Welcome to the webinar on Utilizing Service Canada's Confidential Tip Line for Temporary Foreign Workers. I will be introducing the speakers as we go through the program, but before we get to far along, I want to welcome everybody. I'm David Ivany, part of the Empowering Temporary Foreign Workers during COVID-19 team. I'll be moderating today's session. I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting today on the traditional territories of the Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island. We thank them for allowing to meet and learn together on their territories. To the original caretakers of the land of which we stand, I acknowledge the traditional territories of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples where I am right now. To all that was here for thousands of years before us across Turtle Island, we honor the struggles and the lives of those who gave themselves for it. For all those here today, we acknowledge the ancestors beneath our feet and the land on which we stand. With our ears to the ground, we can hear them, the Cree Nation, the Métis, the Anishinaabe, the Dakota and Lakota Nations, the Inui, the Blackfoot, the Inui, and all of nations that came before us and those yet to become. An infinity of footsteps of those who long called this land home. The unfolding of bundles, the undoing of colonization and the opening of this land to allow a treaty to come alive. We affirm our relationship to each other and to the land. We acknowledge and pay respects to the indigenous nations and ancestors of this land. Once again, I acknowledge the traditional territory of many nations, including the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples where I am right now. A few technical notes for this webinar. To help keep noise disturbances at low, we ask that you remain muted until called upon during the Q&A. We hope to have plenty of time for Q&A and the chat feature will be available through the presentation for you to engage, who for you to introduce yourselves as you continue to come in and where you hail from. During the Q&A, I will read questions from the chat into the discussion and you can also use the raise hand feature to queue for asking questions that you may have. There will be two Q&A sessions, one after the presentation from Service Canada and one after our partners in the project presented. We will be recording this session, so you are free to ask questions with your camera off if you would prefer. Similarly, if you do not wish to be in the audio recording, put your questions in the chat and I will read them in. This webinar will be translated into Spanish and that audio file will be made available for download and dissemination at a later date. The ETFW team is here with us today. We have Mitos and Connie and Jay Lin. I believe ESL will be joining us soon as well and we have ESL here as well. We have members of the CHIRO team here as well. As we move into the session, this webinar will discuss the use of Service Canada's confidential tip line for reporting the abuse or misuse of temporary foreign workers, how to use the tip line and what happens when a call is received. We will also discuss potential barriers to its use and how those of us who support workers can help in using the service. To start, we have Jonathan Larakis and Mark Douglas, Senior Program Advisors in the Integrity Services Branch of Service Canada. We appreciate Service Canada partnering with us on this project and we thank each of them for speaking today. We appreciate both of you coming here to better inform us about the tip line and its use. You can take it away. Thank you, David. Good afternoon and thank you for inviting us today to speak about Service Canada's tip line for TFWs and to speak about our inspections process. My name is Jonathan Larakis and with me is my colleague, Mark Douglas, who will also be presenting. We are both Senior Program Advisors for the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and the information being presented today is current and up-to-date as of this presentation. So if you are watching a recorded version of this webinar at a later date, please check Service Canada's website to get the most up-to-date information. The goal for today is to provide you an overview of the journey of a tip or allegations that is reported to Service Canada, starting with how to report to us and what we do after a tip has been received, including our inspections process. And so we're always looking at ways to make the Temporary Foreign Worker Program better for workers and we rely on feedback from partners such as yourselves to do this. And so last year, several improvements have been made to our reporting process based on what we heard from migrant worker support organizations and TFWs themselves. First, we made it easier for people to report abuse to us in their own language. Our telephone tip line has instructions in English, French and in Spanish. And depending on when they call the tip line, callers may also be able to speak to a live agent, a live Service Canada agent directly in one of more than 200 languages through an interpreter that will also be on the line to translate the conversation between the agent and the caller as it's going on. And secondly, we've redesigned our online reporting tool to streamline it, making it easier to read, understand and use. So with that said, if you need to report to us, you can do so through two main ways. You can call our call center and either speak with an agent or leave a message depending on what time you call. The telephone tip line is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and is free from any telephone number in Canada. Right now, the live agents are available from 6.30 a.m. to 8.00 p.m. on weekdays and weekends and holidays from 9.00 a.m. to 3.00 p.m. All time zones are Eastern time. So all time zones in Ontario and Quebec. Outside of these hours, callers can also leave a voicemail with details of what's going on and or their contact information for an agent to follow up on. And secondly, you also have the option to submit on our report, to submit a report on our website, which is accessible on a computer tablet or smartphone. Bless you. So actually a quick survey. Before this presentation, before this presentation, before this webinar, have you known about or heard of this tip plan? So if you guys want to use your reaction buttons to raise your hands that yes, I have prior to this. Yes, I've been aware. OK, so I see a couple of thumbs up, a couple of thumbs up. All right, so that just goes to show there's still a lot more work for us to do in promoting this tip plan. So thank you again for those who have responded. And so when should you report to us? So below are just a few examples of situations where you can report to us. Situations where the employer is not paying the TFW during their quarantine. Situations where the employer is not providing cleaning supplies to help sanitize and keep the accommodations clean. Situations where they're not providing accommodations that are in good condition or not providing a workplace free of abuse. I'm so sorry. And just as a friendly reminder to just keep ourselves on mute as we continue through this webinar. Thank you. And so when making a report at minimum, we need details about the employer and details of the situation, such as what is happening? Who is involved? When did it take place? Where did it happen? Your contact information or the information or the informants information is optional, but helps us if we need to reach you for additional information. Always remember that you can remain anonymous when you do report, which leads us to our next slide. In protecting the privacy of workers. So Service Canada takes the protection of TFW privacy very seriously. And according to the Supreme Court of Canada case R versus Leapert, Service Canada does not release information received from third parties who wish to remain anonymous. In cases where a TFW wishes to remain anonymous, Service Canada inspectors will use the information they provide as a basis of what to inspect, but they will be very careful not to share any information that could identify the source of the information to the employer. The information the caller provides or the lead or the tip is not a part of the employer's cases file and is not included in the file. This is to make sure that in the event the employer or anyone else makes a formal request through Canada's access to information and privacy laws, also known as an A tip request, the information about what prompted the inspection will not be included in the response. So after a report has been submitted, we determine if in fact the employer is a user of the temporary foreign worker program. We determine if it needs to be redirected to another department or agency such as IRCC, RCMP or the local police. We evaluate if we need more information and based on the information that we've received, we determine the next steps, which leads us to our next section, which will be presented by my colleague, Mark Douglas, who will go into more details on inspections. Thank you very much, Jonathan. So if you go to the next slide, please. So what causes an inspection? There are five key reasons that Service Canada can launch an inspection according to our regulations. The first reason is that we've received a tip or a lead that a business does not comply with their LMA. In addition to receiving tips from the tip line and online tool, tips and leads can also originate from news outlets, provincial partners and stakeholders, foreign consulates, third parties and the workers themselves. The second main reason is an earlier inspection is found the employer non-compliant. So if an employer has previously been non-compliant, they will be, we can actually launch an inspection as a result of that. The third reason is that an employer is selected for a random inspection. Service Canada utilizes a risk modeling system that identifies high-risk regions, occupations and industries and randomly selects employers based on their risk of non-compliance. The fourth reason is the inspecting employers whose temporary foreign workers are or were subject to the quarantine or emergencies acts. Finally, we can also launch an inspection in the case where there's the introduction of the communicable disease where the temporary foreign worker works. So for example, if we find out that there is someone infected with COVID-19 at a temporary foreign workers work site. So how are inspections conducted? Service Canada connects both physical, on-site and virtual inspections. When Service Canada inspectors go to a work site, they will have picture ID that lists their name, their job title and the organization they work for, Service Canada. Inspectors will always ask the employer to show that they're meeting the terms of their labor market impact assessment. They'll ask for proof such as documents, photographs and they'll interview the employer, their staff and their TFWs separately and privately. In Canada, there's a clear delineation of authority between federal government and the provincial and territorial governments. Public health and work by safety are mainly the responsibility of the province or the territory. For this reason, Service Canada has also started to work with our partners in the provinces and territories as well as other federal partners to coordinate inspections and help fight the spread of COVID-19. Service Canada must respect provincial or territorial authorities when conducting our inspections. To help with this, last summer, we conducted joint inspections with the provinces in both Ontario and British Columbia. We're working to improve collaboration with the provincial partners to improve our inspections and to improve employer compliance, which