PSC Privacy Policy

WHAT IS PERSONAL INFORMATION?

We define “Personal Information” as any information, recorded in any form, about an identified individual, or an individual whose identity may be inferred or determined from the information. This Policy does not cover business contact information (e.g. name, title, business address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address) when used for business purposes, or aggregated data from which the identity of an individual cannot be determined. PSC retains the right to use business contact information and aggregated data in any way that it determines appropriate.

WHAT PERSONAL INFORMATION DO WE COLLECT?

PSC collects Personal Information about Members and non-Members provided in writing, including via electronic media, verbally over the telephone or in person.

WEBSITE VISITORS

A visitor to PSC’s website (www.psc-gpc.ca) is not required to reveal any information such as name, street address or telephone number. We do not passively collect this information by electronic means. To access and use the Members-only and exclusive portions of the site, Members need to provide certain Personal Information. We will only use this Personal Information to provide our benefits, services and information to Members.

MEMBERSHIP APPLICATIONS, EVENT REGISTRATION AND SURVEYS

We collect information when a person voluntarily completes an online membership application form or other application form, event registration or online survey. We may collect information regarding speakers and conference attendees, including contact information, biographies, photos, and accommodations. We collect, use or disclose this information in a manner consistent with this Policy. We also collect email addresses during the online membership application process, but you may indicate that you do not wish to receive unsolicited electronic communications from us. We comply with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation with respect to the sending of commercial electronic messages.

Member Benefits

When a person wishes to utilize certain benefits like PSC’S WebMap System, PSC may require both personal and business information: We collect this information for the delivery of services purposes. In addition, we may use this information for future marketing and communications purposes. You may opt-out of such use of your information by sending an email request to michelle@psc-gpc.ca or removing the permission from your member profile or the membership application.

SECTION ACTIVITIES: ELECTIONS, AWARDS AND VOLUNTEERS

We may collect Personal Information for the purpose of conducting voting for elections and on resolutions that may include your opinions and choices regarding individuals and issues. We may also collect Personal Information in order to nominate award and honors recipients, including your views regarding nominees and recipients and others’ views about you if you are nominated. We also collect Personal Information that is necessary to run our volunteer programs including appointments to committees, mentorship programs, and other volunteer programs.

COLLECTION OF INFORMATION THROUGH OUR WEBSITES AND ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

We may collect information about your use of our benefits, services or website(s) when you use our benefits, or register for, interact with, or use our services or website(s), contact us for information, or respond to emails, newsletters, or promotional or information communications. By accessing and browsing our website(s), you agree that we may collect, use and disclose any information we collect about you through our website(s) as described in this Policy. Our web server automatically collects visitor information in the form of the visitor’s domain or Internet Protocol (IP) address, as well as information about the pages being accessed, the date and time of your visit to our websites, the documents that you downloaded, the searches you performed, and the website you were on prior to visiting our website(s). We use this information to better serve visitors by managing our sites, diagnosing any technical problems, and improving the content of our website(s). We may also track your activity on other websites or social media platforms that you visit after leaving PSC website for the purposes of delivering advertising campaigns that may be of interest to you. For information on how you may opt-out of the collection of such information, please contact us (see Contact Information below). For the transfer and receipt of certain types of sensitive information such as financial information, visitors will be re-directed to a secure server and will be notified through a pop-up screen on the site.

WHY PSC MAY COLLECT PERSONAL INFORMATION

PSC uses only fair and lawful methods to collect Personal Information. We collect certain information from you for the purposes of fulfilling our objectives and mandate. These purposes include:

• Communicating with our membership and determining their needs
• Providing benefits, services and information to Members
• Conducting voting for elections of individuals to volunteer positions and for resolution voting
• Managing our events and your participation in them including by determining and carrying out your accommodation, dietary and other needs
• Making various awards available to members including through nomination processes
• Permitting affiliated organizations and preferred suppliers to provide benefits, services and information to Members
• Managing our relationships with Members and non-Members
• Distributing publications, invitations to events and programs, and other communications that may be of interest to Members and non-Members
• Providing for the safety, health, security and emergency preparedness of our staff, guests and visitors who are located on our premises
• Responding to questions and concerns
• Meeting legal or regulatory requirements
• Communicating for any other purpose for which we have Members’ consent
• Using your Personal Information to generate anonymous or aggregated data that we will use and disclose in our sole discretion.

