Privacy Policy - Advantag Canada

Our commitment
At ADVANTAG CANADA INC. (hereinafter “ADVANTAG”, “us”, “we” or “our”), your privacy is important to us. Accordingly, we are committed to regularly reviewing our practices to ensure that they are up to date and to ensure that effective controls are in place to protect the personal information you have entrusted us with. We will never sell or rent your personal information.

Summary of Policy
The Privacy Policy (the “Policy”) explains how we collect, share, use and retain your personal information when you use our website, www.advantag.ca , when you call us, respond to our surveys, when you purchase our products or when you use our services (collectively, the “Products and Services”). It also describes the types of personal information we collect about you, what we collect it for, how we use it, how we protect it, and under what circumstances we share it with third parties.

In addition, the Policy describes the choices you can make in respect of how we use your personal information, and the different ways you can contact us should you wish to access, verify or update your contact information, change your privacy preferences, or ask us about our privacy practices.

Applicable laws and regulations
This Policy and the personal information processed by ADVANTAG are subject to Canadian, provincial and federal privacy laws as well as the General Data Protection Regulations of the European Union, as applicable.

Consent
By accessing our Website or using our Products and Services, you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this Policy. In some cases, your consent may be “implied”, meaning that your permission is presumed based on your action or inaction at the time of collection, use or sharing of your personal information.

If you do not agree with the Policy, please refrain from using our Website or Products and Services. In addition, the collection of some of your personal information in accordance with the Policy is mandatory for us to provide you with the Products and Services you have requested, such as shipping.

Who is the policy for?
This Policy applies to anyone who communicates with or interacts with us, regardless of the means used, whether you are a customer or someone who visits our Website, warehouse and other premises. Our employees, consultants and job applicants are subject to a separate privacy policy.

This Policy does not apply to websites operated by third parties over which we have no control. If you follow a link to a third-party site, the privacy policy of that third-party site will apply. We are not responsible for their privacy policies, procedures or practices. We encourage you to review these policies before submitting personal information to such third party sites.

What is personal information?
Personal information is information about you that can be used to identify you, directly or indirectly.

Information that is anonymized and that cannot be directly or indirectly associated with you is not considered personal information. When information is anonymized, it means that it has been irreversibly modified to ensure that it cannot identify you either directly or indirectly.

How is your personal information collected?
We collect only the personal information necessary to achieve the purposes set out in this Policy.

We primarily collect your personal information directly from you, but also from third parties, depending on the circumstances and the Products and Services you wish to obtain from ADVANTAG. For example, we collect your personal information when:

when you voluntarily provide such information directly to us;
when personal information about you is automatically collected in connection with your use of our Website or Products and Services;
when third parties provide us with personal information about you. Third parties who share your personal information with us include service providers or partners when, for example, having retained your prior consent, they provide us with your contact information for opening an account or managing registration to obtain one of our Products and Services.

Personal information you provide voluntarily
When you visit our Website, use our Products and Services, or otherwise communicate or interact with us, we may ask you to volunteer personal information (such as your name, email address, shipping and billing address and phone number) so that we can facilitate communication with you, respond to your request, and provide you with the Products and Services you have requested.

Personal information automatically collected
Cookies

A cookie is a small data file containing a unique identification number that identifies the browser on a visitor’s mobile device or computer each time the visitor accesses our Website (but does not necessarily identify the visitor).

When you access our Website, we use cookies to automatically collect information about users, such as the Internet Protocol (IP) address that identifies the mobile device or computer, the IP address of the Internet service provider, the name and version of the Web browser, the date and time the user accesses the Website, the Internet address from which the user directly accesses our Website, the operating system used, the sections visited on our Website, the pages and images viewed, and the documents displayed or downloaded from our Website.

With your consent, if you enable these technologies or if applicable law allows us to do so, we will also use cookies that enable us to manage our Website and Products and Services and to analyze how our Website and Products and Services are used. They also allow us to better understand your interests and offer you a more personalized online browsing experience better suited to your needs. You can reset your browser to be notified of the cookies used and/or accept or reject the cookies. However, if you decline cookies, you may not be able to use some of the features of our Website.

