Preliminary findings from an upcoming study on internships in Canada show that the majority of interns are young women who make less than the provincial minimum wage — if they're paid at all.
The study, to be released soon by two researchers at the University of Victoria and the Canadian Intern Association, is aimed at determining the scope of unpaid internships in Canada amid a growing uproar about the practice both here and abroad.
Saskatchewan and Ontario recently cracked down on unpaid internships, while Alberta is facing calls to do the same.
Several American states are taking tougher measures against unpaid internships while parliamentarians in Great Britain recently passed a motion to ban the practice by a whopping 181 votes to 19.
The British motion was put forward by a Conservative MP who argued that unpaid internships disproportionately favour the children of the wealthy and well-connected.
In Canada, there's no such move among Conservatives to ban unpaid internships despite some estimates suggesting as many as 300,000 young Canadians work without pay — 200,000 more than in the UK, which has a population almost twice the size of Canada's.
The lack of federal labour market data, however, has made it impossible to determine a precise number, said Claire Seaborn, head of the Canadian Intern Association.
Employers in Canada are not required to report unpaid interns to provincial or federal authorities, she added, making meaningful data elusive. A private member's bill by an NDP legislator in Ontario would force employers to account for their unpaid interns.
Andrew Cash, a federal NDP MP who tabled a private member's bill on unpaid internships last fall, said he's working on another bill that will focus on beefing up federal regulations to protect those who are working for free.
Federally regulated telecommunications companies like Rogers and Bell are among the biggest users of unpaid interns in Canada.
Of the interns that responded to the survey by Isabelle Couture and James Attfield, public administration grad students at the University of Victoria, 83% reported earning less than the provincial minimum wage or nothing at all.
The majority of the internships are in Ontario and are most common in the private sector, where 49% of respondents said they worked, preliminary results of the study found. Public and non-profit sectors made up the difference at 26% and 25% respectively.
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