directly affects temporary foreign workers. Service Canada can inspect a workplace with or without first telling the employer that we're coming. If we notify our employer in advance, we call it an announced inspection. Otherwise, it would be an unannounced inspection. If an employer is selected for an announced onsite inspection, the inspector will contact the employer before arriving and explain why they've been selected for the inspection, what the employer will have to do and provide them with the date that will be onsite. If an employer is selected for an unannounced inspection, their first contact with the inspector will be when they arrive at the work site. When the inspector arrives, the employer must let them onto the work site to see where the workers work and if the employer provides accommodations where they live. While onsite, inspector will take photos or video, collect documents and conduct interviews with the temporary foreign workers and the employer. The employer is expected to provide reasonable assistance and access to the inspector. This means doing whatever they need to help the inspection go smoothly, including giving the inspector access to documents and clear a place for private interviews. Yep. In the event that a TFW is selected for an interview, don't worry. We're interviewing the temporary foreign worker to confirm the employer's compliance. We're not inspecting the temporary foreign worker. We're inspecting the employer. An employer has been notified of inspection who does not show up or give access to the work site and workers will need to provide justification. Due to COVID-19, Service Canada has introduced virtual inspections under certain circumstances. Specifically, virtual inspections can take place in situations of known outbreaks or when workers are in quarantine. Virtual inspections allow us to inspect without spreading the virus. Given the seriousness of COVID-19 and the danger it poses, virtual inspections are carried out under very tight timeframes so that any issues can be identified and addressed. During a virtual inspection, the inspector will contact the employer by phone. The employer will be required to submit information such as photos and documents that show their compliance through email. The employer must also make sure that the inspector can interview the temporary foreign workers in private either by phone or by video conference. So what do we inspect? Service Canada can check that employers are following up to 28 different conditions. Some of the conditions where we most commonly see violations include wages, so situations where the employer is not paying the wage confirmed on the labor market impact assessment. Working conditions where the employer is not meeting the working conditions laid out on the labor market impact assessment. Housing provided by the employer if they're required to do so. Situations where the employer fails to provide the documents to demonstrate compliance with their labor market impact assessment and that the business is legitimate in operation and able to employ and pay its workers. So what are we looking for when we do our inspections? When we conduct our inspections, we're looking for the employer to prove that they're complying with their LMIA. This means that they must prove that they've been paying the workers properly, that the TFW's working conditions match what was in their contract and that the employer is following the employment laws of the province or territory in which the worker is working. We also want to see it that the employers do not do anything to keep workers from following the quarantine and emergency sites. Some specific examples of what we look at. We look at time sheets or proof of the hours that the TFW worked. We want to see that they're paid properly. These documents should show the workers start and end times and when they took their breaks. Proof that the TFW workers were paid their wages. Often employers will submit payroll information, but we also want to see proof that the workers were in fact paid. So for example, if they're paid by check, we want to see the front and back of the check to make sure that the TFW negotiated the check. Records of cash advances. We know that in a lot of situations when TFW workers arrive, they ask for a cash advance from their employer. We want to see that the evidence that the TFW did in fact request the cash advance, received it and agreed to the repayment terms. Accommodations, when inspecting out accommodations while on site, we frequently identify discrepancies between the accommodations provided to the foreign worker and the housing inspection reports. Examples include non-functioning or partially functioning appliances, missing screens on windows or vermin and by the speaking presence. Next slide. Once the inspector's completed fact finding, they'll advise the employer if the inspection is complete and the employer has been found on a factory. If non-compliance has been identified during the inspection, the inspector will advise the employer that they must provide justification. If we identify non-compliance during fact finding, employers provide a chance to justify why they were non-compliant in accordance with the immigration and refugee protection regulations. They're asked to provide a detailed explanation as to why they were not compliant and explain what steps they've taken to rectify the non-compliance and prevent it from happening in the future. If the employer provides a credible, acceptable justification in accordance with the regulations, they'll be found satisfactory. If the employer justifies the non-compliance after you do an error made in good faith and they're found to be non-compliant for the same condition in the future, that justification will not be accepted. If the employer is still not compliant after submitting their justification, they'll be sent a notice of preliminary finding that outlines the consequences. This notices the employer's final opportunity to provide new information that may change the decision. Any new information submitted is objective and reviewed to determine whether it changes the outcome of the case. If the employer is still not compliant after the notice of preliminary finding, they'll receive a notice of final determination that advises them of any penalties and or bans from the program. So what are the consequences of non-compliance? If after responding to the most preliminary finding, the employer is still found non-compliant, they can face a penalty and or a ban from the program. Non-compliance with any of the conditions can result in penalties, up to $100,000 per violation to a maximum of a million dollars in a calendar year in the case of multiple violations. The employer could also face a program ban that ranges from one year to a permanent ban in most severe cases. Non-compliant employers will have their business details posted to an immigration refugee in Citizenship Canada public website. The website will outline the consequences of non-compliance and why the employer was found non-compliant. And that's the end of our presentation today. So we welcome any questions you have. And as always, we encourage you to go and check our websites for up-to-date information on the current state of the program. Back to you, John. Anything to add before we get to questions, Jonathan? No, again, so we're always looking at ways to improve the reporting process. And so we're always open to any feedback you guys may have, if not about our tip line, about our service or even about this presentation. So if you guys do have some comments or feedback you'd like to share, for those of you who have used the tip line in the past, we are always open to whatever feedback you guys have to share. And so I'll actually leave, pass it back to David who'll facilitate the Q&A session. So thank you again so much for that. I'm sure there are questions arising from this. So please use the raise hand function as I'm seeing people are starting to do and feel free again to add your questions to the chat. Great to see people already raising hands. So we're gonna get to the questions in one minute. I just wanna say that as illuminating as they can be hypothetical situations would be difficult to answer in this context. So let's try to keep questions to more questions rather than proposing hypotheticals. So we're gonna start with Father Peter. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. One question I just wanted to ask off the bat is about the findings of the report. Are the employees and or intervening party like let's say ourselves if we're intervening on behalf of an employee are we privy to the findings as well? So due to privacy considerations and inspection it'll always be between Service Canada and the employer. So unfortunately that information will not be available to anyone outside of the employer. And just a second question I promise I won't monopolize. How many tips on average are handled on a weekly basis? Is there a data on that? We do. So actually I do have the stats. So because the service is still new and we've been monitoring it since its launch in April like the live agent because prior to the live agent I was strictly just voicemail. And so since April 1st the latest we have since April 1st to August end of August is we've received roughly 3,300 calls that have come in through the call center and leads that have come in through or tips that have come in through our web tool are around 434 for that same time period. But again that's just through those two main channels. There are other ways that we receive tips and allegations but those are the stats that I have on hand is for our online tool and for our tip line. So since April 1st to August we're looking about together you're looking about 4,000 tips cumulative, almost 4,000 or calls from both. Thank you. Okay, we're gonna go to Eswani. Yes, hi and thank you for the presentation. My question is, is there a document or a line where it specifies what is considered bad housing? What would be including when you want to report in bad housing? Because that's kind of a very large term, right? Bad housing can be different things from each other from different people's perspective. And would that be part of like some health? I have heard about cases that is a lot of bed box problem in the housing of American workers like in the bunk houses. In my opinion, that's something to do with health but I have heard that is not. So could you please clarify on that? I'll actually, so this is more of an inspections question that I'll pass on to Mark. So with regards to bourbon and bugs, such as bed bugs we would ask that be reported to us so that we can look at doing an inspection on that. With relation as to what is bad housing we're unfortunately limited in terms of what we do based upon what the housing inspection report is. So what it boils down to is as long as the housing meets the inspection report then it's considered to be acceptable. Housing inspection reports are handled by different groups depending upon which province or territory and even in some cases which municipality they're in. However, if there are issues such as insufficient space for TFWs to properly socially, physically distance or if there are situations such as there are inadequate facilities for the temporary farm workers, elements such as no running hot water, those are the type of elements we will very definitely look into. Beyond that unfortunately, because there are so many different standards across the country it's hard for me to give you a blanket statement as to what would be considered bad housing. