Event Details

Thursday, October 8, 2015
Location: Earl and Jennie Lohn Floor Policy Room 7000 at Harbour Centre
8:15-9:00 Registration and Continental Breakfast

9:00-9:45 Welcome and Introduction
Leo McGrady and Gary Teeple

Leo McGrady – Thursday morning facilitator

9:45 – 10:30 Sibel Ataogul, Lawyer at Melançon Marceau Grenier Sciortino, s.e.n.c.

“Migrant Agricultural Workers and Labour Relations in Quebec”

10:30-10:45 Break

10:45-11:30 Naveen P. Mehta, Lawyer, Director, Human Rights, Equity and Diversity,
United Food & Commercial Workers Canada

“Migrants: Strategic Organizing of Ultra – Precarious Workers”

11:30-12:15 Lynne Fernandez, Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues, Canadian Centre
for Policy Alternatives, Manitoba
“The Call for a Temporary Foreign Worker National Advocacy
Coalition”

12:15-1:15 Catered Lunch

Gary Teeple - Thursday afternoon facilitator

1:15-2:00 Yessy Byl, Northern Alberta Educator in Human Rights Education for
the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Center

“The Temporary Foreign Workers Program From an Albertan
Perspective”

2:00-2:15 Break

2:15-3:00 Kaity Cooper, Lawyer for the Hospital Employees’ Union, and
Jodie Gauthier, Lawyer who practices in the areas of labour, human
rights, disability and workers’ compensation law

“Bringing Up BC: The Negative Impacts of the Temporary Foreign
Workers Program on Vulnerable Workers and Proposals for
Regional Action”

3:00-3:45 Natalie Drolet, West Coast Domestic Workers Association

“Caregivers and Labour Rights in BC: Barriers to Decent Work”

3:45-5:00 Wrap-up – discussion
Friday, October 9
8:15-9:00 Continental Breakfast

Gary Teeple - Friday morning facilitator

9:00-9:45 Arthur Read, General Counsel, Friends of Farmworkers, Inc.

“Temporary Migrant Workers: Workers Rights to Organize:
Strategies and Perspectives from the US Experience”

9:45-10:30 Adriana Paz Ramirez, Justicia for Migrant Workers

“Embodying and Experiencing Labour Apartheid”

10:30-10:45 Break

10:45-11:30 Patricia O'Hagan, Dean, Health Sciences, University of Hawaii, and
Leo McGrady, Lawyer at McGrady and Company

“Health Issues Under Canada-Sponsored Migrant Worker
Indentureship”

11:30-12:15 Mia Reimers has worked at the Centre of Constitutional Studies at the
University of Alberta and McGrady & Company in Vancouver

“Seeking International Human Rights Law Protection for
Temporary Foreign Workers in Canada”

Catered Lunch

Gary Teeple - Friday afternoon facilitator

1:15-2:15 Documentary Film:
Min Sook Lee Canadian filmmaker and Assistant Professor at the
Ontario College of Art and Design University, and award winning
Director of El Contrato, a documentary about Mexican migrant
agricultural workers in Canada. Showing of excerpts from Min Sook's
work-in progress - her new documentary film: Migrant Dreams: about
migrant women who ‘work in hotels cleaning rooms, greenhouses
tending flowers, factories sorting fruit, in the fields picking worms and
as health care providers.’

2:15-2:30 Break

2:30-3:30 Panel Discussion: Meaning, Implications, and Future of Temporary
Foreign Worker Programs

Panelists: Kendra Strauss, Gerardo Otero, Brett Matthews

3:30-4:00 Closing Remarks: David Fairey, union researcher and advocate

4:00 Final words: Leo McGrady and Gary Teeple