HawkTel
Terms of service

The rules, written to be checked

These terms are the agreement between you and HawkTel. They are written in plain language on purpose, and there is no small print: every limit is stated next to the promise it limits. If anything here does not match what the product does, tell us — one of the two is wrong.

Last updated 20 August 2026

In short

  • The serviceHawkTel connects you with independent professionals. They give the advice. We are not a law firm and give no advice of our own.
  • The priceA session has one price, shown before you commit. Nothing on HawkTel is ever billed by the minute.
  • The roomNo audio is ever recorded. If you both agree in the room, a written record of the session is produced after it ends — the expert approves it before you receive it, and either of you can withdraw, which deletes it.
  • VerifiedWe checked the expert’s registration number against the public register, and we recorded who checked it and when. That is the whole claim — no more and no less.
  • Your rightsNothing in these terms takes away a right that Canadian or Ontario law gives you. Where a clause below and the law disagree, the law wins. Section 24 says so at length.

1. What these terms are

These terms are an agreement between you and HawkTel Innovative Solution, of Toronto, Ontario, Canada (“HawkTel”, “we”, “us”). They apply whenever you use this site — browsing it, joining the waitlist, booking a consultation, calling an expert, registering for or attending a seminar, or holding an account. Part B, at the end, adds terms that apply only to experts.

You accept these terms by using the service. Ontario’s law on electronic commerce recognises an agreement made this way: booking a session, pressing a call button, or creating an account is your acceptance, and no signature on paper is needed. Each booking you make is governed by the terms as they read on the day you make it — see section 23.

Your personal information is governed by the privacy notice, which is a separate document and the operative one for that subject.

2. Definitions

These words carry the same meaning everywhere in these terms:

  • Client — a person who books, calls, or attends in order to get help. “You” means you in whichever role you are using the service.
  • Expert — an independent professional listed on HawkTel who offers sessions. Experts are not our employees; see section 5.
  • Session — a consultation, an instant call, or a seminar.
  • Consultation — a private session between one client and one expert, booked for a scheduled time.
  • Instant call — a consultation that starts now, begun by pressing a call button on an expert’s profile while they are available.
  • Seminar — a session one expert presents to an audience of registered attendees.
  • Booking reference — the short code issued when a booking or registration is made. It is what admits you to your session; see section 4.
  • Room — the live video session in your browser, run on media servers we operate.
  • Record — the written record of a consultation described in section 13: machine transcription, and machine translation into English, produced after the session ends. Its accuracy limits are in section 12.
  • Verified — the specific, limited claim defined in section 7, and nothing more.

3. Who may use HawkTel

You must be at least 18 years old — the age of majority in Ontario — and legally able to enter a contract, to create an account, make a booking, or call an expert. We do not collect a date of birth and nothing in the product checks one: we rely on this statement being true when you book.

If you are under 18 and need the help this service offers, ask an adult — a parent, a guardian, or a settlement worker — to make the booking and to be with you in the session.

4. Accounts, passwords, and the booking reference

An account is optional. You can book a consultation or attend a seminar without one. If you create one, keep your password to yourself: you are responsible for what is done with your account by anyone you gave the password to. Your password is stored only as a hash — we cannot read it, and we will never ask you for it by email or in a session.

Changing your password signs out every other device. If you believe somebody else is inside your account, changing the password is the thing that removes them — it takes effect on their next request, not whenever their session would have expired.

Your booking reference is what admits you to your session. That is deliberate: a consultation can be booked without an account, and demanding one at the door would exclude the people this service exists for. The reference is generated from cryptographically secure randomness, using an alphabet chosen so it can be read down a phone line — it is not guessable in any casual sense. But it is a bearer credential: anyone who has it can enter your session, see its status, and end an instant call made with it.

So you agree to treat the reference like a ticket. Do not post it, do not send it to anyone who is not joining the session, and if you lose it or believe someone else has it, write to us at [email protected] before the session and a person will deal with it. A consultation room holds two people and no more, enforced by the media server — so a stranger who used your reference first is a thing you would notice, and a thing you should report.

5. What HawkTel is — and what it is not

HawkTel connects people to independent professionals. The experts are not our employees, partners or agents. They set their own prices, their own availability, and they give their own advice. Nothing in these terms, and nothing in how the product works, creates an employment, agency or partnership relationship between HawkTel and any expert.

When you consult an expert, the professional relationship — lawyer and client, consultant and client, adviser and advised — is between you and that expert alone. We are not a party to it, we do not supervise it, and we do not review what is said in it.