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that question this one. And on the topic of inspections, Jalen had a question in the chat. How has it decided whether the inspection is announced or unannounced? Right now for the most part, a lot of our inspections are announced because of the risk of COVID-19. During sort of a more standard timeframe we would be looking at depending upon the assessed risk of the employer. So if for example, we received a lead or an allegation that the employer was not doing something appropriate that would be much more likely to be an unannounced inspection. However, certain industries because of the nature of the industries and the risk it poses to people coming on site would mandate it being an announced inspection. So again, it's a bit of a difficult one to answer but it's mostly dependent upon the risk level of the situation as to whether it will be announced or not. Thank you for that. We're gonna go to Kit. Hi, thanks David. And thank you Mark and Jonathan for your presentation. I have another question about the inspection specifically about the interviews with workers. These interviews are they random workers selected by the inspectors? And if so, are the employers notified that these are indeed random? Because otherwise there might be the situation where the employer sees certain workers being interviewed and might single them out as the ones who reported the conditions or is it the case that the employers choose which workers inspectors speak to which can cause problems that are quite obvious? And I'm asking because these are situations that I've supported workers themselves in dealing with and supported them in reporting and they've come back to me saying, you know, the employer saw me being interviewed so they think I'm the one who made the report or the employer supervisor chooses which workers speak to the interviewers depending on which ones will say what's acceptable by the employer. So that's my first part, the selection of workers and then the second part is the privacy. How is Service Canada ensuring the privacy of workers who are selected for interviews? So in the cases of virtual interviews how does Service Canada ensure that the employer is not in the room with the worker while they're being interviewed? Thank you. So with regards to your question I can only partially answer it. I'm not gonna be able to go into detail about how we select workers. However, I will say that employers are not we don't leave it up to the employer to decide who we will interview. Our inspectors do choose who will be interviewed but I can't go into detail about how we specifically select workers for obvious reasons in relation to both the protection of the workers and in terms of making sure that employers do not know how we make our selection. So I'm sorry, I can't go into detail about that. With relation to how do we verify that the employer is not in the room with the workers it is absolutely a challenge that we face. And it's one of the reasons why we try to make sure that we're always doing video conference interviews but that isn't always possible depending upon the level of technology available to the temporary form worker. But yeah, when we're doing remote interviews we are seeking to do it on video conference so that we can verify who else is in the room with the temporary form worker. Okay, thank you, Mark. So you can't say whether it's random interviews or whether it's workers selected by the employer. Well, it's not workers selected by the employer. Thank you for that. Let's go to Cooper Institute. Hi there. I just have two questions. Just building off the last question that was asked when translation is required for an interview with a worker who is providing that translation? It's provided by Service Canada. Okay, thank you. And then the other question that I just have is when it is an announced inspection when communicating with the employer what is shared with the employer in regards to why an inspection is happening? So according to the regulations we are required to provide the employer with the trigger of the inspection. So whether it is pass-on compliance whether it is a reason to suspect whether it is due to workers having had to quarantine or whether it's due to the introduction of a communicable disease where the TFW works but that's the extent of the information that's provided to the employer. Nothing further is provided. Okay, so like if a complaint came in through the tip line or the online system it would be communicated that they... They would not be told that a tip or an allegation came in they'd be told that we received information that led to the inspection. Okay, great, thank you. I'm not certain that this question can sort of be answered in this space but I think it's an important thing to note. It's been asked if no one else knows the results of the investigation or how do we as allies to migrant workers have faith in the process. I think it's kind of about like what information potentially could be available to people invested in workers or in terms of trusting that the information is being carried forward. I completely understand where you're coming from, David. I know that this is something that's been extensively brought up with our Skills and Employment Branch who are our policy division. Unfortunately, I don't have anything else I can really say about it but I hear what you're saying. Obviously, whenever an employer is found non-compliant it does get posted on the Immigration Refugee and Citizenship Canada website but that also can take a very long time before that happens because of the number of steps we have to go through to find an employer non-compliant. So I do completely understand where you're coming from with the relationship up. Thank you for that. We're gonna go to Christina Gomez. Good afternoon. I have my question is in a different way. I would like to know how often the owner farmers update regarding regulation because if we have that here, maybe we can have so many things about many different problems the worker has to face. So it's an honor that the farmers have updates and they know how much to pay for any kind of fault. They didn't follow the regulation so they didn't have many irregularities and different. So I would like to know how Service Canada updates the owner farmers regarding regulation. I think the question you're asking is how often do we update employers about changes to regulations? Is that correct? Yes, that's correct. Again, that isn't something that Integrity Services Branch handles. So it's a bit difficult for me to answer that. I do know that any changes to the regulations result in our Skills and Employment Branch notifying all users of the program. Oh, sorry, all employers use the program and also employer associations through an email push. But that's about all I'm really positioned to answer. I'm gonna bring in one more question from the chat and then do one more question on the mic. And then we're going to, there will be more time for Q and A. I'm just gonna move it to the presentations from our partners. But there's a question, a few questions about how workers are informed about the tip line and like how the process is explained to workers. Like does Service Canada have a strategy for informing workers about the tip line and what that process looks like on whether it's on the spot or not for the interview. So in regard to the tip line, that is something that we're currently working on is how to promote it further among foreign workers. And so I think last year, I think it was this year we've announced funding to help support organizations such as yourselves to who work and deal with migrant worker support organizations who deal with TFWs directly in assisting them. And so we're working such as today, working more collaboratively with other partners such as yourselves to do these outreach sessions to promote the tip line. And so some of the feedback that we have heard through these kinds of forums is that although there are some organizations out in BC, let's say, I know after doing some outreach with BC, there are organizations that hand out pamphlets at the airport when TFWs do arrive. That is the extent of the kind of work that's being done but we do acknowledge that there's more opportunities to further promote and educate foreign workers on what resources are available to them. And this is just the start. So we're always happy and open to working together to do more in promoting the tip line, whether it's having a little laminated card or whether it's having sessions such as this. Eduardo, I will bring more of your questions into the chat in a little bit. I'm gonna go to Connie first and then I'm gonna take one more question on the mic from Rachel. But again, there will be more time for our question and answers after our partners. Thank you very much, David. And thank you very much, Jonathan, for your last comment because that's exactly what we're also trying to do. There's quite a bit of, and I would say this, honestly and frankly, there's quite a bit of, I wouldn't say suspicion, but not many workers or a majority of the workers are not trusting to file a complaint on the tip line and file allegations, right? Because of fear of the price almost. And what we're trying to do now with our community partners who are directly working with micro workers on the ground is bridge that gap and having this session, for example, having you come and present and being able to respond to the questions that our community partners are raising is a step forward in developing that relationship and creating the trust. Because whatever happens and at this conversation, whatever transpired in this webinar is definitely going to be transmitted to the workers that our community partners are working with on the ground. And also to mention that we do have airport support services of the Toronto Pearson International Airport and included in the information materials that we're providing is about the tip line. So we are collaborating in terms of getting the information out and hopefully more workers are able to trust the process and be able to unrelectively come out and use the tip line. So I just want to... Thank you very much for that comment, Connie. I think one thing I want to really emphasize is that it's really important that when our inspectors are on site and interviewing the foreign workers that they let us know what's going on because one of the biggest problems we have is that we'll receive a tipper or lead or an allegation and we'll go on site and we'll interview a variety of workers and all the workers will tell us is, oh yeah, everything's fine. And that really handicaps our ability to pursue with the inspection. We need to hear from the workers what the issues are, what's going on. And it's really important that they be prepared to talk to us when we are on site because the intention is when we're out there to interview them, we're there to try and find out what's going on so that we can take the necessary steps and we completely understand that number one, they certainly are fear reprisal from their employers and potentially from other people who are involved in their situation. They potentially come from countries where they do not have faith in the government. We understand that as well. And so as a result, us being there and speaking to them is not something that they want to have happen. We completely get that. It's just the unfortunate situation that we need to be able to find evidence that the employer is not complying with their LMIA and that's where they can really help us. Thank you. Thank you. Let's move to Rachel. Yes. Hello. Hi, hi folks. My name is Rachel Lake and I'm a lawyer at Waterloo Region and Community Legal Services. So I connected with a group of migrant workers about a year ago and have been successful with four open work permit applications for abused workers. So I was just wondering whether there's any communication between the IRCC department that issues the open