Canada Is Failing Its Young Men
Conservative MP Jamil Jivani discusses his “Restore the North” initiative which seeks to chart a new path for the millions abandoned by Canada’s political, media, and academic elites.
Canada’s young men are struggling.
That’s not an opinion. It’s a fact.
Seventy one percent of apparent opioid toxicity deaths in 2024 were men. Boys accounted for 70 percent of suicides among older teens. Since 2016, the rate of crime victimization of men and boys has increased by 12 percent. In May 2025, unemployment among young men reached over 22 percent, the highest in more than a decade. Back in 2020, nearly one in five boys didn’t graduate from high school. And in 2023, men made up 67 percent of homeless shelter users.
Yet you rarely hear these numbers from legacy media, politicians, or academics.
Instead, we seem to hear the opposite: that men benefit from “male privilege,” that they are the oppressors, and that they are not worthy of any attention.
One Conservative Member of Parliament disagrees with that notion, and wants to break the silence and give young men the attention they deserve.
Jamil Jivani, MP for Bowmanville—Oshawa North, has been speaking out about men’s issues for a number of years.
In 2018, he wrote a book titled Why Young Men, which examined why young men turn to radicalization and violence, and argued that it stems from a crisis of identity and frustration linked to shifting masculinity, societal change, and feelings of hopelessness.
Now, he’s launching a new initiative called Restore the North, which seeks to restore the promise of Canada for young men.
I sat down with Jivani to discuss his initiative while attending the Canada Strong and Free Network’s regional conference in Calgary, Alberta.
Elie Cantin-Nantel: The issues facing young men. I know it’s something that you have talked a lot about in the last few years. You wrote a book about it. You’ve now launched a new initiative. What’s going on with young men in Canada? And has the situation gotten worse over the past five years coming out of COVID?
Jamil Jivani: Certainly the situation is getting worse, by many measures, whether it’s addiction, education, employment, or crime: the lives of young men in Canada are getting more difficult, and our institutions are failing to respond.
I believe a lot of that stems from liberal politics being unable to understand young men or to respond to them adequately, because they’re simply not invested in these members of our community.
I want young men to use their God-given voices to speak up, to express what they’re going through, and how we can create a Canada where they feel optimistic about their future. It’s one of the reasons I started this website, restorethenorth.ca, trying to get people to engage with us and tell us what’s on their mind and what we can do to help.
Elie Cantin-Nantel: Why is it that we don’t hear a lot in the mainstream media about the issues facing young men? We don’t hear a lot about it in society. You don’t see celebrities talk about it the way they talk about other issues. Why is this seemingly an underreported issue?
Jamil Jivani: One of the big problems is that liberal ideology has put most working-class and middle-class young men to the bottom of a victimhood hierarchy, where they’re just not a priority. There are many institutions in our country where, if you ask, ‘What are we doing to help young men?’ they want to know what colour that young man is before they’re willing to do something. And that’s not my values. I don’t think that’s the values of most Canadians. Most Canadians want to help people who need help. That’s it. We’re not interested in dividing people up based on race or all other things.
And yet that is how our government currently works. It’s the way a lot of institutions work, and it’s leaving a lot of young men marginalized and silenced.
Elie Cantin-Nantel: Let’s get into the details. How are young men being marginalized today? Is it socially? Is it economical? Is it both?
Jamil Jivani: It’s both. The most alarming statistics that I point people to are opioid addiction. For opioid toxicity deaths, men make up 71 percent of those who die every year. When you look at the unemployment numbers, in May 2025 Statistics Canada reported 22 percent unemployment for young men. These are alarming things. They should indicate that large portions of our communities are not being served well by the status quo.
I think that’s partly why you don’t see the strong reaction that we need, because a lot of people in power like the status quo. They don’t want to look in the mirror and face the reality that young men are suffering. And we actually need some significant changes right now.
Elie Cantin-Nantel: What role do you think left-wing, toxic, anti-man ideology, the kind that claims men are oppressors, has played in the marginalization of young men?
Jamil Jivani: I think all this discourse around toxic masculinity, for example, has made it normal to ignore young men and their struggles. People assume this historical framing that men are perennially advantaged, when that’s just not the case.
People can have their debates about the past. I live in the present, and I’m thinking about the future. The reality today is that young men are struggling. Whatever happened in the past that people want to get upset about, I’m concerned with what we’re doing now. And I think that’s where most people’s heads are at.
We don’t want to live in a historical narrative that doesn’t move our country forward. We want to solve today’s problems. That’s why I’m trying to get people to realize we need to free ourselves from the victimhood hierarchy, acknowledge all people when they struggle, and help all people who need it.
Elie Cantin-Nantel: Are young men worse off than young women?
Jamil Jivani: It depends on the measure. There are certain measures, like eating disorders, where young women are certainly struggling more than young men. And then there are measures like incarceration, unemployment, and high school dropout rates where men are worse off.
My belief is this is not an either-or.
The federal government has a department of Women and Gender Equality. So there is government infrastructure to respond to the unique challenges facing young women. My point is that we don’t have that for young men. And that’s what I’m trying to stand up for and say: this is a forgotten group, and we need to do something for them.
More information about Jamil Jivani’s initiative can be found at restorethenorth.ca
This conversation was edited for length and clarity