HawkTel is not a law firm, not an immigration consultancy, and not a licensed professional of any kind. Nothing on this site, and nothing we write to you, is legal, immigration, financial or tax advice from us.

6. Immigration advice is restricted by law

Under section 91 of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, only three groups of people may give Canadian immigration advice or representation for a fee: members of a provincial or territorial law society, members of the Chambre des notaires du Québec, and consultants registered with the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants (CICC). This is the single most important rule on this page, and everything in this section exists because of it.

6.1 What the software enforces

On HawkTel, a profile in the immigration category cannot appear in the directory, cannot take a booking, and cannot be called — not even for a free call — until a person on our staff has checked its licence number against the public register of the body that issued it. This is enforced by the software, not by policy: the same gate sits in front of the directory, the booking form, and the call button.

6.2 What that enforcement is not

The gate checks a licence once, at verification. Nothing re-checks it afterwards — section 7 says what that means for you. And the gate cannot hear what is said inside a session: we do not monitor, record or supervise conversations, so we cannot and do not promise that everything said in every session stays on the right side of the legal line.

6.3 If an expert crosses the line

Our position is this. An expert who gives immigration advice they are not licensed to give — in any category, in any session, paid or unpaid — is in breach of these terms. If we learn of it, from you or from anyone else, we may suspend or remove the profile at once, and we may inform the regulator that issued (or should have issued) their licence. If you believe it has happened in your session, tell us at [email protected] — a person reads that mailbox and will answer.

6.4 Seminars

A seminar is general information, not advice about your own situation. This is said on the seminar page and again in the room. Do not act on your own file — your own application, your own status, your own deadline — on the strength of a seminar alone; that is what a consultation with a licensed professional is for.

7. What “verified” means — and what it does not

We check the registration number an expert gives us against the register of the body that issued it, and we record who on our staff checked it and when.

Verification means exactly this: at the time of the check, that number appeared on that public register. It does not mean we endorse the advice. It does not mean the professional carries insurance. It does not mean the licence is still in good standing today. It does not mean we have supervised anything.

Nothing re-checks a licence after the first time. A registration that lapses later will still show as verified here. The registration number is on the expert’s profile so you can check the register yourself — and for anything that matters, you should.

We do not ask for a scan of anybody’s licence. The register is a stronger check than a document, and it means we hold nothing sensitive.

8. Booked sessions

A booked session has one price for the whole session, never a rate per minute. The price is copied onto your booking at the moment you book, so an expert changing their rate afterwards does not change what you agreed.

Per-minute billing was considered and rejected. A conversation held across a language barrier is slower — people repeat themselves, people confirm what they heard — so a meter would charge you more for the language you speak. That is the opposite of what this company is for.

9. Instant calls

An expert may offer a call that starts now. They choose one of three price shapes, and none of them is a meter.

  • FreeNo charge, however long the call runs.
  • One priceA single price for the call, whatever its length.
  • Free, then one priceSome minutes free, then a single price for the rest. The free minutes apply to your first answered call with that expert, not to every call — and the button says so.

Every shape gives you the number that matters before you press anything: the most this call can cost. It is stated on the button, and it is the most you will ever owe for that call.

A call costs nothing until somebody answers. It rings for 45 seconds. If it is not answered, or the expert declines, there is no charge and no obligation on either side. An expert may decline any call — declining is not a breach of anything — and may waive the charge for a call that already happened.

Free minutes count once per client, not once per call. We recognise you by the email address you give when you call. If you have already had an answered call with that expert, the next one is charged from the start, and the button says so before you press it. Giving a different address to reset your free minutes is a breach of section 17.

An expert takes one live call at a time. If they are already on one, you are told they are busy rather than being put in a queue. “Busy — book a time” is an answer you can act on now; a queue is waiting with no idea how long, and then very possibly being missed anyway.

When a call ends, the amount it came to — under the shape that was on the button — is recorded against the booking. While payment is switched off, which is its current state, nothing is charged and no card is on file to charge. If we ask you to pay a recorded amount, we will write to you and say how. See section 15 for what changes when payment is switched on.

10. In the room

Your microphone, camera and screen share are yours. Nothing is ever switched on for you by anybody else. In a seminar, being given the floor enables a button on your screen; it does not open your microphone.

In a seminar the presenter holds the floor. You may put a hand up, and the presenter may pass you the microphone and take it back. Both are permissions held on our media server, not requests to your browser — a modified client cannot speak in a room it has not been let into.