HOW PSC USES PERSONAL INFORMATION

Our use of Personal Information is limited to the purposes described in this Policy, unless we expressly tell you otherwise. We do not otherwise sell, trade, barter, exchange or disclose for consideration any Personal Information we have obtained from you.

WHEN PSC MAY DISCLOSE YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

As a general rule, we hold all information concerning a Member in strict confidence. Except in limited circumstances, we do not reveal this information to anyone unless you have expressly or implicitly authorized us to do so. In such cases, we will secure written agreement from these organizations that they will use the information we provide to them solely for the purpose of providing services to you or to PSC. We will also secure their agreement, in writing, that they will not use, allow access to, or disclose, your Personal Information to any other party, except with your consent or where required to do so by law. We will also require that these organizations have appropriate physical, technical and organizational safeguards to protect your Personal Information. We transfer your Personal Information to various third party suppliers for purposes of carrying out our activities and events, for example, conference organizers or venue/accommodations suppliers, mailing companies, IT and financial service providers and various other suppliers of services to us. These parties are obligated to maintain your Personal Information in confidence and not to use or disclose it for unauthorized purposes. There are circumstances where the use and/or disclosure of Personal Information may be justified or permitted, or where PSC is obliged to disclose information without consent. These circumstances may include:

• Where required by law or by order or requirement of a court, administrative agency or other governmental tribunal
• Where PSC believes, upon reasonable grounds, that it is necessary to protect the rights, privacy, safety or property of an identifiable person or group
• Where it is necessary to establish or collect fees
• Where it is necessary to permit PSC to pursue available remedies or limit any damages that PSC may sustain
• Where the information is public as permitted by law
• Where it is reasonable for the purposes of investigating a breach of an agreement, or actual or suspected illegal activity
• Where it is necessary to determine whether to proceed with a prospective business transaction or complete the transaction, or where it is necessary to carry on the activity that was the object of a completed business transaction. A “business transaction” includes:
  • The lease or licensing of any of an organization’s assets
  • Any other prescribed arrangement between two or more organizations to conduct a business activity

When this occurs, we will not disclose more information than is required.

CROSS-BORDER TRANSFER OF INFORMATION

PSC may transfer Personal Information to a service provider which is located outside of Canada where privacy laws may offer different levels of protection from those in Canada. Your Personal Information may also be subject to access by and disclosure to the local courts, law enforcement and national security authorities under the applicable foreign legislation.

CONSENT

By providing your Personal Information to us, you agree that we may collect, use and disclose it in accordance with this Policy and as otherwise permitted or required by law. However, we may seek your consent to use or disclose Personal Information after it has been collected in cases where we wish to use or disclose the information for a purpose not previously identified or expressed in this Policy. If you need to provide us with Personal Information about other individuals (such as your employees, employer, supervisor, etc.), you represent and warrant to us that you will obtain their consent where required by law and prior to your disclosure to us. Consent is required for us to use and disclose the Personal Information of these individuals for the specific purpose(s) for which you made the disclosure.

WITHDRAWAL OF CONSENT

You may withdraw your consent to us collecting, using and disclosing your Personal Information at any time, subject to reasonable notice and any legal and/or contractual restrictions. You may, at any time, ask us not to send you further marketing materials about our goods and services. If you do not wish to receive further invitations to events, you may unsubscribe or contact us as set out in the Contact Information section below and ask that we not contact you for these purposes. If you wish to withdraw your consent to have your PSC membership information disclosed to affiliated organizations, preferred suppliers and other reputable organizations, please contact us as set out in the Contact Information section below.

