Again, I can't answer for the government, although I think it was an odd question that was posed earlier. There's nothing in the statute that would prevent interns from suing employers for a breach of any agreement they have with them. This statute or any statute wouldn't prevent them from suing, so I don't understand that question put by the other member.
That said, your comment about the floor that we wouldn't subject our children to is apt. I have children of working age, and I can say that I can afford to subsidize my children to work for free, but when I was their age, I couldn't afford it. When I had to article to become a lawyer, we were paid for that, and now in Ontario we're introducing unpaid internships for articling students. I can say that I would not be a lawyer today if we'd had those when I came out of law school; I just could not afford to work for 12 months for free.
By excluding interns from these protections, we're reserving the advancement—all of the good things the government is saying that internships do for people—for the children of the wealthy.