Written questions in a seminar go to the presenter alone, never to the rest of the room. This is enforced twice: the message is addressed to the presenter when it is sent, and every attendee’s room drops anything that did not come from the presenter. That is deliberate, and it is about you: what somebody asks a professional is often about their own permit, their own money or their own family, and a public chat is how that reaches strangers. The presenter can open and close written questions for everyone at once; closing them does not cut off somebody who is already speaking.

Two things in a room do carry your name, and you should know them before you speak. The name you booked or registered with is your name in the room, visible to the people in it. And if you are given the floor in a seminar and speak, the whole room hears you under that name — that is what asking a question in front of an audience means.

Messages are not saved. They exist only for the people in the room at the time and are gone when it closes. Nothing produces a transcript of them.

11. When a room is open

A session room opens 15 minutes before a booked start and closes 30 minutes after the end. An instant call runs for at most 120 minutes. A consultation room holds two people and no more, enforced by the media server itself, not by the link being hard to guess.

12. The record is machine transcription and machine translation

Where a written record is produced under section 13, its lines are machine transcription running on our own hardware, and the translation in it is machine translation. It is good enough to follow a conversation, and not good enough to act on a number, a name or a date without confirming it with the other person. You accept that a machine-transcribed or machine-translated line can be wrong, incomplete or missing, and you agree not to treat it as the authoritative account of what was said — the person who said it is.

The record’s translation is not a certified translation and must not be used as one — not in a court, not in an application, not in any filing.

Translation is produced into English only, and only in the record — one way. Nothing is transcribed or translated while a session runs, and nothing renders the expert’s English in the client’s language. A language the product cannot yet transcribe is not offered: we do not deliver a translation nobody can stand behind.

13. No audio is recorded. A written record, only if you both ask for one

There is no audio or video recording feature anywhere in the product — not off by default, not present at all. No copy of the speech in a session is ever kept: where a record was consented to under this section, audio is processed to produce it and then destroyed.

A consultation can produce a written record, and only on two yeses. Each of you is asked in the room, separately, before anything is kept. Nothing is written down until the second person has agreed, and either of you can take it back at any moment — taking it back deletes what has been kept, rather than merely stopping the rest.

The record is produced after the session ends, not during it: the audio is processed on our own hardware to build it, and is not kept. It is machine transcription, with everything section 12 says about its accuracy, and a line spoken in a language the transcription is weaker at is marked as such rather than presented as certain.

The expert reads it first. They may remove any line and must approve it before the client receives anything. That is deliberate: a professional is answerable for what is written under their name, and a verbatim transcript released without their reading it would be a liability rather than a service. Until they approve, the client has nothing.

A record is kept for 90 days from the session and then deleted. Seminars never produce one. The privacy notice says more, and it is the operative document.

If you intend to make your own recording with your own device, tell the other person before you start. Recording someone without telling them is a breach of section 17, whatever the law of your province says about it.

14. Prices, currency and taxes

Prices are in Canadian dollars unless the profile shows another currency. The price shown before you commit is the amount charged — nothing is added at checkout today. If sales tax must be charged on a session, the total including tax will be shown before you commit, not discovered afterwards.

15. Payment

Payment is currently switched off. No page on this site takes a card. A booking made today is recorded, nothing is charged, and every page that touches money says so. This section describes what the product does the day payment is switched on, because these terms have to stay true across that day.

When payment is on: your card is charged when the booking is made, not held until the session. An earlier version of this site promised the money would be held until the session finished; that describes a card authorisation, which expires after about seven days, and consultations are booked further ahead than that. The promise was withdrawn rather than quietly broken.

Card details are entered on the payment provider’s own page (Stripe) and never pass through our servers — we never see the number. A booking is marked paid only when the payment provider confirms it to us over a signed channel, never by a page you can type into a browser.

Experts are paid by hand. No page on this site asks anybody for a bank number. If a page ever does, it is not ours.

16. Cancellation, refunds and chargebacks

Cancellations and refunds are handled by writing to us at [email protected]. There is no self-service cancellation button. At our current size that is a person replying to you, and saying so is better than a button that files a request nobody reads. There is no fixed cancellation fee schedule yet; until there is one, each request is handled by hand.

Two promises we make now, and will keep by hand until they are software: if the expert does not attend a consultation you paid for, you will be refunded in full. And if we cancel a session, anything you paid for it comes back to you in full.

