Privacy Policy

The East Gwillimbury Chamber of Commerce (“EGCOC” or “we”) is committed to maintaining the accuracy, security and privacy of personal information in accordance with applicable legislation. This EGCOC Privacy Policy is a statement of principles and guidelines concerning the protection of personal information of our members (“members”), service providers and other individuals (“you”).

Consent

BY SUBMITTING PERSONAL INFORMATION TO EGCOC, ITS SERVICE PROVIDERS, OR AGENTS, YOU AGREE THAT THE EGCOC MAY COLLECT, USE AND DISCLOSE SUCH PERSONAL INFORMATION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THIS PRIVACY POLICY AND AS PERMITTED OR REQUIRED BY LAW. Subject to legal and contractual requirements, you may refuse or withdraw your consent to certain of the identified purposes at any time by contacting the EGCOC Chief Privacy Officer. If you refuse or withdraw your consent we may not be able to provide you or continue to provide you with certain services or information which may be of value to you. If you provide the EGCOC or our service providers and agents with personal information of another individual, you represent that you have all necessary authority and/or have obtained all necessary consent from such a person to enable us to collect, use and disclose such personal information for the purposes set forth in this privacy policy.

What personal information do we collect?

Why do we collect your personal information?

To whom do we disclose your personal information?

Where do we store your personal information?

How may you obtain access to your personal information?

How do we protect your personal information?

Privacy in our Web Site

Changes to the privacy policy

Further information

What Personal Information do we collect?

Canadian Privacy Legislation generally defines “Personal Information” broadly as information about an identifiable individual or as information that allows an individual to be identified. For the purposes of this policy, personal information means information about an identifiable individual as defined from time to time in applicable privacy legislation. Generally speaking, personal information does not include what is considered business contact information, such as your name, title or position, business address, telephone number, facsimile number or e-mail address, so long as it is used to contact you in relation to your employment, business or profession. The types of information that the EGCOC may collect about you include your name, home address, telephone number, personal email address, billing and account information, information about your business and issues relating to your business and other information incidental to providing Chamber of Commerce services to and on behalf of our members.

The EGCOC may receive personal information from members for the purpose of providing services to them. In these cases, the EGCOC relies on the members to ensure that such personal information is disclosed to the EGCOC in accordance with applicable privacy legislation. Such personal information is used only for the purpose of providing the services in question.

We have a physical presence in Canada and may in the normal course of operations collect personal information through visits from the public, capture of video images on security cameras, telephone inquiries, or employment inquiries. This personal data, incidental to normal business administrations, is not collected for a business purpose or shared with third parties except under exceptional circumstances as required by law.

Why do we collect your Personal Information?

In general, the EGCOC collects, uses and discloses personal information about our members, and others in order to provide our members with Chamber of Commerce services to and on behalf of members. More specifically, we collect, use and disclose personal information for the following purposes:

to fulfill the goals and mandates of a Chamber of Commerce representing Canadian businesses;
to share Personal Information to and from third parties for the purposes of providing Chamber of Commerce services to and on behalf of businesses;
to understand and respond to members, suppliers and other third party needs and preferences, including to contact and communicate with such parties to conduct surveys, research, evaluations and trade shows;
to develop, enhance or otherwise provide EGCOC products and services;
to sell or otherwise provide products and services of third parties with whom the EGCOC has a relationship;
to distribute our newsletters, Chamber of Commerce information and other materials to individuals on our mail and e-mail lists including via third parties mailing houses and e-mail service providers;
to develop and manage the EGCOC and its operations;
to detect and protect the EGCOC and other third parties against error, negligence, breach of contract, fraud, theft, and other illegal activity and to audit compliance with the EGCOC’s policies and contractual obligations;
to engage in business transactions including the purchase sale, lease, merger or amalgamation or any other type of acquisition, disposal or financing involving the EGCOC;
as permitted by and to comply with any foreign and domestic legal or regulatory requirements or provisions; and
for any other purpose to which you consent.

To whom do we disclose your Personal Information?

From time to time, the EGCOC may disclose your Personal Information to:

service providers including organizations or individuals retained by the EGCOC to perform functions on its behalf such as marketing, surveying, data processing, document management, and office services;
a person who in the reasonable opinion of the EGCOC is providing or seeking the information as your agent;
to our insurers and to regulatory agencies, insurers or others in connection with regulatory or other obligations of the EGCOC in its capacity as a Chamber of Commerce representing businesses;
any third party or parties, where you consent to such disclosure or where disclosure is required or permitted by law;
as permitted by, and to comply with, any foreign and domestic legal or regulatory requirements or provisions.

