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Jason Kenney looks to Germany for help at curbing Canada’s youth unemployment rate

The Harper government is looking to Europe, of all places, for some economic guidance.

Minister of Employment and Social Development Jason Kenney will lead a delegation to Germany, next week, to learn how that country is able to consistently buck the international crisis that is youth unemployment.

According to a 2013 report by the International Labour Organization in Geneva, the unemployment rate for youth (age 15 to 24) in the developed world is at 18.1 per cent. If you include the discouragement rate — the rate at which young people just stop looking for work — the UE number jumps to a whopping 21 per cent.

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Canada, unfortunately, is no exception — our youth unemployment rate is about 14 per cent. If you include youth up to age 30, there were approximately 904,000 Canadians not in employment, education or training in 2011.

Germany, according to Kenney, has a starkly different system that yields much better results.

He spoke about the upcoming trip to Germany during a speech at the Manning Centre conference last weekend.

"I am encouraging my provincial colleagues to re-engineer their education systems, to reinvent the vocational high schools that we lost two or three decades ago. That’s why next week I will be traveling to Germany with many of my provincial colleagues to study closely the enormously successful dual training system in Germany.

"Did you know that twice as many young Canadians enroll in pt-secondary academic university programs as do young Germans? Many would say that’s great but did you know that our unemployment rate for youth is three times higher than in Germany. Why? Because in Germany employers, unions, state and federal governments, educators all work together to encourage young people to pursue the full range of occupational choices and give them practical on the job skills even when they’re in junior high school that lead to apprenticeship programs.

"You have many young Germans making fantastic incomes as master craftsmen and ticketed journeymen in their early 20’s realizing their potential and many of them a few years later then go to university and further upgrade their skills. I think we as Canadians while we are a model in many areas we should also have some humility and recognize that perhaps we can learn a little bit from other countries. That’s what we hope to do next week on our trip to Europe."

In Germany — as Kenney touched on — the government puts an emphasis on the trades: youth as young as 10 years old are streamed into a tiered system of schooling combining general and technical education.

According to an NPR article, 60 per cent of German students continue their technical training through high school and into vocational colleges where they take part in an apprenticeship program. Most, of that 60 per cent, stay on with the firms they apprentice with.

To date, it's paid off.

Other countries — including the U.K. — have mused about adopting a similar system.

[ Related: Deal reached on Canada Job Grant with provs, territories, except Quebec ]

Since taking on the employment portfolio, last Summer, Kenney has had some successes.

The most recent success, of course, is getting all provinces to agree on the Canada Job Grant Program — a program which puts an emphasis on "employer-led" training.

But to really take a real bite out of high youth unemployment levels and the on-going labour shortages in the trades, maybe the German model is the way to go.

(Photo courtesy of the Canadian Press)

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