An instant call that nobody answered, or that the expert declined, costs nothing — there is nothing to refund. An expert may also waive the charge for a call that happened, in which case nothing is owed for it.

If you dispute a charge with your card issuer, tell us as well — we answer disputes honestly, with the booking record, and most of them are faster to fix by writing to us first. A chargeback filed for a session you attended, to avoid paying for it, is a breach of section 17.

Nothing in this section takes away a cancellation or refund right the law itself gives you — including any right Ontario’s consumer protection legislation gives a consumer who buys at a distance. Where this section and that law disagree, the law wins.

17. Acceptable use

Using HawkTel, you agree not to:

  • give, or offer to give, advice you are not licensed to give where the law restricts it — section 6 is the one that matters most;
  • use a session to harass, threaten, deceive or defraud anyone, or for any unlawful purpose;
  • record a session, by any means, without telling the other person first;
  • enter, or attempt to enter, a session that is not yours, or use a booking reference that was not issued to you;
  • share your booking reference with anyone who is not joining your session, or post it anywhere public;
  • misrepresent who you are, use another person’s identity, or give a different email address to reset free minutes you have already used;
  • probe, overload, scrape or interfere with the service, or attempt to bypass a permission the media server has not given you;
  • file a chargeback for a session you attended in order to avoid paying for it.

We may suspend or remove an account or a profile for a breach of this section — see section 22.

18. Intellectual property

The site — its text, design, name and marks — belongs to HawkTel. You may not copy it or pass it off as yours.

What is said in a session belongs to the people who said it. HawkTel claims no ownership of anything said, shown or written in a room. Where you have both agreed to a written record under section 13, we hold that copy in order to give it to you and for no other purpose — we do not license it, publish it, or use it to train anything. Notes you take during your session are yours. Advice an expert gives you is theirs to give and yours to use for your own situation.

An expert grants us permission to display, on their profile and in the directory, the information they give us for that purpose — their name, credentials, registration number, languages, prices and description. Part B says more.

If you send us feedback about the service, we may use it to improve the service without owing you anything for it.

19. What we do not promise

We promise to run the platform — the directory, the booking, the room, the record — with reasonable care and skill. We do not promise that:

  • an expert will be available at any particular time, accept your call, or accept you as a client;
  • the advice an expert gives you is correct, complete, or right for your situation — it is theirs, not ours, and section 5 is the whole of our relationship to it;
  • a session will be free of technical failure — a call can drop, a network can fail on either side, and a record’s machine transcription or translation can be wrong or incomplete;
  • using the service will produce any particular outcome for your application, claim, finances or status.

Where a session fails because our platform failed, section 16 is the remedy: write to us, and a person will put the money right. And this section does not exclude anything the law does not let us exclude — Ontario consumer protection law implies certain promises about services supplied to a consumer, and nothing here removes them.

20. Limits on our liability

To the extent the law allows it, HawkTel’s total liability to you for any claim arising out of the service is limited to the greater of: the amount you paid HawkTel for the session the claim arises from, and $100 Canadian dollars. To the same extent, we are not liable for indirect losses — lost income, lost opportunity, or losses flowing from a decision made on advice an expert gave you or on a line the machine transcribed or translated in a record.

The limits above do not apply to liability for fraud or deliberate wrongdoing by us, to anything the law does not allow us to limit, or to any right Ontario’s consumer protection legislation — or the consumer law of the province where you live — preserves for you as a consumer. If part of this section reaches further than the law allows, that part is read down to what the law allows, and the rest stands.

21. Your responsibility to us

If your unlawful act, or your deliberate breach of these terms, causes a third party to bring a claim against HawkTel, you agree to compensate us for what that claim reasonably costs us. This section never applies to your ordinary use of the service as a consumer, and never requires you to cover us for our own fault.

22. Suspension and removal

An expert may decline any client. HawkTel may suspend or remove a profile or an account — for a breach of these terms, for a legal requirement such as section 6, or because we can no longer stand behind a verification. Neither party owes the other a session that has not happened; anything you paid for a session that will now not happen because we acted comes back to you under section 16.

At our current size, a problem is handled by a conversation — write to us and a person will answer. There is no automated moderation system, and we do not pretend otherwise.

23. How these terms change

We will change these terms from time to time, and the date at the top changes with them. What we will not do is change the terms of an agreement you have already made: a booking is governed by the terms as they read on the day you made it, and a consumer agreement cannot be rewritten under you after the fact. New terms apply to new bookings and to your continued use of the service after they are posted.

