employee

Business perspective on unpaid internships in Canada

August 20, 2012 Occasional Contributors Employee Relations, Employment/Labour Standards, Human Resources, Human Rights, Payroll, Recruiting and Hiring, Training and Development, Wages and Compensation

young people holding up letters to spell "internships"

This is a follow-up post to my previous post on a business perspective on unpaid internships in the United States.This post deals with more of a Canadian business perspective, and when it comes to internships in Canada, the regulations are anything but clear. There are currently no laws in Canada regulating internships specifically, so provincial employment standards acts are the only form of governance. For the most part, internships in Canada are paid, however in some sectors (media, PR, journalism) internships go often unpaid. In the United States, some candidates are actually paying employers for unpaid internships. Luckily in Canada, things haven’t gone that far. However, Canadians are still fairly unaware of what unpaid internships are all about.

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Not an employee? Not an independent contractor? How the courts define the hybrid

June 11, 2012 Matt Lalande, Lalande & Company Lawyers Employee Relations, Employment/Labour Standards, Human Resources

Increasingly, Canadian courts have recognized an in-between class of agents that are not technically employees or not technically independent contractors. Over the past few years, our courts have come up with a hybrid category of agents called “dependent contractors.” These are independent individuals who work so closely with employers, and whose relationship status with their “employer” is so sufficiently long-lasting, as to allow them entitlement for reasonable notice.

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Intern not ’employee’ for CPP and EI deduction purposes

February 10, 2012 Christina Catenacci Payroll, Source Deductions and Reporting

I just read a case coming out of the Tax Court of Canada that confirmed an intern working for a charitable organization was not an “employee”; rather, she was a scholarship recipient. Therefore, the organization didn’t have to make any source deductions such as CPP and EI on behalf of the intern.

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