Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Last updated: February 5, 2021

Protecting the privacy and the confidentiality of Personal Information (as defined below) is a standard by which Electricity Human Resources Canada (“EHRC”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) conducts its business. The collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information is fundamental to many of our project areas and day-to-day administrative activities. We strive to provide high quality services and deliverables with the utmost professionalism. This includes respecting privacy and treating all stakeholders fairly.

EHRC has established this Privacy Policy to define its practices and procedures concerning the collection, usage and disclosure of Personal Information that applies to your access and use of the website located https://electricityhr.ca/  (the “Website”) and to identify the ways in which EHRC ensures compliance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (hereinafter referred to as the “Act” or “PIPEDA”).

The Website includes, but is not limited to, all other sites owned and operated by EHRC that redirect to the Website, all subdomains provided through such other site or the Website, and all downloadable applications, features, functionality, content or information that is made available or provided on the Website. The Website is made available to you for the purposes of providing you with access to information about EHRC, online courses, a networking platform to connect new graduates with industry professionals (the “Mentor Junction”) and other product offerings as well as best practices and resources for your information (collectively, the “Services”).

Please read this Privacy Policy carefully to understand our policies and practices for collecting, processing, and storing your Personal Information. If you do not agree with our policies and practices, you must not use the Website or our Services. 

By voluntarily providing us with Personal Information through the use of Services and the Website, you are consenting to its collection, use and disclosure in accordance with this Privacy Policy. You acknowledge and agree that such Personal Information may be transferred from your current location to the offices and servers of EHRC and authorized third parties referred to herein located in Canada. 

EHRC reserves the right to amend its Privacy Policy from time to time without notice, so please be sure to check back periodically. You can tell if this Privacy Policy has changed by checking the last updated date that appears at the beginning of this Privacy Policy. You should not continue using the Website or our Services if you do not agree with the version of this Privacy Policy in effect at that time. By continuing to use the Website or our Services, you agree and accept the version of this Privacy Policy in effect at that time. Any changes will be effective only after the effective date of the change and will not affect any dispute arising prior to the effective date of the change.

What is Personal Information?

“Personal Information” includes any information about an identifiable individual, including but not limited to: name, address, gender, age, ID numbers, income, ethnic origin, registrant files, work experience, level of education, opinions, evaluations, comments, social status, or disciplinary actions, existence of a dispute and intentions (for example, to acquire goods or services, or to change jobs). An individual’s name need not be attached to the information in order for it to qualify as personal information. 

Why does EHRC Collect and Use Personal Information?

EHRC provides services and information to a wide range of individuals. In doing so, we may need to collect personal information for various reasons including:

  • to understand your needs and to respond to your requests;
  • to conduct surveys and focus groups for research purposes;
  • to facilitate the delivery of services and information;
  • to maintain your contact information;
  • to provide information about our services and information; 
  • to engage interested parties in policy/program development; and
  • to customize your use of our Website and Services.

To the extent permitted by applicable law, we may use, process, transfer, and store any data about individuals and customers or partners in an anonymous (or pseudonymous) and aggregated manner. We may combine Personal Information with other information collected online and offline, including information from third party sources. We may share anonymized data with third parties for advertising purposes and employers for business development purposes and use such anonymized data for purposes including heat map analysis, traffic analysis, site search analytics, email marketing segmentation analysis and A/B testing. 

We may also use your Personal Information in other ways with consent or as permitted by applicable law. By using the Website and/or the Services, you agree that we are hereby licensed to collect, use, share, and store anonymized (or pseudonymized) aggregated data collected through the Website or your use of the Services for benchmarking, analytics, metrics, research, reporting, machine learning, and other business purposes. 

Should EHRC need to collect your Personal Information, other than simply for processing, we will advise you of the purposes for the collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information at or prior to the time of collection. At no time will your information be released to any outside agency or organization (except in accordance with this Privacy Policy or unless such an organization has been contracted to perform EHRC-related work and agrees to be bound by EHRC’s Privacy Policy).

What Type of Personal Information Do we Gather?
  • Personal Information from participants in industry consultation activities such as surveys and focus groups;
  • Personal Information received from third parties, such as consultants, who are contracted to do work for, or on behalf of, EHRC;
  • Contact information for persons opting-in to communications from EHRC;
  • Personal Information received from and about persons registered in workshops, seminars, and other programs offered by EHRC and its partners;
  • Personal Information from persons completing comment forms from EHRC workshops, seminars and other programs offered by EHRC and its partners;
  • Personal Information received from persons applying for a partnership with EHRC;
  • Personal Information submitted to EHRC through the Website or the use of Services.

Examples of such Personal Information we collect includes your name, email address, age, location, employment information, educational credentials and social media handles. Credit card information is not collected or retained by us and is directly collected by our service providers engaged for such purpose. 

When you visit the Website, our web server automatically recognizes the Internet domain and Internet Protocol (“IP”) address from which you access the Website, to compile statistics regarding the volume and timing of access to our Website. We do this so that we can improve the content and structure of the Website and our Services. Only aggregate information is collected and the Personal Information of individual visitors is not identified. We will not share or sell this information to a third party, except in cases of electronic intrusion, attempted or successful, where material pertinent to the intrusion may be shared with computer security professionals as well as with law enforcement officials in those cases warranting legal action.

In addition, when you visit our Website, we collect certain information about your activity on our Website, as described below under the heading “Our Use of Cookies and Log Files”.

