Fresh off its decision to roll back a planned minimum wage hike and gut employment protections for Ontario’s most vulnerable workers, the Ford government now seems keen to exempt major junior hockey from complying with any labour laws at all.

Ontario Hockey League Commissioner David Branch dashed off a letter to the provincial government last week asking for assurances that players are “amateur athletes and not employees regulated by employment standards legislation.”

And the new minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport, Michael Tibollo, delivered a swift and unthinking reply: “Our government is behind you.”

“We are going to do everything in our capacity to grow and support the Ontario Hockey League and junior hockey across our province.”

If the government gives in to Branch’s demand it means it will be supporting the league, which acts as a feeder to the NHL, and the team owners who make money, in some cases lots of it, off the unpaid labour of teenagers.

These players, typically aged 16 to 20, are drafted and can be traded from team to team far from home. They work, by some accounts, for up to 65 hours a week and play hockey in front of paying audiences.

In exchange for all that, they are given a stipend that can amount to little more than lunch money. They are billeted with families, and eligible — though by no means guaranteed — to receive some amount of scholarship funding when their junior career is over.

These players are being exploited for profit. It’s an injustice, and a longstanding one at that.

But challenges to the status quo have been mounting in the form of attempts to unionize the players and an ongoing $180-million lawsuit on behalf of the unpaid players in the OHL and two other regional leagues that operate under the umbrella of the Canadian Hockey League.

Instead of dealing with those challenges head on and coming up with a fairer system, the owners have simply looked to governments to protect them and let them continue to deny their players basic workplace rights, including a minimum wage.

Sadly, most provinces have already given in, content to continue with the charade that these players are no different than the student athletes on university teams. But Ontario should stand its ground and refuse to undercut statutory rights simply because a group of for-profit entities thinks it would be handy for their bottom line.

Tibollo has said he’s looking at providing the “clarity” the OHL wants and will have more to say in coming weeks. Before he goes any further down that wrongheaded path, he should carefully read the letter from the Toronto lawyers representing the players in the class action lawsuit, which lays out the other side.

While Branch may breezily claim that “our players, together with their parents and with the support of player agents, enter and continue to play in the OHL clearly understanding that they are participating in amateur athletics,” that’s all open to debate. Plenty of players, parents and agents do want change.

Major junior hockey has long benefited from young players with a passion for the game and a dream that one day, if they do everything they’re told, they just might make it to the NHL. The truth is very few will make it that far, and allowing a league to run on player dreams instead of paycheques is shameful.

The core of Branch’s argument about not paying players minimum wage is that it would hurt the league to do so. But it’s impossible to know even that since the league has worked so hard to keep team finances under wraps.

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And, as one player agent put it to The Hockey News: “What about McDonald’s and Harvey’s and Home Depot? Can they lobby the government to get students to work for free subject to education funding? Of course they can’t.”

The Ontario government has already taken steps to make sure the minimum wage stays at $14 instead of rising to $15 next year. The least it can do is refrain from ensuring that OHL players will never even be entitled to that much.

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