@noel.semple7 We need more Canadians making their own jobs and making jobs for others. Like my kids are doing this sunmer!
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Last week almost 50,000 people applied for 5,000 jobs at the CNE, and then thousands showed up in person for this in-person job fair.
And it’s a tough summer for young people looking for work. Ontario’s youth unemployment rate is 16.2% ,which is one of the highest in the country. To make that situation better, we need more hiring but we also need more entrepreneurship.
And this is where I take off my Ontario Policy guy hat and put on my proud father hat because both of my kids, who are teenagers, created their own jobs this summer.
My daughter who is 18 was walking around the neighbourhood and noticed that there are a lot of lawns that seem to need help, a lot of people who need to seem seem to need help with weeds in particular.
And so she started a weed pulling business. She just printed up a bunch of these signs. And within a week or two had all the clients she could handle and she just goes there and picks weeds for 20 or 25 bucks an hour, and it’s great.
Meanwhile, my son who is 13 is out right now selling soft drinks in parks. He’s also collected golf balls and sold them back to golf courses, and he’s cleaned people’s garbage bins for money, and he’s also working on selling a website development services to local small businesses.
So this type of thing, Entrepreneurship and business formation, is something where Canada lags behind some other countries and the United States in particular.
And I don’t know exactly how the government can help make people more willing to start businesses and create jobs for themselves and then go on to employ others. But if we could narrow that gap and create more of an entrepreneurial culture and mindset among Canadians of all ages, then we would go a long way towards building the economy that we need to create a great life for everyone here.