The New York Times posts

Just this week, The Huffington Post reported that The University of Toronto Students' Union called on Ontario's Labour Minister to ban illegal unpaid internships, contending that over 300,000 Canadians are misclassified as interns, trainees and non-employees at a time when the youth unemployment rate is double the national average at 14.2%. The union also argued that such practices do damage to the economy in general by inflating the student debt even more.

Wait a minute, "Misclassified?" Yes. As Walletpop has covered before, Unless the interns in your office are part of an internship program from a high school, college or university and working for course credit, the following six conditions must all be met before they can legally work for free:
For his part, Labour Minister Yasir Naqvi agreed with the union writing to Huffington Post that "If you perform work for someone – unless you are self-employed, in a co-op placement, or a trainee – you are an employee covered under the Employment Standards Act and should be paid – it doesn't matter if you are called an 'intern' or not."

However, he did not make it clear whether he would address the existing double standard and close the legal loopholes that allow employers to break the law by relying heavily on unpaid or underpaid labour.

However, the exploitation of the youth labour force across North America goes way beyond just unpaid internships, even the people technically getting paid are working harder and longer, while getting paid less than any other previous generation.