Privacy Policy

At the Association for Bright Children of Ontario, the privacy of your personal information has always been an important aspect of how we operate. On January 1, 2004, the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) began to apply to provincially regulated organizations that collect, use and disclose personal information. Accordingly, ABC Ontario has developed the following Privacy Policy in compliance with PIPEDA, as well as to assure individuals of our continuing commitment to the protection of their personal information.

Our Pledge to You

The Association for Bright Children of Ontario ("ABC Ontario"), is committed to protecting your privacy. Most importantly,

Your right to confidentiality and privacy will be protected.
Your personal information will not be sold, traded, or rented to others.
ABC Ontario is committed to high standards that require honesty, integrity and fairness in all relationships.

The following policy discloses the privacy practices for our web site. However, our site contains links to other sites. Once you link to another site, you are subject to the privacy and security policies of the new site. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of all web sites you visit, especially if you share any personal information.

What is personal information?

Personal information includes any factual or subjective information, recorded or not, about an identifiable individual. This includes information in any form such as a personal email address, credit card numbers, home addresses and so on.

It does not include information normally found on a business card, such as name, title, company, business address, business email address, business telephone or fax number.

Why does the ABC Ontario collect, use or disclose personal information?

ABC Ontario is dedicated to increasing public awareness about gifted learners and supporting educational excellence. ABC Ontario and its chapters share common goals of providing information and education, supporting research, and advocating for programs and services for bright and gifted learners. In order to meet these goals, ABC Ontario may collect, use and disclose personal information, when applicable, for the following purposes:

To assess applications for volunteering
To evaluate donor needs and interests
To assess applications for various ABC Ontario awards
To issue newsletters and event notifications
With additional consent, to provide stories to media, research and other public relations work
To guide development of new features and services relevant to our web site visitors.
To provide sponsors with summary - never individual - information about the web site's overall usage patterns.
To focus activities on your preferences.

ABC Ontario does not:

Sell or rent its member, volunteer, staff or donor information to any external parties.
Collect personal information about you unless you choose to provide that information to us.
Use techniques that collect personal information about you without your knowledge.
Transfer your personal information to third parties for their marketing purposes. Any personally identifiable data about our customers or web site visitors is stored securely.
Collect personal information about children (under 18 years of age) without the express, positive consent of their parent or guardian.

How do individuals provide ABC Ontario with their consent for the collection, use and disclosure of their personal information?

Individuals may provide personal information expressly through the membership application, events/programs registration, or newsletter subscription process.

During these processes, they may also provide their preferred contact information.

ABC Ontario staff and Executive members have access only to the personal information provided by the member that is required to fulfill the purposes stated within this policy.

At times, ABC Ontario may communicate information and details about future activities to these individuals.

ABC Ontario will collect specific permissions on release forms for general use items such as photos, brochures and other projects.

Information will not be released to any third party without the express permission of the ABC Ontario client. Consent can be withdrawn by contacting membership@abcontario.ca.

How much personal information does the ABC Ontario collect, use or disclose?

ABC Ontario collects, uses and discloses personal information only to the extent required to fulfill the purposes stated within this policy.

How long does ABC Ontario retain personal information?

ABC Ontario retains personal information only for as long as is required to fulfill the purposesstated within this policy, and to meet all requirements by law. For example, inactive member records are retained in a protected storage facility for a five (5) year period as required by law. All financial transaction records are retained as long as required by the Canada Revenue Agency.

How accurate is the personal information collected, used and disclosed by ABC Ontario?

Personal information that is collected, used and disclosed by ABC Ontario is provided by individuals and is updated by the organization when requested by the individual. If an individual's personal information requires amendment, they may log onto the ABC Ontario website and update their membership account file or they may email membership@abcontario.ca.

How can individuals access their personal information held by ABC Ontario?

Individuals have a right to access their own personal information in the possession and control of ABC Ontario. They also have a right to know if their information has been disclosed to any third parties. We will be pleased to inform you of the existence, any use, and disclosure of personally identifying information, and provide you with access to that personal information, within 30 (thirty) days of a receipt of a written request directed to membership@abcontario.ca subject to exceptions assigned by law. ABC Ontario reserves the right to charge a reasonable fee for the copying of his information.

