Mr. Speaker, yesterday in Toronto, a group of students made their voices heard around the issue of unpaid internships, and I would like to applaud their engagement and courage. Their intervention underlines a disturbing reality for many young people across the country.
These days, the chips are stacked against them. They graduate with record student debt, only to find that those jobs that a generation ago were entry level positions are now unpaid internships; unpaid. Today, we are asking young people to work for free. There are many excellent internship programs out there, but due to a lack of clear rules in some parts of the country and a lack of enforcement in other parts of the country, large and very profitable corporations at times exploit young people's desperation for jobs and do not pay them anything.
It is why I am proud to stand with my NDP colleagues here in the House of Commons and the NDP provincial member for Davenport, Jonah Schein, to call on the federal government and governments across the country to tighten and enforce the rules for unpaid internships. Making a young person work for free is not fair and it is oftentimes illegal.