Where do we store your Personal Information?

Your Personal Information is stored in locations and on servers controlled by the EGCOC, located either at our offices or at the offices of our service providers.

How may you obtain access to your Personal Information

Upon your written request, subject to certain exceptions, the EGCOC will inform you of the existence, use, and disclosure of your Personal Information and will give you access to that information. Access requests should be sent to our Chief Privacy Officer using the contact information below. There are a few instances where we may not be able to provide some of the personal information we hold, including:

if it is subject to solicitor-client or litigation privilege;
if it contains references to other individuals;
if it cannot be disclosed for legal, security, or commercial proprietary reasons; or
if it is prohibitively costly to provide.

How do we protect your Personal Information?

To help protect the confidentiality of your Personal Information, the EGCOC employs physical, administrative and technological safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of your Personal Information. Where Personal Information is sent to a third party for processing we require, through our contracts with them, that all Personal Information is kept secure. Please be aware though that, despite these efforts, no security measures are perfect and no systems are impenetrable. Particularly if you are using the password-protected areas of the Web Site, your privacy can be enhanced by taking care to use suitably strong passwords that others cannot guess, that are kept safe by you, and that are not re-used on other web sites. Taking steps like avoiding dictionary words or proper names and adding extra character and punctuation marks can also help protect you. If you believe your password has been compromised, you should change it immediately.

Privacy and our Web Site

Cookies – When an individual visitor accesses the EGCOC Web Site, we may use a browser feature called a ‘cookie’ to collect information such as the type of Internet browser and operating system the visitor uses, the domain name of the web site from which the visitor came, date and duration of the visit, number of visits, average time spent on our Web Site, pages viewed and number of cookies accumulated. A cookie is a small text file containing a unique identification number that identifies the visitor’s browser, but not necessarily the visitor, to our computers each time our Web Site is visited. Unless a visitor specifically informs us (e.g. by registering for an event or sending us correspondence from our Web Site), we will not know who the individual visitors are. In addition to the identified purposes described in our Privacy Policy, we may use this Web Site information and share it with other organizations with whom we have a commercial relationship to measure the use of our Web Site, to improve the functionality and content of our Web Site and to facilitate usage by a visitor. Visitors can reset their browsers either to notify them when they have received a cookie or refuse to accept cookies. However, if a visitor refuses to accept cookies, he or she may not be able to use some of the features available on our Web Site.

Online Communications – In order to provide our Web Site visitors with a service or information, visitors may voluntarily submit Personal Information to us for purposes such as asking a question, obtaining information, reviewing or downloading a publication, participating in a seminar or other event, and participating in contests and surveys. If you are known to the EGCOC as a registered user of an online service, we may combine and store Personal Information about your use of our Web Site and the online information you have provided with certain other online and offline information we may have collected.

Electronic Communications – Occasionally, we may send electronic communications to you with information that may be useful to you, including information about the EGCOC and other third parties with whom we have a relationship. We will include instructions on how to unsubscribe and inform us of preferences if you decide you do not want to receive any future e-mails from the EGCOC. Such preferences may also be expressed by e-mailing our Executive Director at EGCOC.org with your name and the electronic addresses you wish to have removed from our database. Please note, however, that in certain circumstances, the EGCOC may be required or empowered by law to send you certain important electronic messages notwithstanding an earlier unsubscribe request.

Links – Our Web Site may contain links to other web sites which are provided as a convenience only. Visitors are advised that other third-party web sites may have different privacy policies and practices than the EGCOC, and the EGCOC has no responsibility for such third-party web sites.

Changes to the Privacy Policy

The EGCOC reserves the right to modify or supplement this Privacy Policy at any time. If we make a change to this Privacy Policy, we will post such changes on our Web Site and make such revised policy and changes available upon request to the EGCOC Chief Privacy Officer. However, the EGCOC will obtain the necessary consents required under applicable privacy laws if it seeks to collect, use or disclose your Personal Information for purposes other than those to which consent has been obtained unless otherwise required or permitted by law.

Further Information

The EGCOC has appointed our Executive Director as its Chief Privacy Officer to oversee compliance with this Privacy Policy and applicable privacy laws. For information on the EGCOC’s privacy practices please contact the EGCOC Chief Privacy Officer at:

EGCOC, Chief Privacy Officer

19040 Leslie St.

Sharon, ON

L0G 1V0

Email: executivedirector@egcoc.org

Ph: 905-478-8447