work permits for vulnerable workers or like, yeah, I guess just whether there's any communication between between Service Canada and IRCC on that front. So again, it's not really something that I'm well equipped to talk to but that being said, we do communicate with IRCC through our internal channels whenever we receive tips, leads and allegations and likewise, when they receive applications for open work permits they communicate with us as well so that we can take the appropriate steps. But there are limits in terms of what information can be shared and again, I'm not in the best position to talk to this unfortunately because it's not really my area of expertise. All right, so people with their hands raised we will come back to Q&A session but I do want to shift to our partners in the project talking about it and this may bring up some of the concerns and questions that we have as well. So for now, you can leave your hands raised and I'll keep you in the queue for now. We have Stacy Gumm as who coordinates No One is Illegal Health Acts Chewbook Tooks Migrant Workers program which is engaged in outreach, direct support, public education and advocacy in solidarity with migrant workers throughout Nova Scotia. So far this year the program has reached well over 1,300 migrant workers in the province. No One is Illegal is a member of Nova Scotia's Migrant Worker Rights Working Group. You can go ahead, Stacy. Thank you, it's good to see everyone. So yes, No One is Illegal Health Acts Chewbook Tooks Migrant Workers program provides confidential support to migrant workers throughout Nova Scotia on issues such as violence in the workplace, unpaid wages, workplace injuries and threats that workers face in being sent back home. And we have supported migrant workers to make complaints to the ESTC tip line in the past and we've made complaints on workers' behalf when requested. So one benefit of the ESTC tip line is that it provides an anonymous way for migrant workers to make a complaint. And because migrant workers are tied to one employer, this puts a lot of power in the hands of the employer and often migrant workers fear speaking out due to risks of reprisals, including being fired sent back to their home country and not being able to return back to the seasonal agricultural workers program to Canada. So anonymity is often important for workers. However, if a migrant worker does make a complaint, this will not lead to rectification of the issue in their specific situation. For example, if there's a situation of unpaid wages, this would not result in them receiving wages. That would be more through the provincial labor standards. Moreover, as we've spoken about, they would not be informed the results of the claim or complaint, rather. And nor details such as whether an investigation is underway. So that is a big limitation. I'm going to share a bit of what we've heard from workers around the tip line and investigation process. So we've heard that when on-site visits do happen, the employer has selected who will speak to the investigators. Visits happen during the daytime when migrant workers are working and therefore not available to speak with investigators. Many reports have been made by migrant workers about a specific employer, but they have not seen a result from those complaints. We've heard employers being notified in advance of on-site visits and fixing it so that it seems better at the time that the investigation takes place. And we've also heard of migrant workers being threatened and coerced to speak positively of the employer. There's also a number of concerns that we have as well. So for a period during the pandemic, on-site visits were not happening. And we know that migrant workers have been disproportionately impacted during the pandemic. Thousands across the country have become ill with COVID-19 and a number have also died from COVID-19. And one major concern, which I'll just talk about briefly is a lack of confidentiality during on-site visits. And really the only way to ensure anonymity is for workers to leave a complaint online anonymously or over the phone anonymously. So there are risks for confidentiality during on-site visits. And I'll follow up about that later directly. And also penalties are rarely imposed and in most cases they're not severe. So in 2019, only three employers were suspended from the program through this investigation process. When suspensions did happen, in most cases it was only for up to two years. And in 2019, 51 employers were fined. When they were fined, it was often also for a very low amount from $100 to $3,000. And just to give an idea of scope, in 2016, I understand that there were 1,600, sorry, 16,000 employers who received positive labor market impact assessments. That's a document that's needed to hire migrant workers. So in conclusion, the ESDC tip line is one of the tools available to migrant workers who are experiencing abuse in the workplace. However, if the aim is to protect migrant worker rights, it appears that it's falling short. So there is a need for greater transparency. For example, having information on employers who had complaints made against them public and also the results of those complaints. If a labor market impact assessment is revoked from the employer, it's important to guarantee that the migrant worker receives an open work permit to be able to find employment elsewhere. And we're also joined other organizations across the country and advocating for full and permanent immigration status for migrants, including migrant workers. This would ensure that migrant workers are able to exercise the same rights as all other workers. And that includes being able to easily move to another employer if they're experiencing abuse. Current, the current avenues that exist, including the vulnerable worker open work permit are limited. For example, it's quite labor intensive, not very accessible to workers to do on their own, for example. So yeah, those are the reflections that we wanted to share to me. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. We can definitely bring those issues into the discussion as we carry forward with it. I did want to move on to a reminder that yes, there will be more time for questions shortly, but first I want to welcome Fannie Restrepo-Belkowski from the Center of Migrant Workers Solidarity in Simcoe to share her experiences if she has any. Fannie has been an important voice for temporary foreign workers and a really critical voice in these webinars. So I wanted to have time and space for her to share her experiences with the tip line and if she has anything else to add to this important conversation. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. I just have three report points I wanted to ask is we're running into, if you are inspecting for payroll there's a situation where it looks perfectly legal when you go in, it looks as if they've worked 40 hours and they have all the paperwork, but then the rest of the pay after 40 hours is all cash. And so workers tell me on different farms that's just how it's done. So then when they try to get benefits they look as if they only worked 40 hours. So that's one question. Or I'm wondering too with WSIB, I don't know if you get involved if there's in the WSIB case, but when suddenly there's an investigation then the employer then fixes things, didn't pay during a period when there was an accident, the worker became distressed, wanted to go home. And then when WSIB comes in then suddenly he's paid for that period and it all looks great in the books. The bookkeeping if you look would look just great and it would make the worker look as if he's a liar and would make his WSIB case look weak. So those are two points I had and then I just had two other comments. If you are interviewing workers online in video you may see everybody on the screen but the door might be open in the background. So the workers just are so terrified of never being asked back that they're terrified they probably won't tell you how it really is if even if you see everybody on screen there may be a door where someone could hear them. And the final thing too is with open work permit I don't know if you ever deal with this but with open work permit it's great if we can get it but then when we go you have to give your resume you have to give where did you get your experience driving a forklift and so you can't name the employer that was abusive where you were for 13 years. So those are some of the scenarios we have. Really appreciate the feedback in relation to those elements. Unfortunately there's not much we can do about situations which as you described where the workers aren't prepared to advise us as to what's going on. For example, if an employer is in the room where the door is open as you described it is one of the reasons why we do try to get out and conduct our interviews in person when we can but it's not always possible either due to the situation with COVID-19 or what have you so or an outbreak on the site or et cetera. With relation to WSIB unfortunately there's not much we can do about how they conduct their investigations. They are not a federal department they would be provincial and unfortunately there's nothing we could do about that part of it. Thank you for your question Ella and we're going to go on to Juhi Aladua. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for this great presentations. Pretty clear, pretty nice.  The person from the government officials you know what she said? They never ever use the hotline. Why? In earlier I heard that you have made great strides in making language you know the taking of that barrier language barrier. Right now about 200 languages available. That's great, that's great, that's beautiful. But the real fear, the real fear from the workers are not being addressed. What is the plan B? For example, here's a simple example where we talk of some people have been talking about the vulnerable workers permit. That is a bandaid yes but it's a dead end. At the end of the one year open work when what happens the worker goes hits a brick wall what happens to the worker? That's a dead end that's a trap for workers. That's not taking out the barriers that's creating more headache for a worker. When what are the barriers that the workers facing? What are the barriers? When will we address the barriers? And that is what really languages one yes but that's not the main barrier. At the end of the day the workers come here to put bread on the table to support their family. What is there to guarantee that they do a fair day's work in Canada and get a fair day's pay? What is there? And that is what we are feeling to address. So many times I'm heard from you, we cannot answer that, we cannot answer. Why? Because we try to do things in isolation and we know that all the problems that migrant workers face, the 20 justices that I feel, they are every, every, every level of government. Why are we having a session and we are in isolation from the other stakeholders, the other parties and we don't have our whole system is stuck against migrant workers. When are we going to get all the cards on the table? That is the challenge I have. And how can we address that? That is my question. I'll leave it as that. The only question I have for you. Hi Dave, everybody I'm here. I'm really sorry. It's busy, busy here. We have some Caribbean workers coming and they wanted to talk to me. So I am really sorry. So do you want me to still explain about the cases I had here at the center? Yes. I think just in one, in one quick moment, I'm not certain if anyone wants to respond to the last, the last, we have Connie. Yeah. Oh, you're muted. No, no, I'm not going to respond to Gabriel's question, but I want Mark and Jonathan to respond to Gabriel if they're, if you have a response