The Ontario Liberal government’s Futures program for employment disadvantaged youth: 1985-1990

The article was jointly written by Barb Sulzenko-Laurie and Philip Dewan

In his first 18 months after becoming Leader of the Opposition in February 1982, David Peterson regularly attacked the Tory government for its failure to adequately address the youth employment crisis.

Unemployment rates for the 15-24 cohort, which had been relatively stable throughout the post-war years, had jumped from the low teens to over 18 percent in the early 1980s. This represented more than 150,000 young Ontarians most months looking for work but unable to find it. That this level and rate of increase were substantially higher than for the general population was the result of several factors, including the residual effects of a recession, the coming of age of many children from the baby boom cohort and the rapidly changing demand for new labour force skills.

In Peterson’s view, it also reflected a lack of targeted government support to bridge the school-to-work transition for those most in need. He was particularly concerned about the inability of many youths aged 18-24 to obtain even entry employment. Noting that in 1982 almost 28,000 of these young Ontarians were unemployed for 20 weeks or more, he spoke to the devastating long -term risks:

“[S]tatistics cannot measure the despair of those who cannot get a job because they have no job experience. Nor can statistics measure the desperation of those who do not know how or where to begin to look for work, or the frustration of those who unfortunately have difficulty even filling out a job application form.”

Offering credible solutions while in Opposition

The Liberal Leader wanted to do more than just criticize; he wanted to offer credible solutions.

In late October 1983, Peterson took the unusual step for an Opposition Leader of releasing a detailed program called “A Plan for Youth: The Ontario Liberal Alternative.” He proposed an open enrollment program for any 18–24-year-old out of work for 20 weeks or more to receive an employment opportunity for up to one year in return for a commitment to participating in educational upgrading on their own time, of six hours per week, as well as required career and employment counselling:

The youth of Ontario need jobs. They need the experience that comes from working. They also need to invest in themselves, through increased educational effort and life skills development.

Our proposed youth program would give a guaranteed opportunity for a work experience of up to one year to every youth, 18 to 24 years of age, who has been unemployed for 20 week or more.

It was envisioned that the program would serve up to 14,000 youth each year at a cost of approximately $100 million.

Without the resources of government (and in an age when digital access to information did not exist) the program was based on a model developed by critic John Sweeney and the Liberal Policy Research Office (LPRO), especially economic researcher Phil Dewan. They reviewed the existing shorter-term government programs at both the federal and provincial levels as well as drawing on alternatives such as the California Conservation Corps.

The announcement was accompanied by a detailed 24-page backgrounder prepared by the LPRO and an estimated costing of $90 to $110 million per year.

The gamble of setting out such a detailed offering, which he knew the Conservatives would attack with the substantial resources at their disposal, paid off.

Support for the Liberal plan

A front-page headline in the Toronto Star the next day read, “Peterson unveils his plan to give every youth a job.”

In the coming days, editorial boards weighed in.

The Niagara Falls Review noted that the plan “deserves attention” and said “it would be shameful if the government refused to look at it carefully.”

The Hamilton Spectator wrote that it “offers an alternative rather than just criticizing government policy” and opined that “it would be wrong for the government to dismiss the plan.”

The PC government did indeed try to tweak some existing programs in the directions the Liberal plan suggested. But as the 1985 election approached, it was evident to many that more needed to be done.

An Accord commitment

After the shocking election results of May 2, 1985 brought an end to 42 years of Conservative rule in  Ontario, the Accord between the Liberal and NDP caucuses became the foundation for two years of stable government.   Among several policy commitments, the Accord cited Peterson’s undertaking to “introduce programs to create employment and training opportunities for young people”.

This reflected the new Liberal government’s perception of the youth unemployment situation as not only a critical political and societal issue, but also an opportunity to bring a new approach to public policy reform; one that looked for efficiencies through combining related programs and that integrated multiple tools in order to address the different aspects of a complex socio-economic concern. The 1983 policy document was just a starting point.

The Ontario Futures Program was announced in the legislature on October 22, 1985 by rookie Member of the Provincial Parliament (MPP), Honourable Greg Sorbara, to go into effect on November 4th.  Sorbara’s Cabinet appointment as minister for the dual portfolios of Colleges & Universities and Skills Development foreshadowed the key theme of the program, which was to provide a “single work experience focused on a consolidated approach to job preparation, enhanced education, training and real work experience”.   To this end, Futures replaced six of the then existing youth employment and training programs and was targeted to support a population of employment-disadvantaged youth, aged 16 to 24 from across the province.

(While the opposition proposal had targeted youth 18-24, the Futures program reduced the lower threshold to age 16, the legal age for youth to leave high school. Part of the Futures program design was to require work towards grade 12 equivalency for those enrolled, recognizing the vast difference in future prospects that high school equivalency conferred.)

Developing the Ontario Futures program

Details of the new program were quickly developed by staff of the Ministry of Skills Development (under the leadership of Deputy Minister Blair Tully and Assistant Deputy Minister, Les Horswill) and delivered by local youth employment counselling centres and community colleges.  It offered pre-employment training and counselling, with a stipend paid to eligible participants at $100 a week.  Most notably, participants who committed to enroll in educational upgrading were also guaranteed up to one year of minimum wage paid work experience.

As Minister Sorbara explained to the legislature, Futures “offered the option of one year’s employment in return for a personal commitment to upgrade their education on their own time”.

The minister’s statement also anticipated expansion of the program into northern Ontario to include providing services to indigenous youth living in isolated reserves and adding more placement centres. Based on information provided to the legislature in July, 1986, 21% of the Futures budget had been allocated to youth in that region.

The initial announcement of Futures met with a skeptical response from the NDP, who claimed that the government had not been transparent about the amount of funding that would be allocated to it.  However, over the course of the following year the government raised its allocation for training and employment programs for Ontario youth to bring total government spending support for youth training and employment programs to $275 million.

A record of success

Against this background, in November 1986 Hansard recorded Minister Sorbara’s statement that the Futures (and predecessor) programs had helped “almost 50,000 young people in Ontario, and two-thirds of those people have found work or have opted for further education or training”.

By the time of the 1990 election and the surprise defeat of the Liberal government, youth unemployment had returned to more traditional levels. The steady decline brought diminished political focus on the youth unemployment issue.

Rather than being adjusted in response to the rapidly changing labour market, the Futures program was discontinued as the incoming NDP government adopted new policy and spending priorities.

Though youth jobless numbers soon began to soar again – along with unemployment in all age cohorts as the deep recession of the early 1990s took hold – the emphasis on school-to-work transition was lost.

Notwithstanding its notable successes, it is unfortunate that a lack of consistent and relevant data reporting on Futures and other programs of the era make real quantification of results difficult.

Still, there can be little doubt that the Liberal’s Futures program positively affected the life course of tens of thousands of young Ontarians. It is an approach that deserves to be revisited.