Privacy Notice

This website (https://startcanada.ca/) (the “Site”) is operated by StartCanada. If you have a question or complaint about our personal information handling practices, please contact us. In this Privacy Statement, the terms “we”, “our” and “us” mean StartCanada.

This Privacy Statement is effective as of July 1, 2016. This Privacy Statement governs our practices with respect to personal information we collect through this Site and through online and offline communications in respect of the programs and services we provide.

Personal information is information that identifies you or could be combined by us or our service providers and affiliates with other information to identify you. This information includes your personal e-mail address, your home address, your home telephone number, your personal cellphone number and other similar information when associated with you. Personal information may also be information containing details as to whether you have opened our promotional e-mails or how you have used our Site, if we can associate that personal information with you. If you are a business customer or prospective business customer, personal information does not include your title, business address and business telephone number.

We collect personal information from you when you create an account, make a purchase, communicate with us using our web forms to make a request or ask a question, submit a comment, take a survey or otherwise submit personal information to us with your communication. For example, we will request credit card and other identifying information to process a credit card transaction when you purchase a product or service through our Site.

We receive personal information about you from other sources. For example, we will receive information from credit card processors regarding whether the credit card details you gave us have been accepted or declined.

We use your information to provide products and services and to manage our business operations. Some examples include:

(a) to register your account;
(b) to authenticate you when you log into your account;
(c) to fulfill your requests for products and services;
(d) to communicate with you about your requests;
(e) to recommend or to offer you other products and services based on your inferred interests;
(f) to post your comments, feedback and recommendations;
(g) to communicate with you regarding customer service matters; and
(h) to protect the security or integrity of our Sites and our business.

We also automatically collect information when you visit our Site in order to customize your experience. For example, we collect information about what site referred you to our Site, your browser type, operating system type and version, language, and your Internet Protocol (“IP”) address. We also collect information about how you browse through our Site, including logging the pages you visit and the amount of time you spend on certain pages. We use this information for a number of technical purposes to ensure that our pages load correctly in your browser. We also use this information to improve our Site. For example:

(a) we use IP addresses to correct pages for your geographical location;
(b) we log the frequency of visits to certain pages on our Site and how visitors navigate through our Site in order to detect problems, improve our Site and learn about what products and services are of interest to our customers;
(c) we use information about products and services that you have clicked on to make suggestions about other products or services that you might be interested in viewing; and
(d) we track whether certain types of promotional e-mails or email newsletters were opened by you and whether you sought information about a particular product or service in order to make inferences about other products and services you might be interested in.

Our Site and the services offered on our Site are not directed to children under the age of 18 years. We will not knowingly collect personal information about a child under the age of 18. We do not allow minors (persons who are under the age of majority in their place of residence) to create accounts or engage with us through our Site.

We may share your personal information with our service providers that help us with our business operations. We share information with service providers, partners or our affiliates who provide us with marketing, promotional or program services. We require our service providers, partners and affiliates to keep your personal information secure. In addition, our service providers, partners and affiliates may not use or disclose personal information for any purpose other than providing the services on our behalf unless we or they have obtained your consent.

We may transfer any information we have about you in connection with a merger or sale involving all or part of our business or as part of a corporate reorganization or other change in corporate control.

We may also disclose your personal information if it is necessary for us to collect a debt from you or where we have reason to believe that it is relevant to the investigation or decision to investigate a breach of the laws of Canada, a province or territory of Canada, or a foreign jurisdiction, and we are legally permitted to do so.

We will disclose personal information without your knowledge or consent if we receive an order, subpoena, warrant or other legal requirement issued by a court, tribunal, regulator or other person with jurisdiction to compel disclosure of your personal information. If we receive a request from a police officer or other law enforcement agency for access to your personal information in the course of an actual or potential investigation, our policy is to require the police officer or law enforcement agency to obtain an order, subpoena or warrant, unless the information is urgently required to prevent serious bodily injury or serious damage to personal property.

Your personal information may be used or stored by us or our service providers outside of Canada. We require that our service providers safeguard your personal information. However, if your personal information is used or stored outside of Canada, it will also be subject to the laws of the country in which it is used or stored.

If you sign up to receive our newsletter, you will have the option to unsubscribe from us at any time. You can modify your information by emailing us to make the requested changes. If you communicate or register with us as a corporation, business entity, employee or professional, you will have the option to modify your information by emailing us to make the requested changes. If you register with us as a nonprofit organization, you will have the option to modify your information by emailing us to make the requested changes. If we contact you but do not receive a response from you within 3 months, we may permanently delete your account. Please note that we still maintain information that you provided to us for audit purposes or to comply with our legal obligations.

If you have an account, log in to access and to modify the personal information stored with your account. If you have questions or concerns about other personal information collected by us and would like assistance accessing that information, please contact us using our web form.

We take administrative, technical and physical measures to safeguard your personal information against unauthorized access, unauthorized disclosure, theft and misuse. This includes limiting access of employees and contractors to, and the use of, your personal information through the use of passwords and graduated levels of clearance.

We do not publish all of our security measures online because this may reduce their effectiveness. We take physical precautions to ensure that the computer servers on which your personal information is stored and archived are secure and that access to such servers is protected. We educate our employees and contractors with respect to their obligations to protect your personal information and we require our affiliates and any third-party service providers to take comparable steps to ensure the protection of any of your personal information that is shared with them.

Although we take precautions against possible breaches of our security systems, no company can fully eliminate the risks of unauthorized access to your personal information and no website is completely secure. We cannot guarantee that unauthorized access, hacking, data loss or breaches of our security systems will never occur. Accordingly, you should not transmit personal information to us using our Site if you consider that information to be sensitive.

You may be able to access third-party websites through links available on our Sites. You may also connect to social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook. These links are provided for your convenience. We do not have any control over those third-party websites and we do not provide any guarantee that the privacy practices of the hosts of those websites meet our standards. Your use of such third-party websites is at your own risk and will be governed by the privacy policies of those websites and not by this Privacy Statement. Do not transmit personal information using those websites without reading the privacy policies governing those websites.

You may create links between our Site and social networking sites. If you do so, we may be able to publish updates about our products and services to your social network account through the links that you establish. You may terminate those links at any time by modifying your social network account.

If you are logged into a social networking site when visiting our page, your visit to our Site will be personalized based on your social networking profile.

You may change the way social networking sites and our sites interact by modifying your privacy settings in your social networking account. You can also log-out of your social networking account before visiting our Site. For more information, please refer to your social networking site's privacy policy, which governs your use of these social plug-in features.