before moving on to Fannie. Because I don't want that question kind of left hanging and yeah, very, thank you. Thanks Connie. So Mark or Jonathan, anything to say in response? So thank you again for sharing your feedback. I think it hasn't fallen on deaf ears. I'm only speaking from an integrity point of view and what we can do and what I can say is that we're doing what we can to address some of these issues but some of these are things to deal with regulations and policy, which have also have been heard by our policy folks and our regulation folks and without, because I can't speak on behalf of them but I do know that having my own experience in attending other sessions like this, such as through the migrant worker support network, I can assure you that ESCC is working hard to address a lot of the frustrations that you guys have communicated to us today. And like with us today isn't just Mark and I, we also have some other service candidate colleagues who also work in the operation side of things who are hearing your feedback and will be taking it back to our managers and directors of some more of the feedback that we're hearing and how we can improve and change our process and make it better. Okay, and now Fanny, thank you for, thank you for pausing and thank you for prioritizing workers at the center. So take it away. In the same area we had, I called the tip line twice and at the beginning of the, in April or May, some workers from Jamaica came to the office and they were complaining that the employer was deducting some wages that the employer was not supposed to deduct. So, and the housing conditions were not, there was no social distancing and the housing condition was deplorable. So I called the tip line and within about two weeks Service Canada, I think went to the, the, the farm and I think the farm has been audited by Service Canada. So the workers call me very happy stating, listen, someone came over here and we think is Service Canada. So I haven't heard from the workers yet but probably it's going to be a long process for Service Canada to investigate but that was a, it was really successful and I encourage everyone to, if you guys see any abuse or someone, a worker complains because it could be one worker that has the courage to complain and has no fear. So if you, everyone, if you have a worker that has a problem, please call the tip line. I had another farm where the workers were not able to come out to come shopping. The farmers set up a store in the, in, like at the farm and now the workers are coming to town because I think these workers are being affected mentally while they are in these farms for five, six, seven months with no way out. So any farm where the workers are not being able to come out, please call the tip line. I encourage everyone to do it, please because it's affecting the workers mentally when you are stuck in a farm for such a long time. So it's been very successful and thank you for the service and, you know, everybody working on behalf of the workers, they need us. Thank you so much, Fanny, for sharing stories and it's good to hear that the complaints do move through the system. It's important to note too that as partners or as people providing support to migrant workers, there is the, because the process of reporting a tip is anonymous and can be done by voicemail as well, it is possible to help with moving a complaint from a worker to a service provider and then that service provider forwarding the tip along as just a suggestion for like adding that extra layer of anonymity to the process. So taking as much information as you can from the worker and then calling the tip in yourself to further that anonymity in the process. I wanted to get to Eduardo's question. I know, Mike, you're next in line with the hands, but Eduardo, did you want to speak to what you wrote in the chat slash ask a question and Mike will get to immediately after. Sure, thank you so much and thanks for the presentation Mark and Jonathan. I work for a network of occupational health clinics. So we have some experience trying to, I guess promote and look at the Ministry of Labor's kind of similar in theory reporting number for their call center. So we kind of experienced working with workers who might have occupational health and safety concerns or even injuries and looking at how they report and so there's a lot of very similar themes. So I think I put in the chat a bit about the importance of how, especially for those in-person inspections or worker interviews, how the whole process is explained to workers. I think that's so fundamental because when we were working with the Ministry of Labor early days about their inspections, there was a lot of work that had to be done about basically ensuring that their inspectors were trained to understand kind of the context in which these workers are facing that Gabriel has really well pointed out so that sensitivity is really at the forefront of this whole thing. I do imagine, I'm not at all surprised that the in-person interviews don't tend to be very, worker or workers are not so forthcoming sometimes because we encountered even, the threshold for a worker to speak out is so high because of the fear of losing their job. So we encountered even workers who were injured, like injuries that could actually put them into serious situations of being able to be welcomed back to the program if their injuries get worse than their screen back home and they don't even come back. There's even reluctance in those levels of workers to speak out and what we found in terms of the reporting to the Ministry of Labor is it was often workers who didn't even wanna go back to that farm anymore. It was so high the risk that they were basically going to report and throw away the thinking that, well, I'm probably not gonna be asked here but things are so bad that I don't even wanna be here anymore. So it's really a challenge to lower the threshold because we're really talking about decent work, safe work for workers, not to a point where they're just so as exacerbated that they're willing to lose their job and opportunity. So I know it's a challenge. There's no easy solution for that but I do think then training for inspectors, the process explained. So I think that if your first touch base, if the first time a worker's hearing about this process is when the inspector arrives on the farm, I'm very kind of reluctant to think that a lot of workers will speak out. So it's to say maybe that's the first touch point and I know that obviously all your inspectors are not necessarily gonna be out on any farm twice or three times, I can understand staff and resources but maybe it's envisioning about a first touch based on that farm to say, this is the process. Think about it, this is how I ensure you your safety, your confidentiality and then contact me on your own time or some sort of follow-up process so that they're not having to make a decision to participate on the spot with them, maybe first time engaging with the government of Canada person, maybe first time thinking about complaining. So you're kind of catching people to have to make that decision that they're thinking could jeopardize their employment on the spot, right? So I think that's just some things to consider but as Gabriel noted, I think a lot of this is so attached to just the precarious employment situation that people are in, right? And so we're asking them to report, we're asking them to be the drivers of improving their conditions when at the other end, what kind of protections are we tangibly providing them, right? If not, it's just them risking for decent work in Canada that should be insured by, you know, governments, but yeah, complicated for sure, but. Thanks, Eduardo. Do we have a response from Mark or Jonathan? In terms of, yes, the sort of like contacts with inspectors and potential for that not being the only contact the inspectors on the farm. Yeah, we definitely appreciate the comments. I know that a lot of our inspectors will provide temporary foreign workers with their cards so that the temporary foreign workers can reach out to the inspector on their own time to discuss. We haven't found, as you might imagine, a lot of uptake on that, but you know, it's definitely one of the things that our inspectors do do to, you know, try and make it so that the TFWs are comfortable talking with us. Thank you. Okay, Mike. It's pretty clear that a lot of the workers are apprehensive to come forward. And when you're doing your interviews for the inspection, they might be apprehensive because of anonymity or confidentiality concerns. Is there any potential to use the locations of outreach organizations as a secure space for workers to come forward so that they don't have to worry about the employer being there or other workers that, you know, might not agree. And they will have more anonymity in one of our offices if they can come in and you guys can do your interview either online. You know, they can have an individual space with a computer there that you can talk to them online or you could even conduct the interviews in person at one of our locations, the locations of an outreach organization. Is that anything that you would consider or is the logistics kind of a, you know, would it be too hard to organize? I can't speak to that specific situation where we would be on, for example, one of the NGOs, my workers for organizations, but I do know that in the past, service kind of inspectors have interviewed temporary form workers at service cannabis centers without employers being around or at various other neutral points. But again, I can't speak for every inspection or however investigator handles their, however inspector handles their work. But I do know that has been done in the past certainly with making use of sites that are off the employer's work site to interview TFWs. If the TFWs come forward to the inspector and asked to be interviewed. To move to a few questions from the chat, what happens when an employer continuously commits infractions and can't provide a reason? Well, just the panel. So for example, if it's the first infraction first for a lot of elements, there's a table that's actually set out in immigration refugee and protection regulations. If anybody's interested, I believe it's table two, but I don't quote me on that, but it actually lays out how we calculate out the amounts that we the non-compliance, how many people are affected, what the type of effect is, all those different elements. Did the employer take any, all of those elements? So I would certainly encourage anybody who's curious to go and take a look at the regulations. It's, it doesn't go into the specifics as to how we would determine it, but it does lay out how it's calculated. So in the event that an employer has previously committed an infraction, then the consequences escalate, both in terms of duration of any bans, if they receive one, the amount of any administrative monetary penalties, et cetera. So all that is on there and it does definitely escalate as it goes on. As I mentioned, one of the common justifications that a lot of employers have used in the past that we are certainly working on limiting their use of, which is part of the reason why we're doing employer outreach and other steps to educate employers on their responsibility. An error of interpretation made a good faith where effective workers were subsequently compensated for any errors on the employer's part. So for example, let's say an employer underpays a TFW, then if they use that justification, they would have to compensate them for the amount that they shorted them. If that justification is used, then that justification cannot be used again in the future for the same type of situation. So absolutely, we do take a look at the employer's past history when figuring