THE ACCURACY AND RETENTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We endeavour to ensure that any Personal Information provided to us and in our possession is accurate, current and complete. If we become aware that Personal Information is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date, we will revise the Personal Information and, if necessary, use reasonable efforts to inform third parties. We do not actively maintain information of former Members and, for as long as we hold that information, we cannot assure the information is accurate. We keep your Personal Information only as long as it is required for the reasons it was collected. This period may extend beyond the end of a Member’s relationship with us, but it will only be held as long as it is necessary for us to communicate with you or to have sufficient information to respond to any issues that may arise. When we no longer require your Personal Information, we have procedures to securely destroy, delete, erase or convert it into an anonymous form.

PROTECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

We endeavour to maintain appropriate physical, procedural and technical security safeguards at our offices and information storage facilities to prevent any unauthorized access to, or loss, misuse, disclosure or modification of Personal Information. This also applies to our disposal or destruction of Personal Information. We further protect Personal Information by restricting access to those employees who need access to provide benefits, services or information. If a PSC employee misuses Personal Information, we will consider the act a serious offence for which we may take disciplinary action up to and including terminating employment. If any individual or organization misuses Personal Information, we will consider it a serious issue and may take action up to and including terminating any agreement between PSC and that individual or organization. We audit our procedures and security measures from time to time to ensure that they remain effective and appropriate. A “breach of security safeguards” is defined as the loss of, unauthorized access to or unauthorized disclosure of personal information resulting from a breach of an organization’s security safeguards or from a failure to establish those safeguards. In case of a breach of security safeguards involving your Personal Information under our control, we will notify you and the appropriate Privacy Commissioner(s) if it is reasonable in the circumstances to believe that the breach creates a real risk of significant harm to you, including physical, financial or reputational harm. We will also notify any other organization or government institution that can reduce the risk or mitigate the harm from the breach.

ACCESS TO YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

You have the right to access and review the Personal Information we hold about you subject to certain restrictions recognized in applicable laws. We will endeavour to provide the information in question within a reasonable time. When we will not or cannot disclose information, we will provide the individual making the request the reasons for non-disclosure. Further information concerning PSC’s access policy and procedures may be obtained by contacting us as set out in the Contact Information section below. Despite our efforts, errors sometimes do occur. If you identify any Personal Information that is out-of-date, incorrect or incomplete, please contact us and we will make the corrections promptly. We will also use every reasonable effort to communicate these changes to other parties who may have inadvertently received incorrect or out-of-date personal information from us.

COOKIES AND SIMILAR TECHNOLOGIES

(A) COOKIES

In browsing the Internet, you will encounter a technology called “cookies”, which are small data files that are saved to your device when you visit our website(s). These are commonly used to provide you specific information from a website, and to provide the website’s operator information about you. We may use both session cookies and persistent cookies. A session cookie is a temporary file which is only active while you are on the website and is erased once you close your browser. Unlike a session cookie, a persistent cookie is not deleted when you close your browser and will remain on your device indefinitely. These cookies are used to improve navigation on websites and to collect aggregate statistical information. This information may be used for advertising and marketing initiatives after you conclude your session on PSC website. The cookies may also track your activity on other websites or social media platforms that you visit after leaving PSC website. You may opt out of such tracking by adjusting the cookie settings on your browser.

ADJUSTING COOKIE SETTINGS ON YOUR BROWSER

Most Internet browsers are initially set to accept cookies. If you do not wish to accept cookies, you can set yours to refuse cookies or to alert you when cookies are being sent. However, doing so may prevent you from accessing all or part of our websites. If you wish to disable cookies on your browser, or be prompted prior to a cookie being loaded, you can do so by adjusting your browser’s settings. Consult each individual browser’s “help” feature for more information.

