Good morning.

My name is Claire Seaborn and I'm the president of the Canadian Intern Association and a recent graduate of University of Ottawa law school. We're here to discuss the amendments to the Canada Labour Code proposed in division 7 of the budget bill.

First of all, I would like to congratulate the government on the amendment that would provide unpaid workers, including students, with occupational health and safety protections under part II of the code. This is an important advance for young and other vulnerable workers who currently do not receive these protections.

Today I will focus on two issues.

First, the proposed amendments do not cover unpaid workers under several Canada Labour Code provisions, including protections related to hours of work, work-related illness or injury, sexual harassment, and the filing of complaints. We recommend some very straightforward amendments to provide basic workplace protections for unpaid interns and students.

Second, the proposed amendments create an exception that allows federally regulated employers to take on workers for four to 12 months without pay, even where the position is not associated with a school program. We recommend that unpaid internships in the federal sector should be allowed only if they're associated with an accredited educational institution. I'll take the next few minutes to expand on these recommendations, and I'm also happy to elaborate during questions.

Division 7 of the budget bill seeks to regulate unpaid interns and students in the federal sector. The proposed amendments use selective exceptions that target Canada's most vulnerable, precarious, and marginalized workers. While the proposed amendments provide health and safety protections, they fail to include unpaid workers in protections under part 3 of the code, including those related to hours of work under division I, work-related illness and injury under division XIII, sexual harassment under division XV.1, and the filing of Canada labour program complaints under division XVI. A simple modification to the existing bill would extend these protections to unpaid interns and students. In particular, things like the tragic deaths of Andy Ferguson in Alberta and Aaron Murray in Ontario would be directly addressed by the hours-of-work protections.

Our second recommendation is that allowing four- to 12-month unpaid internships not associated with educational institutions is the wrong approach. The result is that a university student could work a summer job for a courier company without pay followed the next summer by working for a national news organization without pay only to graduate and find themselves working for one of Canada's banks or airlines, again, for several months without pay. This exemption creates an endless cycle of unpaid labour in which employers are able to extract work from young people while providing little training and no remuneration.

Further, interns are not just young Canadians; they're also immigrants, mothers re-entering the workforce, and workers trying to find a new career after an injury. Currently, interns are considered employees under the code, even if they are receiving some training. These exemptions would legalize unpaid work for the first time for Canada's largest and often most profitable employers and undermine the minimum wage. The exemption is also couched in a set of conditions that are vague and unenforceable, which will lead to inconsistent employer compliance.

Tim Gleason will be expanding on the common-law definition of employees and why interns are in fact considered to be employees.

Educational institutions such as high schools, colleges, universities, and professional programs are in the best position to ensure that interns and students receive beneficial training, to make sure they have avenues for complaints, to ensure that they will not replace entry-level employees, and to make sure they can access student loan programs.

We recommend that the exemption for four- to 12-month unpaid internships be removed and the exemption for internships associated with educational institutions be maintained.

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