out whether or not there will be an administrative monetary penalty and calculating that and also whether or not they'll be... Thank you. And I'm gonna take one more question from the chat and then move on to Izwani. Do you have any cultural outreach workers who can build that trust and dialogue? Like are there workers that aren't inspectors that are getting the word out to start that relationship? Or is it currently just inspectors that are sort of building the sort of... I can't speak to that exactly, but one of the recent pilots that was run, as I'm sure several of you are aware of was the migrant worker support network in British Columbia, where Service Canada brought together multiple different migrant worker support organizations, employer associations, migrant workers, academics, different levels of government. So for example, provincial government, foreign consulates and others into a symposium where methods of improving things that we could do both in terms of educating migrant workers, you migrant worker support organizations in terms of reaching out and providing assistance to workers, educating everyone on the integrity and the nature of the program. So we've certainly done some steps in that. I'm not sure where that is at. That is a program that's managed by our skills and employment branch of our policy side. So we're not really in a good position to talk about it. In terms of from our perspective, we're often the ones that go out and actually speak with the temporary farm workers just due to the nature of our work. So we do try to make sure what's going on, how they're helping, what they're doing, et cetera, when we go on site. But again, we do appreciate that to a certain extent, there may be a, well, there is a lack of trust, even though we're doing everything we can to assist them. Thank you. Eswani, did you wanna ask another question? Yes, thank you, Ayvat. Okay, so thank you so much, Mark and Jonathan for the information. I am from Mexico and I work on the ground with a lot of workers, migrant workers. And sometimes it's, I think difficult for us to see that we have this deep line and there is still a lot of ways that this deep line is falling short to help workers like Stacy Gomez stated. So I don't know how long, like you say, Mark, there is a document, but how many complaints does it take to really change something in a farm, right? So on the employer is usually his overspent is working with workers. So there is also a change on it because it seems to change immediately. I know even like in a course of months. So if a worker is here, going through these difficult conditions, housing conditions or healthy or health kind of that is being put in their health, job provides, it doesn't seem that it's changing that quickly. It takes months, maybe next year or maybe it doesn't happen, right? I know it's a process and it takes a process. And like I heard that there is some fines that is going to the farmers, but farmers, $100 is nothing, $3,000 is nothing. They can pay it in a time. So that's one question. And I think that may kind of asking it again, but it's just my point of view. The other part that I'm thinking it's very hard, like you say, to build trust between you and the workers. So do you go, when you go on the side, do you take an interpreter that is cultural familial or is the same culture than the person that is working there? For example, if you have Mexicans in the farm, you take an interpreter with you, the inspectors that is from the same culture. Then it's more comfortable to talk with. It's something that you have considered, it's something that you do, it's something that is happening. And the other part is like, how do you plan to build a relationship? I know it's hard because I work on the ground, but it has always been nice to have a cultural related person, right? And that is not on the farm. And I find it very difficult because I think somebody put in the chat that if you kind of say, we're going to go there, there is no inspection. I feel like, and I have heard this from the workers and I will do it myself, right? Like if I know that my friend is coming to visit me, I will clean my house. But if nobody tells me that he's coming and they just show up at my door, my house is how it is. These are just my points of view. And I think that aligns with what Jaylen was asking about in terms of the interviews. Like are they conducted in the workers' first language? So when we do conduct our interviews, unfortunately the reality is our inspectors are not fluent in every language that we would go out and inspect on. We do bring, essentially, we use a telephone service called CanTalk, which provides access to, I can't remember, it's a couple hundred different languages for translation. So the translation is basically handled by, through CanTalk, so that we can interview the temporary farm workers in a language that they understand if that's what they request. I mean, I interview them in their preferred language, be that English, French, Spanish, or whatever it is, depending upon where they're from. And so we always make sure we offer them that choice during the interview, because there's a lot of nuance and a lot of important elements that can be missed if we try to interview them in their second or third language or even fourth language, depending upon the situation. So we do make use of translation services when we are on site to do those interviews. Unfortunately, the reality of it is that, and I totally understand about having somebody who is from a particular culture can make a world of difference. The reality of it is that we don't have access to those reasons. I just wanted to acknowledge Vilma's comments in the chat. I think the open work permit issues are ones that we should continue to discuss. And I'm hoping to bring that conversation further in these webinars potentially. But the issues are certainly related between the tip line and the potential for the open work permit. But I understand that that's not necessarily in Mark and Jonathan's wheelhouse. So thank you for your comments. And we've taken note of them for future sessions. We have just a few minutes left. Claudio, is your question quick? Perhaps. Yes, I did try. Okay. Okay, so I appreciate the information provided by Mark. My question is to do with the final report done after the investigation. You, Mark, mentioned that this is a confidential report between Service Canada and the employer. But I'm thinking, is the migrant worker interested to know the final result? Let's say I make a phone call through that secret line and I want to know what is the result of the investigation. Can you provide support? Thank you. John, do you know the answer to this one? So like a copy of the report that they had submitted. Like the tip that led to the inspection or the final report after the investigation has been done. The later. The latter. Unfortunately, we don't provide any final reports of investigation to the foreign worker. Because of, again, it is limited and because of privacy considerations, it is limited between Service Canada and Canada. I will just jump in here. We don't actually provide the final inspection report itself to the employer either. If, you know, what the employer will receive is they'll receive a letter either saying that they were found satisfactory or they will receive a letter outlining the consequences of their non-compliance. So as far as it goes, they either get a letter stating that they were satisfactory or they get a letter called a Notice of Final Determination that stating that they were non-compliant. So, but how we can improve that? Like do we have to call our member of parliament and try to change your policies? You know, we are trying to help these migrant workers and if Fanny mentioned, you need courage to call and she encouraged everybody to call if you have problem. But how can you know if my problem is resolved if you don't even know the final result? Yeah, it's certainly a challenge. The sort of the echo chamber of the, or the lack of an echo chamber I suppose of the process. It's good that there are service candidate reps here hearing this and hopefully they can carry that forward. Unfortunately, we have arrived at time. If there are any quick closing remarks from our speakers, now's the time. Mark or Jonathan? Anything to- Thank you very much for having us today. As we mentioned, one of our main goals is to try and improve education and outreach both on the worker side and also on the employer side. We wanna make sure that employers understand what their responsibilities are and we want workers to know what their rights and protections are and that we aren't here to try and help them. So absolutely thank you very much for having us today. Thank you so much. Any last words from Stacy or Fanny? Just thanks for inviting us to speak. It's good to hear just the concerns that are being raised and also perspective from service candidate around how things work on that end. Thank you. Thank you. And Connie, anything to wrap up for me? I think Mark wants to say something to Mark. No. Oh, it's not Mark, sorry. Jonathan. I was looking at Jonathan there. No, I echo what Mark said. Again, thank you so much for this opportunity and we're always open to hearing more about your experiences and feedback and we will make sure to bring it to the right people and bring it to the right tables for the right people too, who can move things forward. Thank you. And thank you so much, Jonathan and Mark, for coming and sharing your presentation and just being part of it to you, to Stacy and Fanny. And to all that are here participating in the conversation and just wanted to say that one, thank you so much. And also to assure you that this is just the beginning of more conversations with Service Canada and other government departments. As you all know, we are funded by Service Canada, by the government to provide support and services to the migrant workers since December until the present. So the relationship, the current relationship and the community partnership with Service Canada is very new, but we bring with us the issues and critique of the different processes and hear the complaints of the workers over the years of our working with them and over the years of our advocacy. And this moment where we have this support and funding and I think we are in the same goal in providing support and services to the workers that I think we are finding a common ground on how we can continue doing this and being more open and transparent and be frank in putting forward the questions and critique that we have keeping in mind that we are not here to antagonize and we are not here as enemies, but rather we are open to finding solutions and further collaboration in addressing these issues and challenges. So I hope that we have more opportunities to be able to do this. I heard Gabriel's point, I share that and so many others. And I hope that over the course of time, we would be really addressing some of the root causes and some of the questions, hard questions that we have had over the years. So again, thank you so much and more webinars and conversations like this coming up. Thank you. I've put in the chat a link to subscribe to the Migra Justice Cairo's email list where we will be posting information about future webinars. We have a few cooking up as we speak. So we look forward to getting the word out about that. And thank you again to all of our speakers and thank you so much for all of your thoughtful questions and comments through this webinar. Please take good care through the day. And when we have a copy of this webinar in Spanish, we will disseminate it to our partners and we will have information through our website and social media as well. So thank you so much and I hope you all have a lovely day.


