VANCOUVER—A Vancouver non-profit that works with new immigrants is redeveloping its government funded pre-employment program to comply with labour laws.

Last week, StarMetro reported that a program at South Vancouver Neighbourhood House refers new immigrants to volunteer opportunities that may help them get experience and land jobs in the future. But some of the volunteer positions were unpaid work placements at for-profit companies, including a Subway restaurant franchise.

Including for-profit companies in the program was an “error,” executive director Zahra Esmail wrote in an email on Wednesday.

“We will be discontinuing the practice of placing participants with companies immediately, and redeveloping the program to ensure we are in line with labour standards,” Esmail wrote.

Esmail said neither the program’s federal funder, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, nor the “placement partners” were to blame, “as it was our responsibility to ensure we were compliant with federal and provincial laws.”

A spokesperson from IRCC said Tuesday the “contribution agreements” it has with more than 500 organizations stipulate that programs must comply with local laws and bylaws.

The spokesperson said IRCC will spend $1.2 billion on newcomer settlement programs across the country in 2018-2019, and that pre-employment programs are categorized as just one of many program types the department funds as “employment-related services.”

“Pre-employment programs are intended to facilitate the learning of skills that will help newcomers gain employment in the future,” the spokesperson said. “This can be related to food safety, work-life culture, customer service, or learning a point-of-sale system that could be a requirement for other jobs in the service industry.”

Such programs could also include mentoring, networking, and resume-writing workshops, all services the South Vancouver Neighbourhood House also provides.

Lawyers told StarMetro last week that the practice of newcomers working for free in order to gain domestic experience may be common — and, in some cases, the work arrangements could have negative effects on their immigration applications.

Immigrants do this, in part, because many employers place a premium on domestic work experience. That’s exacerbated, said Sylvia Fuller, associate professor in UBC’s department of sociology, by a trend in employers hiring based on “cultural fit.”

“If the employers are focusing on cultural competencies and soft skills, I think that employers have to look at their own practices,” Fuller said in a previous interview with StarMetro.

She said although volunteering may help immigrants get jobs in the short term, the implicit expectation that immigrants get domestic experience —even if that means working for free —keeps them at a disadvantage relative to other workers.

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