Bloc Québécois to contest judicial recount in Terrebonne riding: sources
The Bloc Québécois is expected to launch a legal challenge against the judicial recount that saw the party lose the federal riding of Terrebonne by one vote after a mailing error led to a special ballot not being counted.
Radio-Canada sources say Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet will announce the party's intentions this morning. He will be holding a news conference at 11 a.m. in Ottawa with Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné — the party's candidate in the riding — and Bloc MP Christine Normandin.
The announcement comes a day after Elections Canada declared that the result of a recount in Terrebonne is final, despite a misprint that led to one special ballot being returned to sender.
Elections Canada investigated after Terrebonne resident Emmanuelle Bossé came forward with an envelope that contained a vote for the Bloc Québécois which had been returned to sender.
Results on election night indicated that Liberal MP Tatiana Auguste won the riding by 35 votes. After a standard validation process, the seat flipped temporarily to Sinclair-Desgagné by 44 votes. A judicial recount then found the Liberals had won, but only by a single vote.
The independent agency said that this is the only case they know of in the recent election of an envelope containing a marked ballot being returned to a voter because of an incorrect address.
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National Observer
41 minutes ago
- National Observer
If Carney wants to build, he should go big on a Youth Climate Corps
When our delegation of Youth Climate Corps (YCC) organizers met Mark Carney outside the Liberal caucus retreat in Nanaimo in 2024, Canada was a different place. To remind the Liberal Party of their promise made in the 2024 federal budget to hold consultations on a YCC, we staged a lemonade stand to 'raise' the $1 billion needed for a Canada-wide program to put thousands of young people to work confronting the climate emergency — the defining crisis of our lives. This fun stunt gained the attention of Carney — then just an economic advisor to the Liberals — and Members of Parliament, who reassured us a YCC would be established. We couldn't have predicted the political whirlwind that would follow just months later, resulting in former prime minister Justin Trudeau's resignation and Mark Carney's election to the position. Though the Liberals won, the results of the federal election show a persistent disconnect between the governing party and young Canadians. In a rightward shift among youth, the Conservatives won the student vote. If the Liberals want to earn back the trust of young people, they must make a compelling and inspiring offer, and the Youth Climate Corps represents just that, but only if it is a genuinely bold invitation. The crises we face call for more than a precarious pilot program After years of youth advocacy, the YCC was finally featured on most major party platforms: the New Democrats, Greens, and re-elected Liberals. This win is a testament to the dedicated and inspiring advocacy of Canadian youth across the country. But the 'pilot' program proposed by the Liberals is far too modest, and sends mixed signals about whether they truly understand the severity of the crises we face. As the Liberal platform states, 'Building Canada strong starts with our workers.' We agree. That's why they must scale up their inadequate promise and create the ambitious and visionary climate corps that Canada desperately needs. 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If built right and in adherence to our campaign principles, the YCC would create at least 20,000 jobs across Canada in the first year, and grow with demand each year thereafter. If Carney wants to 'build, baby build,' then we need a well-trained and prepared workforce to get the job done. Polling shows the majority of Canadians across every demographic support the idea of a YCC, and 15 per cent of people under 35 are excited and ready to enlist immediately. The Liberal Party must reckon with the reality that young men are turning to the political right after feeling abandoned by the Liberals, yet a huge majority of young men are excited about the idea of a YCC. To Prime Minister Mark Carney: You have expressed your ambition to 'build things we've never imagined, at a speed we've never seen.' Now is your opportunity to establish a transformative, large-scale Youth Climate Corps, and watch as we strengthen this nation without leaving anyone behind. Erin Blondeau is the communications director at the Climate Emergency Unit, an independent journalist and a human rights and climate justice organizer. Bushra Asghar is the co-director of the national Youth Climate Corps campaign and a human rights and climate justice organizer.
