Carrefours jeunesse-emploi (CJE) deplores having to exclude thousands of unemployed or underemployed young people from their government-funded employment assistance services. New criteria from the ministry are at issue, at a time when the youth unemployment rate is exploding in Quebec.
In the bright and colourful premises of the CJE Thérèse-de-Blainville, in Sainte-Thérèse, the workers have noticed an increase in the number of young people aged 15 to 35 looking for work. “Many arrive with a diploma and they can’t find a job. job in their field. We work on their CV, we work on everything, but it’s not enough,” explains employment advisor Cristelle Elasmar.
The job market is not in their favour. The number of vacancies is decreasing while the unemployment rate for young people aged 16 to 25 is reaching 10.3% in the province, according to figures released Friday by Statistics Canada. You have to go back to 2017 to find a rate this high in June, apart from the pandemic exception of 2020.
The help received in the CJE is valuable in this context: interview simulations, writing cover letters, identifying job offers, determining strengths and weaknesses, among others. Some young people who are further away from the job market have access to a range of services, such as courses to improve their French, support in their return to school process or workshops aimed at improving their self-confidence or developing skills that can be transferred to employment.
Mme Elasmar herself used the guidance services of the CJE Thérèse-de-Blainville a few years ago. “I was really listened to and supported,” she says. “It enlightened me on what I wanted to do.”
For the past year, Emploi-Québec, one of their main funders, has refused to provide funding to the 111 CJEs to support some of these young people. The memorandum of understanding between the ministry and the CJEs has stipulated for the past year that the latter must meet certain criteria, reports the general director of the Réseau des CJE du Québec, Rudy Humbert. Young people receiving social assistance or belonging to certain underrepresented groups are prioritized. Young people who have a job, even a precarious or part-time job, are now often excluded by Services Québec agents, the CJE directors note.
“Prioritizing should never mean excluding,” laments Mr. Humbert. “Each young person comes forward because they need help.” According to a survey conducted among its members, the files of approximately 10,000 young people were thus refused by Emploi-Québec in the last year.
“We have a young man who works two days a week in a rotisserie and he would have the skills to go to computer science studies. The agent [du gouvernement] responded that there was nothing wrong with serving chicken. But that’s not what he wants to do,” complains Nathalie Lachance, general director of the CJE Thérèse-de-Blainville.
At the CJE L’Assomption, 185 of the 500 young people who requested employment assistance services funded by the ministry were unable to receive them, reports the general director, François Girouard. “Our mission is to support all young people. We are not in a position to say [à l’un d’eux] “There’s nothing we can do for him. No one else can help him,” Girouard said.
For the next year, the CJE expect an acceleration of exclusions since the criteria are further tightened in their agreements which began on 1er July. From now on, young people receiving employment insurance, and therefore unemployed, are no longer among the priority clienteles.
Feet and hands
In the CJEs, however, no young person has been completely abandoned, assures Mr. Humbert. The workers have decided to help them at all costs, despite the ministry’s refusals. But it is at the risk of their own survival. Since a significant portion of their funding, negotiated annually, depends on the amount of assistance provided to young people counted by Emploi-Québec, revenues have not been able to keep up with the real increase in clientele.
“In the agreement I just signed for next year, I have funding for 234 young people,” laments Mr. Girouard. That’s about half the number of clients served in practice. His staff is therefore overloaded, and the young people have to be put on a waiting list. Non-priority young people are also deprived of a participation bonus of $14 per trip usually granted by Emploi-Québec.
Mr. Humbert denounces a more general decline in funding granted to CJEs, which is forcing many to reduce their activities. He believes that many CJEs are reaching “a breaking point”. Many of them filed a deficit budget this year, including the CJE Thérèse-de-Blainville. The executive director also deplores the fact that Emploi-Québec’s funding is limited to 75 hours per young person, as many beneficiaries need hundreds of hours of services in practice to get back on the job market.
For the past year, Nathalie Lachance has been angry about the government’s lack of listening and understanding. She is worried about young people, who are experiencing more and more mental health problems, particularly related to anxiety and financial stress, while she has fewer and fewer resources to support them.
The office of the Minister of Employment, Kateri Champagne Jourdain, did not respond to questions from the Dutyinstead transferring them to officials in her department. A department spokesperson explained in an email that it had been necessary to “make difficult choices and prioritize its interventions” due to a $145-million cut in federal transfers for public employment services. She said that people who do not receive services from the CJE “can be referred to other organizations or to the Services Québec office to be directed to other measures,” without specifying what kind of measures could help them.