National Post (National Edition)
Quebec moves to deny hockey juniors a fair wage
MONTREAL• The 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 — arguably among the province’s hardest-working teenagers — protection under provincial labour standards.
They are the players of the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and the exclusion is the result of a national campaign to ensure the young men with dreams of playing in the NHL do not enjoy the benefits of paid employees. 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 high-profile 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 full-time 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 taken in to account, the players can end up devoting more than 60 hours a week to hockey, leaving little time for school, critics say.
“For years, they put aside their studies in hopes of reaching the National Hockey League,” the letter to Vien says. “They benefit from no social protection and no guarantee concerning the promises made. For those who will not achieve their dream (of playing in the NHL), that is 98 per cent of them, it is a rude awakening.”
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 law 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. “We just want to give every opportunity, every tool to the player to develop himself as a good hockey player, as a good student, as a good person,” he said.
Nicholas Pard, 28, who played for the Saint John Sea Dogs from 2006 to 2010, said too many players fall between the cracks after failing to make the NHL.
He played professionally in France after junior and then was denied his education grant because he had not respected the QMJHL’S two-year deadline for returning to school.
“Everyone thinks that they’re going to make a career out of hockey, and at that age 19 or 20, not everyone knows the importance of school,” he said.
In Quebec City, the bill changing the labour standards is expected to be adopted this week.
The lone voice in the legislature criticizing the change is the left-wing party Québec Solidaire, whose MNA Gabriel Nadeau-dubois tried unsuccessfully to have the QMJHL clause removed during recent committee hearings.
He accuses the Liberal government of caving in to lobbying by the QMJHL.
“We need a real debate on the status of these young athletes. The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League needs to open its books so we can find an equitable solution,” Nadeau-dubois said last week.