,

00:31:19.760 it's gonna distort many, many markets,

00:31:23.020 be that the healthcare access, be that housing.

00:31:27.260 So we've already seen, even with just this small reduction,

00:31:30.480 just the fact that we didn't have

00:31:31.420 any population growth last year,

00:31:33.480 which isn't as much of a success as it should seem

00:31:36.480 because we had the highest population growth

00:31:38.660 in our entire history for the years preceding that.

00:31:41.940 Even just that milestone, I mean, you immediately saw rents start to go down.

00:31:47.440 Exactly. 0.98

00:31:47.720 So just tighter controls on just an endless supply of temporary migrants coming in is going to have pretty immediate impacts, as it has done with housing, as it has done with rent, in terms of these entry-level positions. 0.98

00:32:04.660 Yeah, I hope that, I mean, the entry, trust me, the last thing I want is for somebody to be unable to feed their family in need of an entry level position to augment or do that.

00:32:16.740 But I do think it's important that our youth is employed.

00:32:19.360 I think that, you know, with things financially the way they are, the average family that's sending a kid to university needs that kid to offset some of that expense.

00:32:28.520 It can be, you know, fairly costly to do that.

00:32:32.140 And of course, on the other side of it, those kids are going to need jobs as well, because there isn't that huge amount of instant uptake out of the universities.

00:32:39.620 So to have a part time job you can go back to for a period of time after university until you get full time employment is also important.

00:32:47.940 I hope that we find our way back to that. 0.86

00:32:50.500 Maybe control of immigration will quickly bring us back there. 0.93

00:32:53.780 It's the main factor. And it's the only factor I've talked about. 0.86

00:32:56.280 i should mention you know when the x you know when you see economics report of and there's been

00:33:00.600 multiple at this point they all have the same chart of the the immigration like immigration

00:33:04.440 all of the temporary it's it's a massive bulge it's it's it's it's pants crappingly noticeable

00:33:10.360 yeah when you see this type of bulge but they'll also point out uh i mean you know the the economy

00:33:16.280 is is being affected uh by tariffs they'll also say well there's ai maybe a bunch of jobs that

00:33:21.640 used to be done uh by some 18 year old drone can now be done by a computer so they'll mention

00:33:26.280 there's other factors uh so i'm just mentioning immigration because it's the most conspicuous

00:33:31.240 and obvious factor yeah but it's like with housing so yeah you can you can focus on the obvious

00:33:37.480 factor but then there'll be something um you know there'll be a bunch of tertiary contributors

00:33:43.160 as well obviously um even in periods of very very low immigration in canada you did have

00:33:48.840 um high youth unemployment so i think we're highest since the 90s in terms of youth unemployment and

00:33:55.720 immigration was much lower in the 1990s uh if anybody remembers i believe it was also a problem

00:34:02.120 in the early 1980s late 1970s everybody forgets about pierre trudeau he he got immigration way

00:34:07.960 down uh like century lows like you know 10 000 permanent immigrants per year almost no temporary

00:34:13.320 migrants uh some years and so these these problems can still exist um but it's fair and you know not

00:34:22.480 racist to notice um that three million people brought in almost overnight all of them requiring

00:34:29.200 temporary work is going to mean uh you're going to have a lot of youth who otherwise would have

00:34:34.060 done that job who are not doing that job now yeah no and i think that the tertiary uh effects of it

00:34:39.160 I accept as well. And I think that they've always been there to some degree, AI being the exception

00:34:44.680 to that. Although there's always been some technology replacing people's jobs. I do think

00:34:51.860 that it is tough for people to, especially in the media, come out there and say, no, immigration was

00:34:57.420 a real problem for our youth and finding jobs, but it's an obvious one in many ways. So, you know,

00:35:03.600 I'm glad to talk to somebody else about it. I hate to be in an echo chamber sounding like a grumpy

00:35:07.740 old guy worried about kids getting jobs but the truth is i think it's really important that we

00:35:13.260 keep our youth employed and i like you i think it's time for the government to kind of focus on

00:35:17.660 that a little bit and maybe i don't know maybe we even put them to work on a major project out there

00:35:23.180 if we can get one of those actually happening well i mean you have the uh i'm sure if you asked

00:35:28.940 uh if you if you had some senior liberal in this conversation they'd say well we we'll run the

00:35:33.820 senior uh you know we got the summer jobs program this is uh this is the program where uh someone

00:35:38.780 applies and you know a non-profit applies for summer jobs and then the government pays a minimum

00:35:43.980 wage to whoever they bring in so this was always seen as a program the summer jobs program um

