Hon. Andrew Cardozo: Honourable senators, I want to thank the other senators who have spoken today — Senators Wells, Hay, Cormier and Pate. You really make this a very special place. Thank you for sharing those speeches with us. I feel like I am a fifth leg in a four-person relay race, but I will do my best to take you to the finish line.
The Canadian Youth Climate Assembly held in September 2025 was a landmark event. It brought 33 engaged young Canadians from across the country to Parliament, showing how the independent Senate can cultivate new ideas and civic engagement.
To those articulate young people who attended and contributed, thank you for your energy, your vision and your passion.
[Translation]I also want to thank Senator Mary Coyle not only for raising this crucial inquiry regarding the Canadian Youth Climate Assembly and its final report, but also for her visionary leadership as co-chair of Senators for Climate Solutions. Senator Coyle, your ability to bring the energy and voices of the next generation to the heart of our parliamentary process is of the utmost importance.
[English]I also want to recognize Senator Kutcher and Senator Quinn, who previously served as co-chairs, and Senator Muggli, who has stepped into the role of co-leadership in that group.
In reflecting on the assembly’s report and the task ahead of us, I will make three points.
First, we must be honest about the scale of the climate challenge. Even if global emissions stopped today, we may still be looking at a planet 1.5 °C warmer than the pre-industrial average — the Paris target — and emissions are not going to stop today. The choices we make now can substantially alter the outcome, but whatever we do, young Canadians will be living on a planet much warmer than humanity has been used to.
Some warming is now “baked in,” to coin a term. Our challenge is the degree to which we can reduce the impact, limit the damage and adapt to our environment. Every fraction of a degree counts in this battle.
Second, the youth assembly concluded that we must commit to the level of investment required to meet this challenge. To do this, we may need to spend around 5% of our GDP each year; that’s approximately $125 billion in today’s money. We need to do this consistently for each year we fail to sufficiently reduce emissions; the path ahead will become steeper.
The government has admitted we will miss our 2030 and 2035 emissions reduction targets; this is not good. There is much more to be done, but, fortunately, what we need to do is still within our capabilities.
Third, the assembly noted we must view this transition not as a burden but as a historic opportunity. As we spend money on transitioning from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy, building clean power, electrification, public transport, retrofitting and other infrastructure adaptations for a sustainable future, we should do so with an eye to tackling the problems simultaneously.
One of the recommendations of the Canadian Youth Climate Assembly was to “. . . incentivize the creation of sustainable, decent jobs . . .,” including “. . . dedicated initiatives aimed at young people . . . .”
Colleagues, you may recall I have been raising the crisis of youth unemployment in recent months. The youth unemployment rate has consistently been twice that of the average national unemployment rate. The unemployment rate for those under 25 currently stands at around 13%. We have an opportunity to create well-paid, high-quality jobs for young people that will give them important skills and experience to build lifelong careers.
I commend the government for announcing the Youth Climate Corps in Budget 2025 last fall. This is exactly the kind of innovative thinking required to meet the moment. In effect, it responds to the recommendation of the Youth Climate Assembly report, but it is a proposal that could be more ambitious.
Budget 2025 proposed spending $20 million a year this year and next on this program. According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, that will support around 500 full-time equivalent jobs per year. It’s not nothing, but it’s not very much. It is not close to the scale we need to either reduce youth unemployment or mitigate climate change.
There are more than 400,000 under-25s currently looking for work. And there are nearly 1 million under-29s who are not in education, employment or training. This is untapped potential for our society and for our economy. We could be training these young people to do all sorts of useful things, certainly to mitigate the crisis of climate change.
A recent report on unemployment by The King’s Trust — headed until a year ago by our colleague Senator Farah Mohamed — titled Failure to Launch estimated that reducing youth unemployment could raise Canada’s GDP by $18.5 billion by 2034, and this is probably a conservative estimate.
What we need to spend on reducing emissions and limiting the degree of impact of climate change is not a burden. It is well established that, at the very least, it is cheaper to act than it would be to continue emitting greenhouse gases without limit. One can only wonder what the unemployment rate will be if some of the more dire predictions about climate change come to pass.
[Translation]What we are talking about here are investments in the future of our country, our planet and our young people. We can choose not only to leave them a livable Canada, but also to do so in a way that provides them with opportunities and skills that stimulate our economy, create wealth, and build the workforce of tomorrow.
[English]The Youth Climate Assembly helped remind us that climate change represents a major challenge for the policy-makers of today. It need not be all doom and gloom. There are opportunities here to transform our economy. We should take those up with the enthusiasm the assembly had. We need to follow their leadership, youth leadership. After all, it will be their planet a lot longer than it is ours. Thank you.