Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada's Youth Employment and Skills Program is investing up to $3.75 million in jobs for young Canadians to help create opportunities for Canadian youth, particularly youth facing barriers to entering or staying in the workforce, to explore employment in the agriculture and agri-food sector and to better prepare themselves for the labour market.

The Youth Employment and Skills Program will provide funding to employers across the agriculture sector to hire Canadian youth, ages 15 to 30.

Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food Marie-Claude Bibeau on the aim of the initiative. 

"We wanna support youth in general, we wanna give them the opportunity to develop new skills to understand better what they wanna do in life."

"And on the other side, it would be supporting our businesses, agricultural businesses in finding staff that will hopefully remain in the business for a long time."

the program offers matching salary and benefits support of up to $14,000. Moreover, employers who hire youth facing barriers such as mental or physical disabilities, socio-economic barriers, indigenous youth and those in remote locations can receive up to 100% of the additional costs related to employing a youth facing barriers, in addition to the standard salary and benefits support. 

Typically, these additional costs will be up to $5,000 for items such as dependent care, travel, housing and special equipment and accommodations such as wheelchair ramps and other such workplace improvements.