Yes. What has happened in virtually every province—there are one or two exceptions—is employees are covered under the minimum standards legislation. It's the labour code or employment standards, however you want to describe it. Federally, it's part III of the Canada Labour Code. What has happened across the board is that players are exempted from either the entirety of the code or sections of the code. In some jurisdictions, it explicitly lists hockey player employees, and in others, like in my province of Nova Scotia, it says just “athletes”. That is a problem.
Listening to the witnesses talk about their particular situations, and then imagining the work I do for employees.... When you take away any workplace rights and you take away any means to enforce those rights, a culture can perpetuate that results in a whole variety of harm.
I would hope that this committee looks at this huge gap that's been created for athlete players as part of the proposal for an inquiry, and that in your report you say that this has to be on the table. You'd have to pull the provinces in.
The other component to look at—and I suggested this in my initial presentation—is what authority the federal government has to assert jurisdiction in the absence of the provinces' participation. There are means under the Canada Labour Code and the Constitution Act whereby that could be appropriate. Obviously, these are very delicate constitutional questions that the government would want and need to get advice on, but they have to be there.
You can't allow this culture of exploitation, whether it's in amateur sport or in professional sport, to continue for anybody, particularly for any employee players.