Why do we collect and use your personal information?
We use personal information collected about you for the following purposes:

to respond to your requests pertaining to our Products and Services, and to any questions or comments that you send us online, by mail or by phone;
to provide our Products and Services, including but not limited to:
to create and manage your account,
to verify your identity
to manage the return or refund of a product;
to locate where a request for delivery is required;
to provide payment functionality, process payments, or to facilitate payments for our Products and Services; and
to perform internal operations that are necessary for delivering our Products and Services, including resolving software outages and operational issues.
to conduct recalls, quality assurance follow-ups and regulatory compliance for our products;
to conduct analytics and statistics on our audience, customer base and use of our Website and Products and Services to better understand customer interests and preferences;
to develop or design new Products or Services of interest to our customers;
to manage, review and improve our Products and Services, including customer service and internal business processes;
to analyze user data in an aggregated and anonymous manner;
to detect security or privacy incidents and to protect against malicious, misleading, fraudulent or illegal activities;
for any other purpose described in this Policy or communicated to you at the time of collection of your personal information;
or such other purposes as the applicable laws permit or require.

Data Analysis
We may use de-identified user information, which does not directly identify users, to create general reports of information used to investigate trends and changes in user demographics of the Website and our Products and Services. This de-identified information is used to administer the Website, to better understand the interests of our users generally, and to improve the Website.

Who can your personal information be shared with?
We may share your personal information with your consent or where required or permitted by applicable law. For example, we may share your personal information with our service providers for the purposes described in the Policy, with certain professionals when necessary to provide you with the Products and Services you have requested, and to facilitate the management of our activities and to provide you with better Products and Services, as described in more detail below.

Communication to our service providers or partners
We may also share your information with third-party suppliers, consultants, and other providers of Products and Services that we employ to perform tasks or render Products and Services on our behalf. These third parties include our payment processors, website analytics companies, business intelligence service providers, messaging service providers, and advertising partners.

Communication to public bodies or governmental bodies
We may disclose your personal information to public bodies or governmental bodies that are authorized by law to obtain the information, or where we have reasonable grounds to believe that the information may be relevant to the investigation of an unlawful activity, or to comply with a subpoena, arrest warrant or order of a court, person or competent body requiring the production of information, or to comply with a court’s rules regarding the production of records or information, or to protect our rights and property.

Commercial transactions
If necessary for the purpose of evaluating or concluding a commercial transaction, such as the sale or licensing of all or part of the business or its assets, or changing its legal structure by merger or otherwise, we may share personal information with the other party to the transaction and in accordance with applicable legal requirements.

Can your personal information be shared or transferred outside of your province, territory or Canada?
We may disclose or transfer personal information to service providers and partners outside of your province, territory or Canada to perform specific tasks or mandates in the normal course of our business. In these cases, we take into account the protections afforded by the laws of such other jurisdictions and use contractual measures to provide adequate protection to your personal information when we disclose or transfer it to these other jurisdictions. However, when your personal information is processed in a jurisdiction other than that in which you reside, it may be subject to the law of that foreign jurisdiction, including any law authorizing or requiring the disclosure of the information to government authorities, courts and law enforcement and national security agencies in that jurisdiction.

How do we protect your personal information?
We have adopted ADVANTAG’s rules pertaining to the governance of personal information to ensure that personal information is protected throughout its lifecycle. Depending on the volume and sensitivity of information, the purposes for which it is used, and the format in which it is stored, we implement a combination of measures to ensure its protection, including:

Designation of a Privacy Officer to ensure ADVANTAG’s compliance with applicable privacy law;

Internal policies, directives, procedures, and guidelines that define the roles and responsibilities of our employees throughout the information lifecycle and ensure that only employees who need to access your information in the course of their work have access to it;
Training and awareness activities for our employees on privacy and information security;
If the information is collected or stored electronically, technical security measures such as encryption, firewalls, anti-virus software and other similar measures;
Procedures to receive, investigate and respond to complaints or requests relating to our information handling practices, including those relating to any privacy incident involving personal information;
A framework for the retention and destruction of personal information;
Contractual and other measures to ensure that service providers with whom we share personal information maintain adequate security measures.

