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The Canada Student Service Grant raises serious concerns w/respect to the exploitation & potential misclassification of students & recent graduates. It's deeply flawed & needs a complete overhaul. I shared my concerns w/the HOC Finance Committee yesterday. Here's an overview. 1/
The program raises legal concerns with respect to potential employee misclassification for participants, for charities and NGOs, and for the government itself. 2/
First, the program potentially exposes its participants to workplace exploitation & misclassification. Whether someone is a “true volunteer” is a legal determination which rests on more than whether a hiring entity labels them a volunteer. 3/
The structure of the program raises legitimate concerns as so whether these individuals are “true volunteers”. 4/
Second, this arrangement exposes charities & not-for-profits to potential liability for wage and hour claims through employment standards complaints, small claims court actions, and even potential class actions brought by the so-called “volunteers” participating in this program.
Third, the Government of Canada could potentially find itself entangled into these legal disputes, either as an alleged common employer or an alleged labour supply agency given its role as paymaster & in connecting volunteers with placements through its “I Want to Help” portal.
But aside from these legal concerns, the Canada Student Service Grant also raises concerns about fairness and the type of support that the Government should provide for students and recent graduates. These concerns include the following: 7/
First, the rate of pay provided through this program is significantly less than min. wage. Setting aside the legality of this arrangement, it raises fairness concerns & sends a message that the government doesn’t value these workers’ labour. 8/
Second, mandatory volunteer placements are inferior to paid employment in terms of the doors they open and what that work experience means for a young worker on their resume. 9/
To the extent that one of the goals of this program is to support students and recent graduates in their career paths by ensuring they have meaningful summer work experiences, the program as structured fails to deliver. 10/
Third, the program makes what is already a very challenging job market in the non-profit and charitable sector even harder for new entrants by flooding the market w/tens of millions of hours of volunteer labour, potentially displacing what could otherwise be paid positions. 11/
Fourth, this program is seemingly at odds with this Government’s efforts to crack down on the exploitation of workers through unpaid internships, including the Standards for Work-Integrated Learning Activities Regulations set to come into force in September 2020. 12/
Finally, this program places onerous demands on students, who must work 500 hours between June 25th and October 31st in order to obtain the full $5000 grant. 13/
This translates to working more than 50 hours per week between June 25 and the end of August in order to hit 500 hours before school starts. 14/
Or it means working an average of more than 27 hours per week from the start of the program until the end of October, potentially interfering with these students’ studies during the first two months of their school year. 15/
These concerns are heightened given the unique financial, family and childcare responsibilities Canadians are facing during the COVID-19 crisis. 16/
For all of these reasons, the Canada Student Service Grant has serious design flaws that give rise to the exploitation and potential misclassification of students and recent graduates and is in need of a serious overhaul. 17/
At this point in time the best way to try and salvage the program is to completely remove the mandatory volunteerism and convert the existing positions to paid jobs through the Canada Summer jobs program. 18/
The Canada Emergency Student Benefit should also be topped up to CERB levels and extended to international students as the @CFSFCEE has been pushing for. I support the @dontforgetstdns campaign. 19/19