How secure is the personal information stored at ABC Ontario?

ABC Ontario is committed to ensuring that personal information is protected from unauthorized access, unintended disclosures or theft. This protectionis provided by firewalls in the computer system and passwords to protect databases. Only the ABC Ontario Board of Directors, Executive Director and authorized individuals have access to this information.

How secure is online payment?

ABC Ontario uses the services of CanadaHelps.org to process online charitable donations by credit card and issue eTax Receipts, employing a process that is approved by Canada Customs and Revenue Agency. ABC Ontario employs Paypal to provide other payment services. In the event of unauthorized use of your credit card, you must notify your credit card provider in accordance with its reporting rules and procedures.

What is ABC Ontario’s policy on email communication?

From time to time we may use e-mail as a way to keep in touch with our members and other interested individuals.

We give you opt-out options wherever practical. Such choices include:

Opting not to provide certain personal information when registering.
Opting not to participate in Interactive Areas.
Opting not to receive e-mail from ABC Ontario.

How is personal information collected, used or disclosed via ABC Ontario's web sites?

In order to enhance your browsing experience when accessing ABC Ontario's web sites, a small text file called a cookie is sent from our web server to your browser and stored on your computer. Cookies enhance your browsing experience, and also allow us to recognize you when you return to ABC Ontario's website. You may set your browser to notify you when you receive cookies and you may choose to disable or delete cookies if you wish. Please note that cookies may be necessary to provide you with certain features available on ABC Ontario's Site. Cookies are not programs or code, and are only used to optimize browsing. ABC Ontario does not use information transferred through cookies for any promotional or marketing purposes, nor is that information shared with any third parties. Users should be aware that ABC Ontario cannot control the use of cookies by sponsors or third parties hosting data for ABC Ontario.

ABC Ontario's web sites also log IP addresses of visitors. This information is used, in aggregate form to provide statistical measures about usage of the site. This in turn allows us to continually improve the content and design of our web sites. Our site's operating system may automatically record some general information about your visit, such as:

The Internet domain for your Internet service provider, such as 'company.com' or 'service.ca' and the IP address of the computer accessing the web site.
The type of browser (such as 'Netscape version x' or 'Internet Explorer version x') you are using .
The type of operating system you are using (such as Macintosh, Unix, or Windows)
The date and time you visit our site and the Web pages that you visit on our site, along with the address of the previous Web site you were visiting, if you linked to us from another Web site.

We use this information for statistical analysis, to constantly improve the value of the content and services available on this web site. This information enables us to tell which areas of the site are of most interest to our users, which avenues of site promotion are most effective, and to pinpoint peak usage times. We may disclose this non-personal information to third parties such as strategic partners, sponsors, or advertisers and/or use it for auditing purposes. This tracking system does not record personal information about individuals or link this information to any personal data collected.

How does ABC Ontario Use Content you Submit?

Web site visitors provide ABC Ontario with feedback and comments, and receive answers from ABC Ontario, via email, message boards and online components of this site. If you submit content, you grant ABC Ontario a non-exclusive, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicencable right to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, and display such feedback throughout the world in any media and hereby waive in favour of ABC Ontario all of your moral rights in such feedback. You also grant ABC Ontario the right to use the name you submit with the feedback, if any, in connection with the feedback. You warrant and represent that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to such feedback and have the full right and authority to provide such feedback and that such feedback is not illegal, obscene, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy or without restriction otherwise injurious to third parties.

Your Thoughts?

ABC Ontario welcomes your questions and comments about privacy, in addition to any aspect of your experience on our web site. Please feel free to contact us. If individuals have a complaint related to ABC Ontario’s Privacy Policy, they may contact the Executive Director, who also serves as Chief Privacy Officer, in writing at membership@abcontario.ca. If the Chief Privacy Officer is unable to resolve the concern,or if there are further complaints, individuals may contact the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at www.privcom.gc.ca or at:

112 Kent Street

Ottawa, ON K1A 1H3

Tel: (613) 995 8210

Toll free: 1 800 282 1376

Fax: (613) 947 6850

E mail: info@privcom.gc.ca