Mr. Speaker, I welcome debate on true job creation in this country because there has been a lot of rhetoric from across the aisle for a long time, but I see every day in my riding of York South—Weston that job creation just is not happening.

The city of Toronto's unemployment rate currently sits around 9% and for youth it is around 15.4%. That is an enormous increase over what it has been and it is something that the government has not managed to do anything about. In fact, it has gotten worse over the period of time since the Conservatives were elected in 2006.

Let me provide an example of an individual who, until recently, was employed at the airport. He is a trained lawyer who came to Canada as a refugee and could not practise law here because he did not have the language and got himself trained as an accountant. He worked for a while as an accountant, but the manufacturing company he was working for went belly up. Then, just to do anything, he was a valet at the airport making $14.35 an hour, which he thought was enough. Guess what? The airport authority contracted out his job to another company, which fired all of the workers and hired people back at $11 an hour.

Those are the kinds of jobs that the government has managed to create over the past nine years that it has been in charge. In the words of a McMaster University study, nearly one-half of all the jobs in the GTA are precarious jobs. Those are jobs that are low wage, part time, temporary and contract. They do not have security and do not have the amount of money required to raise a family in this country.

Manufacturing jobs, the kinds of jobs that small and medium-sized enterprises might be able to create, have been disappearing at a rate that is perhaps even faster than the rate that the ethics have disappeared in the other place. Over 450,000 jobs have disappeared in the past few years and even the low dollar and low oil prices have not kick-started a resurgence. The government has managed to give away tax money to large enterprises that have not done the job of creating work.

The Bank of Canada suggests we are 270,000 jobs below full employment. That is not 100%; that is full employment. Those 270,000 jobs are a lot of jobs in this country that Canadians could use, as well as better quality jobs. A recent CIBC study suggests that we are now at an all-time low in the quality of employment in this country. Most, if not all, of the job creation has been in low-wage, precarious work.

Mike Sullivan

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