Quebec joins push to exclude juniors from labour laws
QMJHL commissioner: players are not employees, relationships more familial
A bill before Quebec’s National Assembly declares that it is aimed at facilitating “family-work balance,” and most of its provisions are about making life easier for workers.
But amid provisions for less required overtime and more paid days off, the government has squeezed in a clause denying one group protection under provincial labour standards: the players of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League.
Similar changes to labour laws have been enacted in recent years in British Columbia, Saskatchewan and the Maritime provinces following lobbying by league officials, but Quebec is seeing some last-minute pushback from highprofile former players.
In a letter last week to Quebec Labour Minister Dominique Vien, 12 former players led by retired NHL stars Joé Juneau and Marc Savard accuse the government of depriving the young players of “fundamental social protections” by excluding them from labour standards.
The standards cover such things as minimum wage, working hours, days off and protection against psychological harassment.
QMJHL players, aged 16 to 20, are under contract to play fulltime for teams in Quebec and the Maritimes that operate as private businesses. In exchange, teams provide room and board, and pay them a weekly allowance of $60; if they do not go on to play professional hockey, they are eligible for an education grant covering tuition up to $6,000 a year. With travelling, the players can end up devoting more than 60 hours a week to hockey.
“For years, they put aside their studies in hopes of reaching the National Hockey League,” the letter to Vien says. “For those who will not achieve their dream, that is 98 per cent of them, it is a rude awakening. They find themselves without a job, and more often than not, without a degree.”
The push to declare that junior hockey players are not employees comes as Canada’s three major junior leagues (the QMJHL, the Ontario Hockey League and the Western Hockey League) face class-action lawsuits. The suits, which were launched in 2014 and are still before the courts, seek retroactive pay for former players and recognition of employee status for current players.
“If we are successful, then eligible players would be entitled to receive minimum wage and overtime pay, just like other young people who work for businesses,” the Toronto law firm Charney Lawyers writes on a website dedicated to the class action. The site says the pay could be about $10,000 per season plus overtime.
In 2015 correspondence obtained by the firm, the commissioner of the Western Hockey League, Ron Robison, cited the class action in asking then-B.C. labour minister Shirley Bond for “immediate action” to explicitly exclude junior hockey players from the province’s definition of an employee.
Should the players be classified as employees, he warned, it would “make it extremely difficult for WHL franchises to continue operating.” The law was quietly changed in 2016.
QMJHL commissioner Gilles Courteau said he has been working on getting provincial labour standards changed for the last three years, meeting with politicians in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, where the league has teams. Quebec is last on his list.
“For the last 50 years, we never considered our players as employees, and we’re not planning to consider our players as employees,” he said. “That’s the fundamental of our league.” He described the relationship between team owners and their players as more father-son than boss-employee.
In Quebec City, the bill changing the labour standards is expected to be adopted this week.