Kathleen Wynne on Unpaid Internships

Just a short post. The Medium, the student newspaper at the University of Toronto - Mississauga, interviewed Kathleen Wynne, the Premier of Ontario, this past week and asked her about unpaid internships. This is probably the clearest comment from her on this subject and reveals the tepid approach that the Ontario Government is taking towards regulating unpaid internships and other forms of precarious, unpaid labour.

The Medium: What is the Liberal government doing to crack down on illegal internships?

Kathleen Wynne: So we have, we have basically banned unpaid internships. There are ways through university courses or college courses that a student may be in a placement that is unpaid, but is part of a course. The broader discussion that we’re having, we’re looking at precarious work, you know, the nature of precarious work and where do we find situations where people in the workplace are vulnerable because of the working conditions, because of the particular arrangements that have been made. Whether that is within the healthcare system or whether it’s within education or whatever sector it is in. So we’re looking generally at how do we make sure that people have, that they are valued for the work that they do. 

The flip-side of that is that how do we balance that with the need for people to get work experience and to be able to have placements and to have the opportunity to get the experience they need in order to be able to have the work in the future that they want to have. So that’s another part of the discussion and it was something that was raised with me again on this campus tour, students saying, you know I want the opportunity to get experience I don’t want to be exploited, but I want the opportunity to get experience, so that’s something that we have to take seriously. Experiential learning and the opportunity to have hands-on knowledge of a particular sector is very important and we need to make sure there are enough opportunities for students to get that.

Just a couple quick comments. There's nothing terribly surprising in Wynne's comments, but the second part of the answer is troubling given the number of student deaths linked to experiential learning programs over the last year and a half (Wayne Affleck, Adam Keunen, and Aaron Murray). I don't get the sense that the Premier has a fix to growing problems associated with experiential learning at post-secondary institutions. Also, the Wynne government hasn't exactly banned unpaid internships, it certainly has engaged in limited proactive enforcement, but it hasn't yet reversed the Harris-era loophole (the six-part test) that has allowed countless employers to exploit young workers.

The full video appears below.