In a nod to the rise of precarious work, the federal government has pledged $13 million to crack down on wage theft and moved to ban most forms of unpaid internships.

The proposed amendments promise to beef up enforcement and “ensure that hard-working Canadians can more easily recover wages owed to them by their employer, and to ensure that employers who repeatedly offend will be punished.”

The vast majority of workers are governed by provincial labour laws, but some 6 per cent — around 820,000 — fall under federal jurisdiction. This includes sectors like banking, telecommunication and airport work.

More about the federal budget

Sean Smith of the Toronto Airport Workers Council said the money was “a good start” but more support was needed for low-wage employees at Pearson.

“We need the government to actually see what’s happening to federally regulated workers, especially on issues of contract flipping, severance, and protections for precarious work. This is not enough to protect people from the churn.”

The Star has written extensively about the rise of precarious work — including at Pearson airport — as well as how a legacy of poor enforcement at the provincial level has compounded wage-theft problems.

Ontario is currently reviewing its own employment and labour laws with an eye to providing stronger protections for vulnerable workers, and Alberta recently announced it will follow suit.

Following years of activism from the Canadian Intern Association and former NDP MP Andrew Cash, new budget measures also propose limiting unpaid internships in federal industries, calling some of those placements “unfair and exploitative.” The amendments would make unpaid positions in federal sectors illegal unless they’re part of a formal educational program.

“I think it’s a good first and I think it reflects a really egregious gap in federal labour laws, where unpaid interns working did not have any real protections under the Canada Labour Code,” Cash told the Star.

“The devil is always in the details with these things and we’ll see what it looks like when they table legislation, but for everyone who has been working on this issue for many years I think this is a good day.”