OTTAWA—The NDP’s newly named deputy leader, Alexandre Boulerice, is looking to hire unpaid interns at his Montreal constituency office, but says he wouldn’t have to if the Liberal government heeded his party’s long-standing call to ban such positions.

The MP for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie has distributed at least three job advertisements seeking university students for unpaid trainee positions by the end of the month.

The advertisements were shared by the Concordia University political science department on Facebook on March 6, 7 and 11. One calls for applications to work in Boulerice’s office as a public relations assistant. The others are for unpaid jobs as a community relations assistant and a trainee to work with Boulerice’s parliamentary assistant.

In a written statement to the Star, Boulerice said the NDP believes interns should be paid, and that his budget would allow him to pay them if the Liberal government banned unpaid positions.

The NDP pledged to “end the exploitation” of unpaid internships during the 2015 federal election campaign, while party Leader Jagmeet Singh has criticized the Liberals for delaying restrictions to such positions in federally regulated workplaces. The party’s 2018 policy handbook also states, under the section titled “Our Rights as Workers,” that the NDP believes in “abolishing unpaid internships.”

“The NDP supports paid internships and we believe the laws should be changed so that work done is paid,” Boulerice told the Star. “That’s why we’ve been calling on the Liberal government to change legislation to force internships to be paid. If the law was passed, budgets would allow for paid internships.”

Boulerice has an annual office budget of $382,150, according to the House of Commons Members’ Allowances and Services Manual.

In response to questions from the Star, NDP spokesperson Guillaume Francoeur said the NDP will review its caucus employment practices, but that the party itself does not employ unpaid interns.

Liberal party spokesperson Braeden Caley said the party pays interns unless they are on short-term academic placements for school credit.

The Conservatives did not respond to questions about their intern practices on Friday.

Boulerice has been criticized for seeking unpaid workers before. Last year, Le Soleil reported about an online backlash when he posted a job advertisement on Facebook for an unpaid photographer.

The more recent postings describe a range of job duties, such as implementing public relations strategy in the community and researching local issues, while two of them indicate the positions are unpaid because of House of Commons rules.

Heather Bradley, spokesperson for the Speaker of the House of Commons, said she is not aware of any rule that prevents MPs from paying interns or student trainees. Commons policy on employee remuneration says MPs can use their office budgets to pay workers but can’t hire immediate family members or a political party executive.

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Boulerice was first elected in 2011 and was named deputy leader of the party last Monday. The move was broadcast as the first step in the NDP’s plan to win support in Quebec, which Singh signalled as a priority after the party lost a Feb. 25 byelection in Outremont, the Montreal riding that former leader Tom Mulcair held from 2007 to 2018.

Singh won his own byelection in Burnaby South that day, and is set to make his debut in the House of Commons next week.

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