Warning
No data security measures are absolute or fully guaranteed. If you have reason to believe that your interaction with us is no longer secure (for example, if you notice suspicious activity) please contact us immediately by way of the coordinates provided in the “How can you reach us?” section below.

What rights do you have in respect of your personal information?
You have a number of rights related to the personal information we hold about you. You can exercise them at any time by contacting us by way of the coordinates provided in the section “How can you reach us?”

Manage your consent preferences
You may view and change your consent preferences regarding the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information at any time.

Please note, however, that we will no longer be able to offer you Products and Services if you withdraw your consent for a purpose that is integral to our relationship with you as set out in the Policy.

Know if we hold your personal information
You can ask us:

If we have personal information about you;
How your personal information was collected, used and disclosed;
If another person, supplier, partner, affiliated entity or third party holds your personal information for us.

View your personal information
You can ask us for access to the personal information we hold about you. In some cases, we may not be able to provide you with the requested information. For example, we cannot share information with you that would reveal information about another person.

Correct your personal information
You can ask us to correct your personal information if it is incomplete or inaccurate. You can also update it if it has changed.

Delete your personal information
You can ask us to delete your personal information. Our response will depend on the situation. If we have achieved the purposes associated with the collection of the personal information in question, we will delete it. However, we may retain information in order to comply with our legal, regulatory and contractual obligations, and to protect our rights in the event of recourse.

If we have not yet achieved the purposes associated with the collection of the personal information in question, we will delete information that is out of date, inaccurate, incomplete or no longer required. If you ask us to delete the rest of your personal information, we will no longer be able to offer you our Products and Services.

You can make a written request to exercise one of your rights in relation to your personal information by contacting us at the coordinates provided in the “How can you reach us?” section below.

You will receive our response in writing within 30 days. If we refuse your request in whole or in part, we will provide you with the following information:

Reasons for refusal;

The provisions of the applicable law(s) and regulation(s) that justify this refusal;
Your right to challenge this refusal before your provincial or territorial privacy regulator;
Time limits for challenging the refusal.

File a complaint
You can file a complaint if you feel we have mishandled your personal information. We invite you to contact us before you file a complaint. We will take the time to analyze your complaint and discuss how the situation can be resolved.

You can also file a complaint with your provincial or territorial privacy regulator.

What are your choices about how you use your personal information?
By contacting us at the coordinates provided in the “How can you reach us?” section, you may withdraw or modify your consent to the use and disclosure of your personal information, or refuse to participate in certain uses and communications, subject to legal or contractual restrictions. If you refuse to provide us with your personal information or provide us with the required consent for its processing, we may not be able to provide you with our Products and Services.

Login Cookies
You can block the use of cookies by selecting the applicable settings in your browser. For more information on how to block cookies using the settings in your browser, please see our Cookie Policy.

How long is your personal information kept?
We have adopted policies and practices governing the retention and destruction of personal information in our possession or custody. We retain your personal information only for such a reasonable period of time as is necessary or relevant to the fulfillment of the purposes identified in the Policy, or as permitted or required by applicable law. Even if you’ve stopped doing business with us, we have to keep certain information because, among other reasons, the law requires it. When this information is no longer needed, it is destroyed or anonymized in accordance with applicable laws, so that it can no longer identify you, directly or indirectly. As part of the process of destroying information, we follow strict rules and also ensure that unauthorized persons do not have access to it.

Can this policy be changed and, if so, will you be notified?
We regularly update our practices to strengthen them and to reflect evolving privacy laws, regulations and standards. We will notify you on our Website of any material changes to this Policy. When such changes are significant, you will receive notice in accordance with applicable laws.

How can you reach us?
You can use the coordinates below to contact our Privacy Officer in order to:

Make a request to view, correct or delete your personal information;
File a complaint related to the management of your personal information;
Ask for help, provide feedback or ask any questions related to the protection of your personal information.
Make sure you provide us with all the information we may need to follow up on your request.

By email: customerservice@advantag.ca

By post:

Advantag Canada inc
2500, Power Street
Drummondville, QC J2C 7Z4