I'll just point out where Harry Harry is, for those of you who are not familiar with it, it's the west coast of the South Island. Actually, the person that built Upstage is with us here, Douglas, built it for us. When Upstage was built, I was on a dial-up internet connection, so there were really stretch parameters and what we wanted it to do. I just wanted to start a little bit, Harry Harry is where I grew up. I did a lot of travelling and then came back there. I think of myself as an artist visually for most, but I use a lot of digital things. I wanted to start with a bit of a whakapapa of, I guess I'm introducing myself, but also of Ada as a network, because it kind of leads into how we intersect and the kind of coming back to as we alluded to in our little bit that we wrote when we were filling it in. So Ada, it was born in 2003. It is a network. I initially had global in there, but network always means to me global anyway. So it started as an idea and a list and the list still exists. I've got a page that I'll show you later. You can join it. You become a member of Ada basically by joining the list. It's self-selecting. It is curated in that I get a whole lot of emails that I often or primarily, a lot of them currently have to delete. This is where it all began as a research project. The idea then was that, particularly for me, starting to join this list, I was in Harihari, the population, around about 300. I was working in network performance. I was having to describe everything about what I was doing and suddenly through Ada, I found a language and a culture that a whole lot of the stuff that I was doing I didn't have to describe. I had to describe why I was doing it, but I didn't have to describe how and things like that. So this was the first symposium that I actually attended from Harihari. The next one I was lucky enough to go to and we performed at and so the thing about Ada is a national network. So we have these kind of rhizomic activities around the country. I have been doing this for a while now. And it's about actually how the people that are coming to the symposium are interacting with each other. So this was a work called RGB where the delegates all went out and took images of what they thought reflected red, green or blue and it was compiled into a video. It was a really interesting outcome. Ada always gathers around food because it is a really nice way of networking and there's something really good about food. We intersect a lot with other networks. This is Ada at Scans. Upstage and the Avatar body collision, which is a collective I'm part of, was we were resident at Scans and also this is another artist that was resident there, Becca Wood, who's an Ada member. So we're looking at place a lot always in our work, I guess. And again this conglomeration of people where the digital was actually, I don't know if you could actually see it. Ian's on his phone. It's very much around the network, the weaving thing, the connection of the people. So it's Ada's about people coming to New Zealand as well as what New Zealanders are doing and sharing practice. So this is just a quick tour around the country and where Ada has been here in 2009. Ada has been trying to have these reasonably annually and in 2008 Ada formed a trust. So I guess they're starting to talk more about these art practices and the people coming together and really starting to push back out and the artists in the community and setting these discourses for them, particularly around things like the travel and for that one in particular. So Ada is a website, these are some of the projects that Ada's been involved in and unfortunately I don't have a copy of the Ada media reader to show you which was kind of like this amazing snapshot of Aotearoa Digital Artist in 2008 which was launched as part of an exhibition that I see here in Singapore. The touring artist, the Kotawiki, which I'll point that out because it comes up a little bit later on, was a way and it was a piece of software that was a way for people to start to self-select into this archive of Aotearoa Digital Art Works and artists and it was set up in a kind of template way in order for people to start to put their projects in there. Ada takes a kind of a curatorial stance on that I guess in a way but it was a chance for all these people to go, we're here, this is what we're doing. Net Walking was a project that Ada ran bringing the UK artist Simon Pope out and he ran masterclasses all around the country getting people within this network and people who came along to the projects to engage with each other in what he called shoulder-to-shoulder networking so actually walking and talking. The digital is really important but actually the network Aotearoa Digital Artists Network is a really prime driver as well. So a whole lot of the Kotawiki brought together a whole lot of material which was launched in this new website and also the Ada Trust had come about and in 2012 we put together an application for a more organisational focus and looked at the theme of the transitional city in the post earthquake Christchurch. For those of you who are not from New Zealand you should be aware that there's a huge amount of art being created in and around Christchurch for and by Christchurch people but where the media art or art in public space is fitted in there but also thinking about how what was happening there was resonating around the rest of the country as well. So we started off with this round table event that's at the top of the physics room the Heard Street Post Office, Remain Standing, was built in the 30s post the Napier Earthquake and so it had incredible foundations but the rest of Heard Street is gone and at that stage we were looking into the red zone that hadn't been opened then and we brought together a whole lot of Christchurch artist agencies and also the people from the Ada Network to start to talk about how we approached this and so we were talking about the role and the importance and we came up with this sort of concept of space, network and memory that really fitted a lot of the things that people were doing and the kind of work that we knew of the people that might be involved in this and because we as Ada have symposia in North Island and South Island we headed off down to Dunedin to have our first symposia and we had artists creating work specifically for this and talking about works that they were creating in Christchurch or elsewhere and again we engaged in the Ada practice which is a lot around this kind of third space of a whole lot of people together in a room. We had people creating artworks that they made for and engaged with from outside of New Zealand and we had a couple of people coming over who were using very, there was one that is called Long Time No See and they called it a Futuring Tool and it has a paper booklet as a field guide but it also has an app. We also had an artist that did a walk through absent memory so she actually used the internet to research around Dunedin and create this walk that people went on and then she talked about and she wasn't there. She came back this year. All of this is incredibly documented and this is where the... this is where the I Am Sexed Hour really comes in. We've been touring artists as well so Janine Randerson did a work around Christchurch. She does a work based on equality data and she started to try and create a work that looked at Christchurch based on this idea of hope and responding to images. This is a touring artist this year and this is a legacy project which those of you who'd heard James Smithy's talking about seismic he was one of the people that came to the round table. So this is a geolocated auditory work that sits across Christchurch so you can only actually impot into it if you're in Christchurch. You can't impot from outside of Christchurch even if you're a Christchurch person but you can listen to it outside of Christchurch and the idea is that you turn it on and put it in your pocket and walk around and you engage in these levels of Christchurch. It's Christchurch as it was. Christchurch in a snapshot and present and also Christchurch in this speculative future the hopes of people who are in Christchurch or their responses or the children at the moment growing up in Christchurch what they see for the city the ability for people to leave messages for themselves or to play games with this idea of putting bits of audio into space. This was our symposium in Auckland this year so we're trying to build on this idea of space network and memory where it originally created this three-year project that would go around New Zealand and come back to Christchurch. This particular project actually ends this year because we were funded to do it for two years and we did the same thing again in Auckland of getting people out into the Auckland space and we started to look at the social spaces and so the art and public space was a really focus for Dunedin and in Auckland we were starting to look more around architectural and social spaces. We partnered with Digital Outlive to create a work that was shown in the Aotea Square Dan untitled for the Wellingtonians you might know him and he made a robot that saw in 3D and played with the superimposing that images of people in front of it over classic horror genre movies and Auckland scenery. This is Ada currently. We are a website. This is the Wall of Fame. There's a little snapshot of the book that I don't have to show you here but there's a current Ada trustees and the people that have been instrumental in setting it up and have been trustees and we wanted to talk to you about when we wrote our presentation idea we didn't know that we were in the current position we are in now with Ada as an organisation. We had these two speculative projects that we wanted to do and so I'm going to talk about one of it and then Bea gets going to take over and talk about the other. These are really speculative at the moment but one of the things for me I've been interested in community how far to community on a really broad sense in terms of coming from a very small and remote community and looking at this idea of mesh I'm really into the idea of nets and weaving and that connection is really important in good weaving and in good nets and I'm really interested in New Zealand as part of the wider Pacific and so part of the thing I was interested in doing is taking that idea, that space that's created between artists and scientists and researchers and thinkers when they're put together in an environment and for me the most exciting environment is the sea so that was one project that is a watch the space I guess these were the organisations that we were talking to about this and with this and we went Vickie Sarri from ANET and I presented at the USP at a Talanoa for sustainable sailing technology this year in which we started to form some relationships that will hopefully end up being something out of that and now we are over to Bea again. Cool, so I joined ADA last year during the Dunedin Conference and immediately jumped on board because I was so thankful for being a foreigner that has kind of a quirky art practice kind of in the digital analogue programmer designer and coming from Europe to New Zealand I felt really kind of welcomed by the presence of such a network that's in one way open to people like me who are looking for a kind of critical feedback on what I'm doing but also just knowing some people that are around that speak more or less the same language or you don't have to have this 10 minute introduction of I'm doing stuff with computers and hardware hacking but what does it mean what does it have to do with art so that's when I jumped on board and we had like we keep presenting lots of the history and there's kind of a rich amount of works that has been produced in this particular time and the project we were thinking about and that's my more or less the glam question here how can we preserve these works for the future and that's kind of the common question on how to preserve anything and especially digital art and maybe digital art that doesn't even fit into the contemporary frame really well how do you preserve that for future generation if it maybe becomes more relevant later than now so maybe some of my works maybe now are completely weirdly understood by the people which has happened but perhaps there's a way of preserving them or archiving them that in maybe 10 or 20 years someone could look back and understand the contemporary issues with meter and technology better so yeah, with the art base we actually want to reach out not being like this kind of 300 sort of members and member means actually you just subscribe to the mailing list and Vicky accepted you as a non-spam bot so that is already the small threshold of getting into the like Aida network so we were thinking we have this amount of people that are kind of willing to open up share their works, share their ideas and thoughts and discuss and give critical feedback so we have kind of the links and that's how our talk is called links and cables, bricks and mortar because when we were discussing that whole glam sector we were thinking we are kind of with the art base where we