Privacy Policy

 

Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre Privacy Policy

Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre recognizes the importance of privacy and the sensitivity of personal information. We are committed to protecting any personal information we hold. This Privacy Policy outlines how we manage your personal information and safeguard your privacy.

Your Privacy Rights

Alberta enacted its own private sector law, the Personal Information Protection Act (“PIPA”) which applies in Alberta. This Act gives you rights concerning the privacy and the confidentiality of your personal information. PIPA excludes not-for-profit organizations registered under the Societies Act, except when they carry on commercial activities, such as buying or selling membership lists. Fundraising is not a commercial activity.

Nevertheless, Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre wishes to be responsible for the personal information we collect and hold. To ensure this accountability, we have developed this policy, and trained our staff about our policies and practices. This policy applies to employees, volunteers and other individuals we deal with.

Why Does Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre Need Personal Information

Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre provides education on civil liberties and human rights law for Albertans. In doing so, it publishes materials and mails out a newsletter to the public. ACLRC also provides legal information and referrals. In some cases, this requires us to collect your personal information.

What personal information do we collect?

Personal information is any information that identifies you, or by which your identity could be deduced. In some cases, if we did not collect and use your personal information we could not provide you with legal information.

How do we collect your personal information?

We collect information only by lawful and fair means and not in an unreasonably intrusive way. Wherever possible we collect your personal information directly from you.

Consent.

In most cases, we shall ask you to specifically consent, if we collect, use, or disclose your personal information. Normally, we ask for your consent in writing, but in some circumstances, we may accept your oral consent. Sometimes, your consent may be implied through your conduct with us.

Use of Your Information

We use your personal information to provide legal information to you, and to include you in receiving our newsletter. Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre does not disclose your personal information to any third party to enable them to market their products and services. For example, we do not provide our client mailing lists to other non-profit organizations.

Disclosure of your Personal Information

Under certain circumstances, Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre will disclose your personal information:

  • when we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example if a court issues a subpoena;
  • when you have consented to the disclosure;
  • when the legal information we are providing to you requires us give your information to third parties 
  • where it is necessary to establish or collect fees for publications;
  • if we engage a third party to provide administrative services to us (like computer back-up services or archival file storage) and the third party is bound by our privacy policy;
  • if the information is already publicly known.

Updating Your Information

Since we use your personal information to provide newsletter and legal information to you, it is important that the information be accurate and up-to-date. If, any of your information changes, please inform us so that we can make any necessary changes.

Is My Personal Information Secure?

Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre takes all reasonable precautions to ensure that your personal information is kept safe from loss, unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. Among the steps taken to protect your information are:

  • premises security;
  • restricted file access to personal information;
  • deploying technological safeguards like security software and firewalls to prevent hacking or 
  • unauthorized computer access;
  • internal password and security policies.

Access to Your Personal Information

You may ask for access to any personal information we hold about you. Summary information is available on request. More detailed requests which require archive or other retrieval costs may be subject to fees. We normally will respond to an access request within 30 calendar days.

Correcting Errors

If Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre holds information about you and you can establish that it is not accurate, complete and up-to-date, Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre will take reasonable steps to correct it.

Can I be Denied Access to My Personal Information?

Your rights to access your personal information are not absolute.
We may deny access when:

  • denial of access is required or authorized by law;
  • when granting you access would have an unreasonable impact on other people's privacy;
  • to protect our firm's rights and property;
  • where the request is frivolous or vexatious.

If we deny your request for access to, or refuse a request to correct information, we shall explain why. Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre does not use your Social Insurance Number as a way of identifying or organizing the information we hold upon you.

Can I request Anonymity?

Whenever it is legal and practicable, we may offer the opportunity to deal with general inquiries without providing your name (for example, by accessing general information on our website).

Communicating with Us

You should be aware that e-mail is not a 100% secure medium, and you should be aware of this when contacting us to send personal or confidential information.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

Since Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre regularly reviews all of its policies and procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time.

Requests for Access

If you have any questions, or wish to access your personal information, please write to our Privacy. Contact at:

ACLRC

University of Calgary, Faculty of Law
2500 University Drive N.W.

If you are not satisfied with our response, the Alberta Information Privacy Commissioner can be reached at:

Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner (Calgary)
Please note you must make an appointment with the office in Calgary
Suite 2460, 801 6 Avenue SW 
Calgary AB, T2P 3W2 
Phone: (403) 297-2728 
Fax: (403) 297-2711 
Toll Free: 1-888-878-4044
Email: [email protected]

Employment Inquiries

If you apply to Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre for a job, we need to consider your personal information, as part of our review process. We normally retain information from candidates for 12 
months after a decision has been made, unless you ask us not to retain the information. At that time, the record will be destroyed. If we offer you a job, which you accept, the information will be retained in accordance with our privacy procedures for employee records. 

Web Site

Our website contains links to other sites, which are not governed by this privacy policy. On our website, like most other websites, we may monitor traffic patterns, site usage and related site information in order to optimise our web service. We do not collect personal information about our site users. We may provide aggregated information to third parties, but these statistics do not include any identifiable personal information.