In last November’s federal budget, the Carney government announced a two-year $40 million commitment to launch a Youth Climate Corps (YCC). While the budgetary pledge fell far short of the billion-dollar program the national campaign for a YCC had been calling for, this news was nonetheless the only climate “win” in what was otherwise a dismal federal budget from a climate perspective. 

Well, it’s now eight months later, and still no YCC. 

The budget said it would commence with the 2026 fiscal year (which started April 1). We are now more than a quarter into that fiscal year with no YCC program launch and no details have been forthcoming: not how it will work, who it will be open to or even who will oversee it. The delayed roll-out means we are going through another summer without YCC placements, despite brutally high youth unemployment and a bleak labour market, an urgent need to deploy renewable power and to retrofit buildings (jobs for which thousands of young people are keen to be trained) and yet another summer of climate-induced extreme weather events. 

As CNO’s Natasha Bulowski has reported, the military, which is often called upon to assist in the face of extreme weather events, doesn’t want the job of dealing with domestic climate disasters. Thousands of young people across the country, on the other hand, could have been ready........

© National Observer