Globe and Mail
2 hours ago
- Globe and Mail
Farmers divided over bill to enshrine Canada's supply management system in law
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CBC
2 hours ago
- CBC
Gen Z is facing the worst youth unemployment rate in decades. Here is how it's different
Graduation cap in hand, Sarah Chung is posing for photos in school regalia ahead of her convocation ceremony. The campus atmosphere is joyful, but what comes next is sobering: this honours student is graduating into one of the worst youth labour markets seen in decades. "It's bleak," said the 23-year-old graduate of the University of Calgary's media and communications program. She hasn't been able to find a job in her field and said she intends to pursue a master's degree. "I believe that it's tough just because of everything that's happening with the economy, with our society and with politics," she said. "There's a whole [lot] of talk about 'there's a recession coming.' I'm not an economist, but I can also see it as well." Chung is part of a generation facing Canada's highest youth unemployment rate in about a quarter-century. Apart from the pandemic, Canadians between the ages of 15 and 24 are facing the highest youth unemployment rate this country has seen since the mid-1990s, according to first quarter data from Statistics Canada. At that time, Jean Chrétien was Canada's prime minister, Gen Z was but a twinkle in their parents' eyes, and the global workforce had yet to be transformed by social media, gig work and artificial intelligence. Fast forward to 2025, and Canada's youngest workers are grappling with a perfect storm of economic conditions: an inflation crisis that came on the heels of a pandemic; a surge in population growth that has outpaced the number of available jobs; and now, a country teetering closer to recession as the U.S. trade war wreaks uncertainty on the economy. One expert says youth unemployment can be a "canary in the coal mine" that foreshadows broader troubles in the labour market. 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Hiring sentiment "was really high coming out of the pandemic, which probably was never going to last," said Brendon Bernard, a senior economist at Indeed who closely follows youth labour market trends. As the hiring backlog cleared, other conditions started to slow the economy down, he added. The onset of a fierce inflation episode in mid-2021 triggered a domino effect: consumers pulled back on spending and the Bank of Canada began an aggressive interest rate hike cycle, leading businesses to delay hiring as economic confidence deteriorated. Older workers started working second jobs to pay the bills during the affordability crisis. Some experts suspect that the automation of routine tasks could be leading to fewer entry-level opportunities, but there isn't enough data to say how widespread this is. "As things have turned back and employer appetite has fallen back down to earth, the youth employment situation has weakened," said Bernard. 'It is disheartening' Youth unemployment started ticking back up in the spring of 2024. At the same time, the number of young people not in education, employment or training — an economic measure called the NEET rate — has risen among youth in their early 20s, mainly driven by non-students having trouble finding work. Bernard said there was some cautious optimism at the beginning of this year, when the labour market seemed to be stabilizing. But the Canadian economy has been rocked by U.S. trade war uncertainty since April, potentially stifling the hiring appetite as the overall unemployment rate rises. "It is disheartening," said Thivian Varnacumaaran, an electrical engineering student in his final year at York University who estimates that he's applied for 400 to 500 jobs — with no luck — since he started searching in December. "I wouldn't say I'm pessimistic, but I'm really realistic about the situation," the 25-year-old added. Charles St-Arnaud, chief economist at trade association Alberta Central, says the economy is now "sluggish" even without having breached recession territory. He expects more signs of deterioration in the coming months, and noted that young people will likely bear the brunt of those conditions. "Often businesses do what I would call the 'last in, first out' type of strategy when they reduce headcount," said St-Arnaud. "The younger population that has been just hired are more at risk of being laid off in a downturn." WATCH | How the increase in temporary foreign workers is impacting job seekers: Is our 'addiction' to cheap foreign labour hurting young people? | About That 10 months ago Duration 13:58 The number of temporary foreign workers hired in Canada ballooned over the last two years — particularly in food and retail industries — and the youth unemployment rate has soared alongside it. Andrew Chang explains the government changes that led to the hiring spike, and why economists believe it's having a serious impact on both young job seekers and the broader economy. The scars of unemployment The bleak hiring landscape has some young people taking jobs just to stay ahead of the bills. "I spent two hours sweeping yesterday, and I have a mechanical engineering degree," said 24-year-old Ben Gooch of Dundas, Ont. The McMaster graduate is working part-time at a garden centre to cover some of his living expenses, having applied for upward of 100 jobs since December with only a handful of interviews to show for it. "I feel like I'm just throwing darts out at a wall and hoping to get lucky and hit something." Data shows that it's fairly common for young graduates to work in a job that only requires a high school diploma. But Canadian research has shown that being unemployed at a young age during a recession can lead to a persistent but non-permanent earnings loss for many years after — a well-studied phenomenon known as " wage scarring." Other research also suggests that entering the labour market during a recession can impact a person's health outcomes. "Where it can lead to scarring — I mean, we might think of it as sort of a temporary blemish — but it can have long term implications when the economy goes into a serious recession," said Miles Corak, an Ottawa-based economics professor at the City University of New York's Graduate Centre. "Long-term earnings prospects are dampened for people graduating during the recession — not because they're not getting jobs, but eventually they fall into a part of the labour market that isn't as high-paying, in types of occupations that they didn't anticipate doing," said Corak. The economic downturns seen in Canada during the early 1980s and 1990s show the impact of that scarring. Youth unemployment reached a peak of 18.3 per cent in 1983, and rose again to 17.2 per cent in 1992 and 1993, with real wage declines observed among the 17 to 24 cohort in the years afterward. 'I'm kind of waiting for life to start' The lack of opportunities for young people aren't good for the rest of the country either, said Williams, the researcher. "Young people are a treasure of resource that we need to support and also yield dividends from," she said. Corak offers a different perspective. "I'm not so certain that it impacts the economy [so much] as the nature of our economy gets imprinted more clearly on younger people," he observed. Some young people, he noted, are doing very well and earning more than their parents did, while others are losing ground. "What we're seeing is many young people much more stressed, and running faster on a treadmill to stay still." Lately, Gooch has been reflecting on where his parents were at this stage of their lives. By the time they were in their mid-20s, they were working on their careers, owned real estate and were building a life together, he said. The young engineer hasn't given up on his search — he's applying for jobs across the country and abroad, both in and out of his field. He's accepted that he doesn't know what his circumstances will look like in a year.
