THUNDER BAY — An official announcement has been made by the federal government that more summer jobs will be available for youth across Canada this year.
Canada Summer Jobs is a program under the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy (YESS), which provides summer employment opportunities for youth to develop skills and gain paid work experience in hopes of transitioning into the workforce.
Aiden Fisher finished his first year at Lakehead University in the civil engineering program. For the past two years he has been apart of the Canada Summer Jobs program working at Indigenous Services Canada.
“It's been a very great experience and I've been able to meet tons of amazing people at my last couple of summer jobs and even here the people here are really nice, they're supportive.
“It's a really comfortable work environment. They expect enough from me, but not so much as to put too much stress on me. It's been really great experience,” he said.
Fisher is working at Waytaynikaneyap Power this summer, where he said he’s applying skills learned at university directly in the workplace.
“Now I can see a vision of what they were trying to tell me in school, see where it applies, how to apply it and why it's so important. this summer job that I got is just so important to my future because a lot of the times I find that my peers in my classes don't understand what (the skills) are used for in the civil engineering program.
“They feel like it's just math that you have to do to, you know, prove that you can be a good engineer, but I'm finally seeing the importance of these classes and realizing like how they apply in real life and it's important that jobs like these during the summer exist so that in between school years you can figure out why these classes are important and why you should try your hardest,” Fisher said.
The federal government has added 6,000 more summer jobs this year, which brings the total to 76,000 across Canada.
Minister of Families and Jobs, Patty Hajdu, made the announcement in Fort William First Nation last week. She said she did not know how many of the new jobs would be in Northwestern Ontario.
Hajdu said the program gives students an opportunity to explore different career paths to see if it's a good fit for them.
“Looking at Aiden in the back there, I mean, he has a job that's very relevant to the study that he is pursuing through post-secondary education. It gives students that opportunity to get a job, oftentimes in a field that they might be interested in.
“Sometimes it actually will change the course of a student study, sometimes we think as young people we know what we like and having an experience in a workplace might make us question whether or not that's the right choice,” she said.
Hajdu said she often hears from young people that the hardest job to find is the first.
“People are looking for experience, not necessarily direct experience, but for sure the experience in a workforce, the experience of knowing that you have to get to work on time, the experience of knowing how to interact with others and having that first job.
“It's those soft skills that gives an employer confidence that this person has some experience so that gives the employer an opportunity to get low-cost people into their organizations for the summer and it gives the student the opportunity to develop those skills, get something on their resume and make some money,” Hajdu said.
Canada Summer Job Students are between 15 and 30 years old, with all diverse jobs, she said.
“There are people that work in summer camps, there are professional students that are looking to further their career and get some of that lived experience that's relevant to their career, there are just as many examples as you could probably think of.”
Students don't apply to the portal, but to the company or the organization.
“It's the employers that apply every year and the employers are screened based on what is set as national priorities. There might be national priorities around an environmental focus and all of those are sort of through the department rated in terms of whether they meet those national priorities whether they are providing a quality experience for students.
“The lists are actually provided to members of parliament in each riding and the members of parliament have an opportunity to look at the list, see if it reflects their community, if they change any of the recommendations, that's actually all disclosed on the website,” Hajdu said.