If a change matters — money, rights, or what happens to your information — we will say so plainly on this page rather than rely on you noticing a date.

24. Governing law, courts, and your statutory rights

These terms are governed by the laws of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. Disputes belong in the courts of Ontario — except that nothing in this paragraph moves a consumer out of any court, tribunal or class proceeding the law entitles them to use, and nothing in it stops you relying on the consumer protection law of the province where you live.

These terms contain no arbitration requirement and no waiver of class proceedings, because against a consumer in Ontario such clauses are not worth the screen they are printed on — the law makes them unenforceable, and we would rather write the enforceable truth. Nor do these terms shorten any limitation period the law gives you.

25. Complaints, and where to go beyond us

Start with us: [email protected]. A person reads it and a person answers. If we do not resolve it, you can go further, and you do not need our permission to:

  • Consumer complaints — Consumer Protection Ontario, the consumer protection arm of the Ontario government, or the consumer protection authority of your own province.
  • Privacy complaints — the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada; the privacy notice lists the provincial regulators too.
  • Complaints about an expert’s professional conduct — the body that licenses them: their law society, the Chambre des notaires du Québec, or the College of Immigration and Citizenship Consultants. The registration number on their profile is what you will need.

26. The small print, in plain words

  • Notices. We write to you at the email address you gave us. You write to us at [email protected]. A notice is given when it is sent, unless it bounces.
  • Severability. If a clause here is found unenforceable, it is read down to what is enforceable — or cut, if it cannot be — and the rest of these terms stand.
  • Assignment. You may not transfer your agreement with us to someone else. We may transfer ours only as part of a sale or reorganisation of the business, only to someone who takes on these same obligations to you, and we will tell you if it happens.
  • Entire agreement. These terms and the privacy notice are the whole of the standing agreement between us. This does not exclude anything — and the law would not let it exclude anything — we said to persuade you to use the service.
  • No waiver. If we let a breach pass once, we have not agreed to let it pass again.
  • Language. These terms are written in English. If we ever publish a translation, it is for convenience and the English text governs — unless the law of your province says otherwise for you.

Part B — additional terms for experts

This part applies to you only if you offer sessions on HawkTel. It adds to Part A; where the two differ for an expert, this part governs. A separate, signed expert agreement will eventually replace this part. It does not exist yet — until it does, this part is the agreement.

B1. You are independent

You are an independent professional, not our employee, agent or partner. You set your own prices, your own availability, and your own instant-call terms. The advice you give is yours: you are responsible for its quality, for your professional obligations, and for carrying whatever insurance your profession requires. HawkTel does not direct, supervise or review your advice.

B2. Your licence is your responsibility

Everything you tell us during onboarding must be true. If you practise in a regulated category, you must hold the licence the law requires, and you must tell us at once if it lapses, is suspended, or is restricted — because nothing in the product re-checks it, your telling us is the only way the “verified” mark stays honest, and we can only stand behind what we know. Trading on a verification you know to be stale is a breach of this agreement and, in a regulated category, very possibly of the law.

You must stay inside the boundaries of your licence in every session, including the boundary in section 6. In a seminar, keep to general information — the moment you address one attendee’s own situation, you are giving advice, with everything that implies for your profession.

B3. What you let us display

You grant us permission to display your name, photograph if you give one, credentials, registration number, languages, prices, availability and profile description on the site and in the directory, for as long as your profile is listed. You can ask us to change or unlist your profile at any time by writing to us.

B4. Money

Clients pay HawkTel; HawkTel pays you. Payouts are made by hand, on a cadence agreed with you, until volume justifies automating them. No page on this site will ever ask you for a bank number — payout details are arranged directly with us, off the site. You are responsible for your own taxes on what we pay you.

You may decline any call and any client — declining is not a breach of anything. You may waive the charge for a call that already happened; a waived call pays you nothing. While payment is switched off, sessions are recorded but no money moves in either direction, and the earnings page in your studio says so.

B5. The client’s information

What a client tells you to prepare for a session — including the note on a booking — is given to you for that session. Treat it under your own professional confidentiality obligations, and do not use it for anything else.

B6. Leaving

You may leave at any time by writing to us; we unlist your profile and settle anything owed. We may suspend or unlist your profile under section 22, and will always tell you why.

Contact

HawkTel Innovative Solution, Toronto, Canada. [email protected]