Last night I was on TVO's The Agenda with Steve Paikin discussing youth unemployment in segment called "Canada's Jobless Generation". Check out the video here. It was an interesting panels with the other participants being: Andrew Jackson of the Canadian Labour Congress; Nancy Schaefer of Youth Employment Services; Craig Alexander of TD Economics; and, Doug Anderson of Harris/Decima. The discussion was fascinating and really exposed the lack of action on the part of governments and the corporate sector in Canada on job creation for youth, the deterioration of active labour strategies, and how the changes to the economy have disadvantaged an entire generation.
I was on the CBC's The Current this morning discussing unpaid internships in Canada. You can listen to the interview here. The guests included myself, Diana Wang (the lead plaintiff in a class action against Hearst Publishing), and Ross Perlin (the author of Intern Nation). It was a great discussion and covered the legalities of internships, the wider linkages to youth unemployment in Canada, and the ongoing lack of intergenerational equity. This isn't my only media appearance this week, but more on that later.
It's late so this is going to be a very short post. I wanted to draw everyone's attention to the emergency legislation that's being debated right now in Quebec's National Assembly. The goal is to "pause" the student strike for the summer and resume the current semester in August. The text of Bill 78 is frightening and takes aim at the right to freedom of expression and the freedom of assembly of young people - this is bush league Duplessis era tactics targeting a minority in society that doesn't possess a lot of power. Quite disturbing amid the wider developments that are being deployed against students: use of chemical weapons, deploying riot police to respond to peaceful protests, and the use of anti-terrorism provisions in the Criminal Code against people accused of using smoke-bombs in Montreal's Metro. I'll be writing more on the overall situation in Quebec soon, hopefully on the weekend after I've had a chance to talk to some of my friends living up there.