want to actually preserve and present all these works to maybe even international audience that they are like, yeah, we are both a gallery we're a library in one sense because we have like lots of written text lots of discourse also in the mailing list archives archive and museum but the only thing we don't have is like a building, like a library with a signage saying Aida network we are kind of more ephemeral on top of that whole construct so all the conferences that Vicky showed were kind of in collaboration with some sort of either academic institution or with some sort of archive or museum so we have these connections somehow that flow between the buildings and we think that we have the network that could be kind of creating more discourse in these buildings that seem to maybe gotten a bit empty and lonely since the internet took over and people don't really have to literally walk somewhere to get information but Aida generation who didn't use the internet to actually only like reach out and find people and see okay there is someone else on the same time on the other side of the planet and we could technically talk to this person that kind of magic of the internet has kind of faded and we felt that now being more in this fringy art scene it's more important to have this connection to like local artists and use the internet more to say like hey we're having a thing going on and I'm able to contact Vicky with Nelson come to Wellington let's do it and that's kind of the thing that we're more interested in like hanging out in the meat space is like way more productive and way more social space where really things can happen so I think like one day spending at the symposium is much better than trying to kind of do some Skype things. We have board meetings over Skype and like the technology always takes over in the moment so yeah that's how we see ourselves fit into the glam sector but not really being one or the other and totally not being buildings we were thinking about how the art base could actually like technologically work and what actually should we present and how again this metadata and taking question and curating content and censoring content yes no so we're thinking that we want a certain open space but curated in the other way so not everyone should kind of declare any piece part of the digital art archive of New Zealand so there should be some kind of human judgement put on top of that to maybe create collections and ask for certain contributions also from people who might be not in the network yet and there is funnily enough the archive of digital art I think people from Austria did that and they're also called ADA so they already have a really nice archive of general the digital arts and they have like a whole collection of bibliographies and documentation so it's really broad and huge but we really want to focus on the more local aspect and then there's also the Marcel Network I don't know if anyone knows it that's like from a French old academic dude called Don Forester and he's really great he's been thinking about this for I think longer than I live and how to really connect artists on a global level and he found his whole ontology and I think ANET is also part of it the organisation can be part of it and I've having Skype discussions with him and he's really interested in using the internet as a non-commercial space so everyone knows every click you do and every step you take online on the most like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn will all be kind of commodified and he's really one of the persons who has the capability and kind of academic background to be able to really build a network from scratch that's really for artists and not kind of only on the superficial part creating some creative discourse and in the back end there's all this ad tracking surveillance and free speech problems and one other project from like one of my ex teachers in Rotterdam it's called Lurk so they're kind of the sketching the post mailing list scenario and we have a mailing list which is great but probably it's not the newest thing that you can sell to the kids they don't really like email that much and it's actually kind of even the kind of threshold of having to define a subject to communicate to a crowd seems to be the biggest issue because on Facebook you can just say law and everyone is with you but you can't really write law to the mailing list so you really think okay I have to really focus myself and to spell checks twice and three times and really think really hard that don't come across like more like too banal or non-academic so we're thinking that the mailing list is a good thing because it is hosted by the university not by Facebook so all the information is sort of safe and it's free speech, non-sensor that sort of things but still it's not on top medium at the moment so I also found this really interesting article in RISOM where Mark Zuckerberg says law somehow became chief archivist for a body of contemporary art criticism and in the later post he says made the data I don't care and he's kind of making fun that there was this post by Michael Hebron that kind of sparked a really critical discussion about the artwork and I think racism come up and feminism like all these really issues and there are more than 500 or 800 comments, 850 comments and it got really like deep on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg was kind of making fun of it so like look even the artists are kind of creating discourse on my stupid website and I'm not interested in it so we're thinking how can you create an interface that invites people to pop out their opinions and feel kind of invited to just say lol or whatever but still have it in our hands not in Facebook's hands so dragon Espinciaid who is a partner of Oly Li Elina and he's also responsible for archiving all the geocities or deconstructing the whole geocities archive he calls himself I think a digital preserver or archivist or something but he had the idea of making like a sort of proxy service that you could connect to Facebook like use Facebook, the whole interface make use of it but connect via proxy so that the proxy actually kind of catches the whole documentation or the whole communication between you and Facebook and then you actually have to control to match the dag and however you want to do document and archive this whole discussion so we think that's great but I haven't seen any working product it should be a Firefox plugin so I don't have a day about it so we also have a Facebook page but as I said that's not the ideal situation so we were thinking there are lots of great open source software projects like Koho because we were the last night discussing maybe we're even more kind of could act the archive more like a library because archive sounds like a box that's put down and close the door and that's it and a library sounds more like people come and engage with it maybe we could make a system where artists could propose to put their artworks into the system and galleries and curators and museums and whoever could look into the archive and actually rent the artworks and display them and then you could actually use the system to say okay Bronwyn's work is in there but you could say it's on loan by some great library that you found and then you could actually see can I acquire the artwork and how so maybe creating more like a dialogue aesthetic thing like this is an archive done but kind of more like how can you get it and if there's digital work maybe you could directly download it and the system keeps kind of track how often has it been downloaded but not like tracking you and then saying people who downloaded this artwork also would like that artwork sort of stuff so in the end that's a picture from Aida Symposium in Auckland and that they know that we keep a text that is friendly, weirdos so I think that just wants to show like that's kind of a cool picture of the symposium two minutes I'm more sort of down, I mean that's kind of the overview of a few people who are trying to geek out on a laptop with a, this was a strange workshop someone like the data sets and put them into wallpapers yeah but it was fun so yeah we are kind of open I don't know where is the, is there a slide with sign up? yeah but there's the website and you can click on whatever and then you can sign up to the mailing list so we are really kind of trying to use the mailing list as the backbone for the system but trying to develop in different directions and also being more accessible to the glam sector to see how great people we are and how we could contribute to your culture thanks so much I think we've got a couple of minutes so does anybody have any questions at all for the Ada Ada Fook Jay so thank you very much for that very interesting journey through Ada and where you guys are what do you want in your network that is an artist, are you looking for other resources what do you need well you know in our resource like one of the things we were thinking about was you know these like physical sites for hosting these kind of events and more you know the effort that goes into a symposia and the gathering together of people that are vitally important and all the thinking that goes on before it is you know huge and great but also actually able to have these kind of faster smaller you know more I guess exhibition focused but also like you know real workshopping hackerspace and both the Dunedin and the Auckland one we had these maker sessions, skill shares and you know that kind of aspect we have really resisted the bricks and mortar having a place where we exist because it you know things automatically start to centralise north and really you know just to keep that real national global network but you know money is another good one, affiliate programs we do have a really really exciting and broad range of people who are involved in AIDA so people that are you know within institutions like you know actually the kind of the aid in this for one of other way to describe it you know being able to take that out and actually within institutions as well just other ways to you know to I guess think from different perspectives you know letting go of institutional structures and plugging in a few kind of friendly weirdos and seeing what will come out of these institutions you know brought in your slide to the other night where you said when you let things go strange things haven't good things surprisingly good strange things can happen but you know the thing of you know because there's all these amazing skill sets in the room here but also you know I guess sometimes a different approach as well yeah but money infrastructure infrastructure not so much money no, not so much money I'm on the at this point I'd like to say that we have been massively supported by CNZ and institutions who have hosted us and galleries who have hosted us so we are you know we are really lucky in that respect yeah OK I think we might wrap it up because afternoon tea time but thanks so much for coming everyone and thank you for our presenters


This paper proposes a deep learning-based framework for detecting and counting oil palm trees from high-resolution remote-sensing images. The authors trained a CNN model on manually interpreted samples and then applied it to the entire dataset. This resulted in a 96% accuracy rate, which was significantly higher than the other four methods tested. This article was authored by Wei Jili, Huang Fu, Liu, and others.


So there's some breaking news coming out of America, some word out of the American government regarding Djokovic's exemption to be allowed to play in America in the coming months, Indian Wells and Miami of course, are coming up in March, but we've got some word coming out of Florida and the US Senator from Florida saying that he might have been denied his exemption. Let's go have a look at it. This is what Rick Scott, the US Senator for Florida, had to say over on Twitter. We have been told that DHS Gov just denied Novak Djokovic's vaccine waiver request making him ineligible to compete in the US next week in California and in the Miami open. Joe Biden must fix this now, grant the waiver and allow him to compete here in the States. So there it is, that is the first sign of anything saying that Djokovic is not allowed to play in the States. We know that he applied for an exemption, he was already not allowed to play due to being unvaccinated, but this is the first sign we've actually seen of a result for the exemption and it's not confirmed yet. We haven't got any confirmation by Djokovic or the tournaments or the US government outside of the Senator from Florida, but this is not a good sign for Djokovic in his quest to play over March and of course his world number one ranking is at stake as well. Elkres somehow wins Indian Wells and maybe wins Miami. Let me know down in the comments below. What do you reckon? Should Djokovic be able to play? Is this the wrong decision? Because of course he is allowed to play at the US Open at the end of the year when things start to change in the next couple of months, but as of right now the rules say he can't play and it looks like his exemption has been denied.