New graduates at a community college in Arizona recently had a rocky commencement. The wrong names were called or no names at all. So what happened? Well, Glendale president Tiffany Hernandez explained. We're using a new AI system as our reader. So that is a lesson learned for us. So AI messed up their graduation, just like AI could complicate their lives after graduation, at least according to some of the headlines. And it's true that the youth unemployment rate is high in Ontario, more than 15% in the first quarter of 2026.

But is AI really to blame? Turns out the answer may be far more complicated, but no less of a problem. We look at why it's so hard for young people to get jobs right now. Ilona Dougherty is the managing director of the Youth and Innovation Project at the University of Waterloo, and Dan Kelly is the CEO of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. What's causing this cohort unemployment to look the way it does? It's very complicated. But the reality is young people are the canary in the coal mine. When the economy is tough, young people are the last to get hired, the first to get let go. But again, we're in a very complex moment with technology, with immigration. So there's a lot of different dynamics going on.

What are the challenges that a teenager faces versus a university or college graduate? So teenagers, it's usually the kinds of jobs where it's their first job. They're looking to get experience and they don't have any experience. There's a lot of competition for those kinds of service jobs, retail jobs. As you get a little bit older, it's the 3 to 5 years experience that's on every job posting that they can't get or they don't know how to get. There's an expectation that they'll come into the job market with a bow tied, perfectly ready.

50% of young people will not consider a job that has heavy physical labour. 40% of young people will not consider a job that has outdoor work. One third of young people will say that they will not consider a job that pays the minimum wage. The minimum wage these days, remember, is between 15 and $18 an hour. In Ontario, it's $17.60. It'll go up in October to $17.95. If I'm paying 17 bucks an hour for that person, I kind of need them to be able to start running here and serve my customers.

Businesses aren't willing to invest in young employees and train them. There's a lot of skills, creativity, active listening, all these human skills that are becoming more and more important in the age of AI. You have to learn that through experience. 60% of small employers say that they are struggling with young people, that they have to have attentiveness to the job, to not be sitting on their phone while they're supposed to be serving a customer.

We have a tendency, the helicopter parenting, is certainly a thing where we kind of do too much for our young people and then don't allow them to be themselves, to develop skills through experience. We kind of overprotect them. One of the trends was mom or dad coming and talking for junior in the interview to get the job. And if there's a problem in the workplace and there's some disciplinary action, the parent comes to talk to the manager. We got to stop doing that.

About a quarter of the world's maritime oil trade used to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. That all changed in February with the start of the Iran war. Now we're dealing with price hikes and an uncertain future. Rory Johnston is an oil market researcher. Pre-war levels were like 150 ships a day. We're still looking between 2 and 9 ships a day transiting the strait.

Why aren't we seeing oil prices higher than what we are seeing right now? At the beginning of 2026, we had a very oversupplied oil market. That allowed us to build up inventories that have effectively acted as a buffer. $200 or so a barrel would be required to destroy the level of demand required to balance the market without the Strait of Hormuz. Demand destruction is three types: Price elastic (I choose a substitute), Income elastic (my job goes bankrupt and I don't drive), and Government mandated (like Covid lockdowns, rationing the available supply).

What projects should Canada prioritize? Southbound into the states has always been cheaper, which is why 90 plus percent of our oil has always gone there. The challenge is that further entrenches us into the monopsony or the overwhelming dependence on the US market. That's where we go to this Northwest Coast oil pipeline. It provides a strategic optionality to access the Pacific basin directly. If it terminates in a deepwater port, it allows us to have those big VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) tankers that could service the India trade route. We were in a trade war with United States last year, and they were threatening to put tariffs on our oil. That threat was most consequential because we didn't have anywhere else to put the oil.