Twenty Résumés, No Callback: Stittsville's Youth Employment Problem
On International Youth Day, Sheetal Narwal lays out the youth employment problem in Stittsville and a 12-month plan: City job outreach, a local job fair, a mentorship network, wage-subsidy awareness, and transit that gets kids to work.
I heard the same story three times in one week of door-knocking.
A parent answers. We talk traffic, transit, the taxes. Then, on the way to closing the door, they mention their kid.
He's applied to twenty places. He hasn't heard back from one.
Different street, different family, same story. A sixteen-year-old with a clean résumé and an empty inbox.
A first job used to be a rite of passage here. Now it's a lottery.
Different contexts, common aspirations
Today is International Youth Day. This year's UN theme is "Different Contexts, Common Aspirations" : the 1.2 billion young people on this planet grow up in wildly different circumstances but want strikingly similar things. Dignity. A real education. Decent work.
A teenager in Stittsville and a teenager on the other side of the world aren't living the same life. But ask what they want, and the answers rhyme.
Ours is a good context being safe, growing, prosperous. Which is exactly why there's no excuse for a kid here sending out twenty applications and hearing nothing back.
The honest numbers
I won't tell you the sky is falling, because it isn't.
Last summer was rough. Close to one in six students looking for a summer job couldn't find one, the worst it's been since 2009, outside the pandemic years. For the youngest, ages 15 to 19, it was about one in five.
This summer is better. About one in eight young people are out of work, down from one in seven last year. That's real progress, and it should be said.
But it's still worse than before the pandemic. And most of the improvement comes from the economy calming down, not from anything anyone fixed.
So: it got bad, it's getting better, and neither one is a reason to do nothing.
Besides, no teenager lives inside a national average. They live inside twenty applications and no callback.
What I can actually do as your Councillor
As your next Councillor, I can make sure Stittsville families know when City student jobs open, because the City runs one of the region's largest student employment programs. I can connect people to youth employment services this city already funds and most people have not heard of — that's a communications failure, and it's fixable. I can put local employers and our students in the same room, which is something a sixteen-year-old with a résumé simply can't do on their own. And I can push and vote for the transit that gets a kid to a work shift in Kanata or downtown, on the record, every time it comes to Council.
It's a short list. But every single thing on it is something you can hold me to.
My commitments — the first 12 months
1. Every Stittsville student hears about City summer jobs before the deadline. By February 2027. City summer student jobs open February 1 and most close at the end of February. Miss that window, wait a year. Hundreds of positions — rec, parks, camps, aquatics, libraries, public works. Not a notice buried on a website: a direct push into every Ward 6 residents email and every community association, every January. Costs nothing.
2. An annual Stittsville Youth Job Fair. Held within 12 months. Local employers, local students, in Stittsville. No travelling across the city to stand in front of a hiring manager. With a public count of the employers and students who showed up.
3. A Stittsville mentorship network — our own parents, guiding our own kids. Running within 12 months. This ward is full of people who've built careers: tradespeople, nurses, engineers, business owners, IT professionals, first responders. Their experience is sitting in our own living rooms, and no teenager here has a way to reach it. I'll build a volunteer network that matches Stittsville students with local professionals in the fields they're curious about — someone to look over a résumé, explain how they got in, and answer the questions a career fair pamphlet never does. Properly screened, properly supported, run with our schools and community partners.
4. Tell local small businesses about the subsidies that cover hiring youth. Federal wage subsidies help small employers take on young workers, and most Stittsville businesses have no idea they qualify. My office will make sure they know what's available and when to apply — every year, before the deadlines.
5. Push for the transit that gets kids to work. Every budget, every service review. A job you can't reach isn't a job. I'll push and vote for reliable connections out of Stittsville to Kanata, Nepean and downtown and better ones inside our own ward.
6. Back the ones who want to build something. Within 12 months. Mentorship, business education, entrepreneurship programs — most of them free. A seventeen-year-old with a small business today is an employer here in ten years.
Twelve months, then a public report on all of it — every year after. That's the job.
Why it matters
A first job isn't about the money.
It's where you learn to show up when you'd rather not. To handle a customer having a bad day. To work with people you didn't pick. To be counted on.
It's your first reference, your first résumé line, your first real sense of what you're good at.
Today's student employee is tomorrow's tradesperson, nurse, teacher, first responder, engineer, business owner — or the person sitting in this Council seat.
We tell young people they need experience to get hired, then make that first experience harder every year. That's not a fair deal.
Government doesn't create most jobs. Our local small businesses do. But government can clear barriers, make connections and make sure the opportunities that already exist are visible to the people who need them.
On International Youth Day, most of the world is talking about young people in the abstract. I'd rather talk about the kid four doors down with twenty applications out and nothing coming back.
Let's build a Stittsville where a young person doesn't have to leave their own community to find their first opportunity.
Our young people aren't just Stittsville's future. They're Stittsville right now.
Let's give them a shot.
I'm Sheetal Narwal. Ward 6, this October 26th, I would be honoured to earn your support.
📧 info@sheetalnarwal.ca · 📞 (343) 543-6363 · 🌐 sheetalnarwal.ca
Sheetal Narwal
Candidate for Ottawa City Councillor – Ward 6, Stittsville
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