Young New Democrats to PM: fire the youth minister

The youth wing of Canada’s NDP has issued a statement calling for the resignation of Justin Trudeau as the Minister of Youth:

“After repeatedly failing to keep his commitments to young Canadians, or address the important issues facing them, Canada’s Young New Democrats are asking the Prime Minister to step down as Minister of Youth and to find someone who will take the job seriously.

This past week alone, the Prime Minister doubled-down on handing out criminal records to young people for marijuana possession, he backtracked on fixing our electoral system, and he failed to put forward a plan to address precarious work. These are just the latest in a series of huge disappointments for young Canadians. This is not only about Liberal broken promises: this Minister has shown a clear lack of commitment to building the kind of country young Canadians need to succeed.

These disappointments come on the back of the Prime Minister adopting Stephen Harper’s unambitious greenhouse gas reduction targets which will not allow us to meet our international climate change obligations. When challenged by young people on these and many other issues, he scolded them for ‘bad behaviour’.

Justin Trudeau ran for office promising to bring real change and to put issues important to young Canadians front and centre – so much so that he took the portfolio on himself. It’s now clear that this was largely a PR stunt.

If the Youth Minister refuses to do his job, we think he should fire himself.”