(B) WEB BEACONS

Web beacons are small graphic images or other programming code (also known as “web bugs”, “1×1 GIFs” or “clear GIFs”) used to keep track of your navigation through the website(s) and your electronic communication with us. We may include web beacons in our web pages and email messages. Web beacons may be invisible to you, but any electronic image or other web programming code inserted into a web page or email can act as a web beacon. Web beacons or similar technologies may be used for a number of purposes including, without limitation, to count visitors to our website, to monitor how users navigate the website, to count how many emails that were sent were actually opened, or to count how many particular articles or links were actually viewed. Web beacons may be used to collect certain personal information (for example, the email address associated with an email message).

(C) EMBEDDED SCRIPTS

An embedded script is a programming code that is designed to collect information about your interactions with our website(s), such as information about the links on which you click. The code is temporarily downloaded onto your device from our web server or a third party service provider. The code is active only while you are connected to our website, and is deactivated or deleted once you disconnect from the website.

LINKS TO OTHER WEBSITES

Our websites contains links to other sites. This Policy only applies to Personal Information that we collect, use and disclose. We are not responsible or liable for the privacy practices of third parties, and we strongly recommend that you review their privacy policies before you disclose Personal Information to them.

DIGITAL MARKETING

From time to time, we may engage in digital marketing campaigns. These efforts may include using social media platforms to promote membership and industry services. You consent to us using your Personal Information to serve advertisements and other announcements. When we do so, we follow the protocols and procedures established by the social media platforms you use. You consent to us working with your social media platforms in this manner. From time to time, we may use cookies to track PSC emails you are opening and reading. We may also track the email links you are opening and reading, and other related information. We may also use cookies in order to serve our advertisements to you on other websites you visit after leaving our website. This information helps us promote targeted goods and services to you. You may opt out of such tracking by adjusting the cookie settings on your browser. However, note that you cannot opt out of such tracking retroactively.

ADVERTISING ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND OTHER WEBSITES

We may also use social media cookies to identify our members who are registered users of the following social media platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. We create customs audiences by matching our members with users of social media platforms in order to deliver more useful and relevant advertising content. (See Facebook’s Custom Audiences (https://www.facebook.com/business/a/custom-audiences) for more information.) All data matching takes place using secure one-way hash functions, such that no Personal Information of our users is provided to the social media platforms if the user is not already registered with the social media platform. You may opt out of advertisements via social media platforms by contacting us at the Contact Information below. Note, however, that you cannot opt out of receiving tailored advertisements retroactively. Note also that the following social media platforms allow their users to opt out of receiving third party advertisements:

• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• Twitter

ELECTRONIC COMMUNICATIONS

Email is our preferred method of communicating with you and others. Unless you object, we may use unencrypted plain text or HTML-based emails when communicating with you. These emails, and other electronic communications from us, may contain information that is confidential or privileged, unless you instruct us not to send such information electronically. While we make every effort to secure all electronic communications within our control, there are inherent risks involved with exchanging information electronically. For example, third parties may accidentally or deliberately intercept this information. We are unable to accept responsibility or liability for any damages you may suffer as a result of the interception, alteration or misuse of information during electronic exchanges.

CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

This Policy is in effect as of May 2021. From time to time, we may review this Policy. We reserve the right to change this Policy, and any of our policies or procedures concerning our practices for handling Personal Information, at any time and without any prior notice. In the event of changes to this Policy, we will post a notice on our website at www.psc-gpc.ca and we will send notifications through email messages. Policy changes will apply to the information collected from the date of posting to PSC’s website, as well as to existing information in our records.

PRIVACY CONCERNS

We will promptly respond to questions and concerns relating to our Personal Information handling practices and this Policy, and do our utmost to resolve your concerns. In every instance, we will consider our obligations with respect to privileged information, as well as our separate obligations under applicable privacy legislation. Please direct your questions or concerns to us at the Contact Information listed below. If we are unable to resolve your concerns to your satisfaction, you may contact the Privacy Commissioner of Canada by writing to: The Privacy Commissioner of Canada 30 Victoria Street Gatineau, Quebec K1A 1H3

CONTACT INFORMATION

In the event of questions, please contact us at: Professional Surveyors Canada, 900 Dynes Road, Suite 101B Ottawa ON K2C 3L6