00:35:49.660 is it it's it's particularly ramped up in the last few years it's explicitly prioritized by race

00:35:57.500 so you actually look at like a number of uh hiring quotas you certainly see it in academia where

00:36:04.540 you'll have listed academic positions only open to you know these particular uh groups so this

00:36:09.900 year's summer jobs program um says well we're prioritizing you know black and indigenous and

00:36:16.220 then quite explicitly it used to be you know five years ago the language used to be these are open

00:36:21.740 for all if you know do not feel there's a barrier we're an equal opportunity employer and now it's

00:36:25.820 we are prioritizing black and indigenous and then you know women and trans and then it sounds like

00:36:31.740 some right-wing fever dream that i'm just making this up this is the language um try applying what's

00:36:36.220 too late for summer jobs program so i imagine try and imagine uh an 18 year old who was

00:36:43.820 growing up in canada uh i mean they were not able to go to school for two three years between the

00:36:48.860 ages of whatever 12 and 15. uh they couldn't go to their grad ceremony because some you know pro

00:36:53.820 palestine group took it over with screaming at them as they were trying to accept their diploma

00:36:58.940 they can't find a work a job now they apply for the summer jobs program and then they can't get

00:37:03.820 in because they're not the right color for the government's hiring specifications so

00:37:07.900 i mean if if you're looking and you probably brought it up on this podcast uh one of the

00:37:13.100 weirdest things about canada right now is how our youth are more conservative than our old people

00:37:20.220 and this has been shown across multiple polls just a poll came out today um showing uh the rise

00:37:25.820 of the bc conservatives here in bc and when that's stratified by age yeah outsized support

00:37:31.260 i'm on the under 30 set and then all the old people are like no ndp forever it's great um

00:37:37.180 so this has never happened before that well at the exceedingly boring uh conservative convention

00:37:43.980 exceedingly boring uh there was a huge youth uh contingency there that was well informed

00:37:52.140 uh you know tired of and and by the way a wide array of uh of ethnicity and you know within the

00:38:00.860 age group of let's say 14 to 18 they were there in fairly significant numbers well informed and

00:38:09.500 ready to back a more conservative approach even from a party perspective which was interesting

00:38:16.220 yeah i think it's creating more serious minded uh just compare it to me uh graduated in 2005.

00:38:22.620 so endless jobs forever uh you know i can get multiple summer jobs i'm fired because i show

00:38:29.580 up hung over to one i just get another one you know i can if i run out of money i can just go

00:38:35.420 to the oil sands and i can easily get i can get a job at a burger king earning 30 an hour flipping

00:38:41.260 burgers so uh if millennials seem seem to be a very unserious generation i i would counter that

00:38:48.620 the opposite is happening now i think the the 18 year old 19 year old that is coming of age now in

00:38:54.140 canada uh is now realizing oh a lot of these things can't be taken for granted you know prosperity is

00:39:00.780 is difficult um you know we actually have to consider these larger factors i mean so i think

00:39:06.060 they're being forced to grapple with adult questions yeah uh at a much earlier age uh

00:39:12.140 because um name your economic problem it is hammering the younger people hardest and fastest

00:39:19.820 um problems that are almost completely invisible um to many demographics particularly over the age

00:39:26.220 of 55 i mean there's just a completely different canada that is being experienced for young people

00:39:31.180 youth unemployment just being the latest and most conspicuous iteration of that 56 i can tell you

00:39:37.820 that it uh it just kind of breaks my heart because so much changed so fast in this regard and like i

00:39:43.100 say even even from the time that my kids were looking for jobs it just feels like a very

00:39:48.860 different scenario and you're right i think kids have to be concerned even though they don't want

00:39:54.140 to be youth have to be concerned with what happens next for them way more than we did and yes i was

00:40:00.460 fired at least once for showing up hungover uh look tristan i really appreciate your time on

00:40:06.300 this i'm going to encourage anybody who doesn't have a job this summer to send your resume to

00:40:09.820 tristan hopper and uh he'll consider it right away i am looking for an unpaid intern uh to

00:40:17.500 i've got a bunch of airplane models that mean so i won't teach you about writing but i can just

00:40:21.260 exploit you uh in some way you know what it's osmosis makes the youth unemployment crisis work

00:40:26.080 for you me tristan thanks so much don't forget the book is don't be canada how one country did

00:40:33.620 everything wrong tristan hopper uh you're lots of fun on tough topics and i appreciate that thanks

00:40:39.020 man thank you

True Patriot Love - June 21, 2026

Canada's Youth Unemployment Problem ft. Tristin Hopper

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