Finance Committee on March 27th, 2014

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Part of the emergence or the growth of unpaid internships has occurred as part of a broader labour market issue. We have 265,000 fewer jobs for young Canadians than before the downturn. There is a supply and demand issue here, and one that didn't exist I think when we were students. You didn't have unpaid internships to the extent there is today.

Can you comment on the issue of equality of opportunity and the emergence of the situation whereby if a student or young person is from a privileged family they can afford to get, effectively, an unpaid internship that can give them a level of experience that may not be available to somebody who just has to take whatever job they can get to pay the bills. Is that an emerging deepening of inequality of opportunity?

Would you like to comment, Jonathan?

[Jonathan Champagne]

When students graduate today, some of them graduate with no student debt, many of them graduate with significant amounts of student debt. Students have six months until they're expected to start repaying the amounts that they've taken out to go and study. In many cases students within those six months need to find something that will start to pay the bills. Those students often are somewhat restricted in their ability to search for employment or their ability to be picky and choosy maybe in specific fields that they wanted to study in. This, as you were mentioning, creates situations where those who are able to afford to work for free are able to take jobs, especially in specific industries or sectors of the economy where that's the expectation. Those who graduate and need to start earning an income might have to take jobs unrelated or they'd be considered underemployed at that point.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you.

Mr. Annan, your members use interns. Are they paid interns?

[Robert Annan]

Yes, all of our interns are paid. They receive a stipend, which is the equivalent of what they would be receiving as a graduate student at one of the universities.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Are you aware of unpaid internships? If not in your industry, are you aware of other industries that are using unpaid internships?

[Robert Annan]

We're made aware by the sorts of discussions that are being generated around the table. We certainly make the argument to the employers that we engage with that, of course, there's value obviously in the work that they're getting here. So that's a key part. All of our programs have a cost-sharing arrangement so that industry pays half the cost. In terms of the total cost of the internship experience, a portion of it goes to fund the research, but the majority of it goes to pay a stipend to the student.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

The stipend would be, roughly, minimum wage? Or would it—

[Robert Annan]

It would work out to, roughly, somewhere between $25,000 to $30,000 a year, on an annual pro-rated basis, which is about what graduate student receive as an annual stipend.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

A last brief question, please.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

That would reflect a paid internship that would be onside in terms of...and they're getting transferable skills.

[Robert Annan]

Absolutely.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

Thank you for clarifying that, because I think this is helpful for us to understand, that there are paid internship opportunities—

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you, Mr. Brison.

[Scott Brison, Liberal, Kings—Hants, NS]

—that are fulfilling their responsibility.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

Thank you.

We'll go to Mr. Keddy now, please.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Welcome to our witnesses.

I'll just maybe take a little more time with Mitacs on the paid internship issue. This seems to be a larger problem than it was in the past. I'm just trying to rationalize where it came from. It's not unusual for a number of university classes or community college classes to ask their students to volunteer in an office. We often get volunteers here in Ottawa. There's a difference between a volunteer for a couple of weeks to learn how an office functions and an unpaid intern. Where's the cut-off point? Is it two weeks? Or is it a month? Do we know?

[Robert Annan]

We don't work with unpaid internship arrangements.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

No, I appreciate that.

[Robert Annan]

One significant difference is that in many cases, these unpaid internships—and this is really just my own personal understanding—are often used essentially almost as an employment substitute.

Our programs are really geared towards integrated training experience and research for the company. So in our case, it's a very different value argument from the very beginning. So it's just not an issue for us.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

And I think it's safe to say that the employment substitute is an abuse of the internship process.

Thank you.

I have a couple of other questions.

Jonathan, you had mentioned that the way the student loan system works now, there's a limit on the amount of money that a student can earn while they're in school before it's clawed back against their student loan. I think you said it's $100. In recognition of the challenges for students with high student loans, we took the value of the vehicle out in the former budget to allow students.... Because students need more mobility, they often require that car to work. So I would hope you see that as a good move.

And on the wages earned, the cut-off point is $100 a week so that's roughly one or two days maximum a week. Do you agree with taking the vehicle out? That was my question.

[Jonathan Champagne]

That was something our members and our organization were calling for. The elimination of the vehicle as an asset for the candidate's student loans was something very positive that we were pleased to see. And it was increased access for rural students who needed a vehicle. It also could potentially increase access to post-secondary education for mature students.

So we look forward to further investments in increasing accessibility.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Thank you.

Ms. Seaborn, you mentioned that typically the majority of unpaid interns are women. Where's that information coming from and what types of jobs are usually the ones that are female?

[Claire Seaborn]

I was referring specifically to a study done by two University of Victoria students. It was in no way a representative sample. That was the result of their study.

As I said, we don't have data, but based on my experience and the job advertisements that we've looked at and the interns I've spoken to, it's my belief that the vast majority of unpaid interns are women. It's also because the industries that are most likely to do unpaid internships—journalism, nutrition, social work, marketing, public relations—are all female-dominated areas.

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

Okay.

I was just going to say out loud and I caught myself, but I'm going to say it anyway.

Surely journalism wouldn't involve themselves in unpaid interns.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!