New Quebec law would limit child labour

The Quebec government wants to limit the presence of children in the workforce and will table a bill as early as February to do so. The labour minister says he hopes the bill will be adopted by June, just in time for schoolchildren's 2023 summer break.

"There is much more fatigue, stress and anxiety among young people who work many hours per week," said Labour Minister Jean Boulet. "The risk of an accident is therefore higher."

The Opposition is onboard.

"Our goal is to have this piece of legislation and to have it adopted quickly," said Liberal education critic Marwah Rizqy, who worked on the file.

"At the end of the day, it is about the health and safety of minors and the educational success of children. This is a high priority and we cannot procrastinate on this issue for long."

She said she was prompted to start asking questions at the National Assembly and pushing for child labour regulations in May, after Radio-Canada reported that an 11-year-old girl had been using a deep fryer at her job. 

Boulet's announcement follows a report from Quebec's advisory committee on labour and workforce (CCTM).

Boulet said there are details left to refine before the bill will be ready for the National Assembly.

The CCTM, a grouping of unions and employer associations, unanimously recommended the minimum age for employment be set at 14 — with a few exceptions.

Children 13 and under would be allowed to work only in specific settings like babysitting, fruit-picking, family businesses and recreational activities.

The goal is to restrict children's presence in high-risk workplaces like sawmills and factories.

"Teenagers shouldn't be working in environments that are dangerous to them and that has to be really taken into account [by] employers," said Caroline Senneville, president of the CSN union that participated in the negotiations.

It was also recommended that those between the ages of 14 and 16 be limited to a 17-hour workweek, including weekends, during the school year. Only 10 hours of work can take place between Monday and Friday. This would not apply during summer vacation and spring break.

Boulet said the committee looked at legislation in other provinces and international conventions to crunch the numbers.

"This is a social issue," he said.

Unions that participated in the negotiations, like the CSN, are happy with the consensus reached by the committee. 

"It was high time that we set our minds to changing that," said Senneville. "I myself can't wait to get this implemented."

More kids in the workforce

Facing a labour shortage, Quebec has seen younger and younger people entering the workforce. The rate of students who have jobs has nearly doubled in the province in the last two decades.

Quebec does not set a minimum age to enter the workforce. Kids can start working as soon as they want to as long as they have a signed letter from their parents — though not every employer asks for one.

Though some kids are happy to get experience and some pocket money, politicians like Rizqy are concerned about their health and safety. Rizqy says that their priority should be school.

"It must be well regulated. It's not a 12-year-old who will ask 'what are the limits?'" she said. "At 12, you don't even know your own limits. So it's really up to the state."

The number of workplace accidents jumped by 36 per cent among employees under 16 last year, according to the Quebec's workplace safety board, the CNESST.

"It's been a long time that young workers have been a priority for us," said CNESST spokesperson Nicolas Bégin. 

"The law, to put it simply, says school is the priority [for children]. The employer cannot give shifts to a young person that would make it so they miss any school, for example. I understand the new bill would bring precisions around all that."

Rizqy said that, along with the minimum-age requirement, limiting the amount of hours teens spend working is important to minimize their risk of dropping out of school. She said young people in outlying regions of Quebec were more likely to drop out when working more than 15 hours a week.

"These have important consequences on educational success," she said. "When kids work early and longer hours, there's an impact on their scholarly performance and perseverance."

A 'very sensitive issue'

Employers overall are satisfied with the result of the negotiations, said Denis Hamel, the vice-president of workforce development policy at the Quebec Council of Employers (CPQ). He stressed the CPQ recognizes the need for teenagers to finish school.

But, he said it wasn't obvious a consensus would be reached when they first sat at the table.

"It's a very sensitive issue because we have to take into account the series of preoccupations about, first of all, the desire of teenagers to be able to work," he said. 

"We cannot hide the fact that it will be a challenge for certain sectors that are used to to hire young teenagers ... in some regions where the job vacancies and labour shortage are extremely, extremely high."

Unions also felt frustrated, said Senneville.

"It wasn't very simple. Employers at the beginning didn't want too many restrictions," she said. "We reached a consensus but if we hadn't been there to push, there wouldn't be as many rules."

Child labour raises ethical questions

Diane-Gabrielle Tremblay, a professor of human resources management and labour economics at Université TELUQ who researched work-school reconciliation, points out that Quebec has high school drop-out rates.

She says while working for above minimum wage may be attractive to teenagers in the short term, it hinders their potential career development and may land them in precarious job situations later.

Along with worrying about the risks to teenagers' education, Tremblay says there are ethical issues having younger people in the workforce.

"I wouldn't have liked to have my daughter at 11 or 12 working in that kind of situation. I think it's very, very preoccupying," she said.

"I do use the word exploitation because I think when you have young workers who don't know their rights, who can't negotiate, the employer can say more or less anything. And I think it's a very risky situation. So I think as a society, we have the responsibility to protect these young people."