How Do We Share Personal Information?

Protecting survey respondents’ privacy rights is vitally important to EHRC, and to our stakeholders.

Personal Information, including email addresses and other data, is considered confidential and will not be sold, rented, exchanged or passed onto third parties, other than as outlined in our Privacy Policy, as permitted by applicable law or unless we have first obtained your consent to do so. 

When using third parties to conduct market research, surveys, product/program development, or other similar activities, EHRC will only provide Personal Information necessary for project completion. All Personal Information released to third parties is confidential and its use is limited solely to the provision of services to EHRC. We contractually require our partners to have a written policy in place that complies with the requirements of applicable privacy law in Canada.

EHRC may, however, disclose information to third parties in the following cases:
  • to our affiliates, legal counsel, accounting and other advisors that provide professional services to us;
  • to law enforcement authorities, if required by law;
  • to a government agency which can oblige us to do so;
  • to a person authorized by law;
  • in emergency situations in which the life, health or safety of a customer is in jeopardy;
  • to third parties that have agreed that they will only use personal data for the agreed upon purpose, and will not sell your Personal Information to third parties, and will not disclose it to third parties except as may be required by law;
  • to an agent retained by EHRC in connection with the collection of your account;
  • to other third parties, where we have your consent or direction to do so;
  • in response to a subpoena, warrant or other court order;
  • when we believe in good faith that a law, regulation, subpoena, warrant or other court order requires it or authorizes us to do so or to respond to an emergency situation; and
  • to a third party in the event of a proposed or actual purchase, sale, lease, merger, amalgamation or any other type of acquisition, disposal, transfer, conveyance or financing of all or any portion of EHRC or of any of the business of EHRC.
Third Party Websites and Personal Information

The Website may contain links to third party websites which we believe will be of interest and value to our visitors, including those of our business partners and industry stakeholders. While EHRC endeavors to link only to websites that share our high standards and respect for privacy, EHRC is not responsible for the privacy policies or other terms of use of these third party websites. Once you leave our servers, the use of any information you provide is governed by the privacy policy of the website you are visiting. We urge you not to supply Personal Information to these sites unless you have verified their security and privacy policies.

Retention of Personal Information

Your Personal Information is retained only as long as necessary for the fulfillment of those purposes. EHRC does not keep your personal information if it is no longer needed for the purposes required or as required by law. Once the Personal Information is no longer required, EHRC ensures that this information is securely destroyed or anonymized (so that the information no longer is identifiable as information relating to you). We have procedures in place with respect to destroying, deleting or disposing of personal information when it is no longer required for the purposes set out in this policy, or by law.

Accuracy

EHRC will endeavor to ensure that all Personal Information it collects is accurate, complete and up to date. It is your responsibility to inform EHRC immediately of any change of name, address or other Personal Information.

Security of Personal Information

EHRC makes every reasonable effort to protect any Personal Information we have in our possession by implementing commercially reasonable security safeguards, both electronic and physical, against loss or theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification.

In addition, EHRC ensures that its employees understand the importance of maintaining the confidentiality of Personal Information.

Unfortunately, no data transmission over the Internet or data storage system can be guaranteed to be 100% secure. Therefore, despite our efforts, we cannot guarantee its absolute security. WE DO NOT WARRANT OR REPRESENT THAT PERSONAL INFORMATION ABOUT YOU WILL BE PROTECTED AGAINST, LOSS, MISUSE, OR ALTERATION BY THIRD PARTIES.

Your Access to and Control Over Information 

You may opt out of any future contact from us at any time. You can do the following at any time by contacting us via the email address or phone number given on our Website:

  • See what data we have about you, if any.
  • Change/correct any data we have about you.
  • Request that we delete any data we have about you. 
  • Express any concern you have about our use of your data.

If you refuse to provide us with the information we require or later contact us to withdraw your consent for us to use and disclose your personal information, we may no longer be able to provide you with our Services.

In some limited circumstances, a request for access to information may be legally denied by the EHRC as provided under the Act (e.g., where the disclosure of an individual’s Personal Information would reveal the Personal Information of a third party).

Our Use of Cookies and Log Files

We use browser tracking cookies (or “cookies”), which are small text files that are placed on the hard disk of a computer by a website. Cookies are uniquely assigned to you, and can only be read by a website or web server that issued the cookie to you.  We also use browser “log files” which record certain information when you visit a website, including your IP address. To improve your experience on our Website, we use cookies and log files to: recognize you when you return to our Website; keep track of activity on our Website and remember what items you have clicked on or viewed; study how you navigate through our Website and which website you request in site searches so that we can improve the design, content and function of our Website; and customize the message, content and delivery of online banner advertisements and e-mails that reflect how you navigate to and through our Website based on your online behavior. We call this “Browsing Data”. We may hire third-party service providers to assist us in the collection and analysis of this Browsing Data collected through cookies, but none of your personal information is disclosed to these third party service providers. 

You have the ability to accept or decline our use of cookies. You can refuse cookies by turning them off or blocking them in your Internet browser. If you decide to turn off or block cookies, our Website might not function correctly.

Contacting the Privacy Officer

This Privacy Policy addresses some of the main privacy concerns that you might have. If you have concerns regarding the EHRC’s Privacy Policy please contact:

The Privacy Officer
Electricity Human Resources Canada
2197 Riverside Dr., Suite 301
Ottawa, ON K1H 7X3


(613) 235-5540
privacy@electricityhr.ca