Privacy Policy
Canadian Mental Health Association, York Region Branch (“CMHA-YR”) respects your privacy. It is our intention to only collect, store and use your personal information for defined purposes. We use your information to support and enhance our relationship with you, for example, to process your inquiry, provide service and support, and share service and association news and offerings with you. We do not sell your personal information. We only share your personal data outside the Canadian Mental Health Association’s head office and various branches with your consent, as required by law or to protect CMHA-YR, its customers, or the public, or with companies that help CMHA-YR fulfill its obligations with you, and then only with partners who share CMHA-YR’s commitment to protecting your privacy and data. At any time you may contact CMHA-YR with any privacy questions or concerns you may have. You also may ask at any time to see the data you have given us and request its correction or deletion, as appropriate and permitted by law. We strive to ensure a high level of security and confidentiality.
CMHA-YR has prepared this Privacy Policy to inform you about our ongoing commitment to ensuring that your personal information remains accurate, confidential and used only for identified purposes, regardless of how it is provided to us. This Policy also addresses how you can inquire about the personal information we hold about you and how we will respond to such a request.
We consider “personal information” to be information about an identifiable individual. We do not consider public information found in directories and listings, or business names, addresses and/or contact numbers, to be personal information.
The website and privacy guidelines in this Policy are applicable only to this website and to CMHA-YR.
Privacy Principles
We have adopted, as CMHA-YR’s Privacy Policy, the ten personal information privacy principles stated in the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information. The ten principles are as follows:
(1) Accountability - We will identify individuals in CMHA-YR who are to be specifically responsible for our compliance with the CSA Model Code. Their responsibilities will include making sure that third parties who process personal information on our behalf will comply with the CSA Model Code.
(2) Reason for Collection - We will only collect and use personal information about our clients (which includes anyone who contacts CMHA-YR) to identify them, to communicate with them, to protect CMHA-YR and its clients against error and fraud, to understand what services our clients want and to provide information about our services to our clients. See also: Gathering and Sharing of Information (below).
(3) Consent - Before collecting, using or disclosing any personal information about any individual, we will ensure that we have the individual’s consent in an appropriate form (absent a legal obligation for disclosure), this policy representing such a consent to the collection and use of personal information provided via the Internet.
(4) Limiting Collection - We will collect personal information only for the purposes stated herein unless we receive consent from the individual to collect it for another purpose.
(5) Limiting Use, Disclosure and Retention - We will use and disclose an individual’s personal information only for the purposes stated herein, unless we have the individual’s consent to using or disclosing it for another purpose. We will only keep personal information about individuals for as long as we need it to fulfill our stated purposes.
(6) Accuracy - We will maintain all personal information in our possession in as accurate, complete and up-to-date form as is necessary for the purposes for which it is to be used.
(7) Safeguards - We will protect all personal information in our possession from unauthorized access or alteration or from inadvertent destruction by security safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information.
(8) Openness - We will make this Privacy Policy readily available on our web-site. Individuals may make inquiries about personal information privacy issues by contacting us by mail: Mr. Neil Howard, Privacy Officer
1091 Gorham Street, Suite 300
Newmarket, Ontario
L3Y 8X7
(9) Individual Access - We will give any individual access to the personal information about him or her that we have in our possession. Individuals may request access to their personal information in our possession by contacting us by any of the means noted herein. In the event that the individual demonstrates that the information which we have in our possession is inaccurate or incomplete, we will make any appropriate changes.
(10) Challenging Compliance - Any individual may address any issues about our collection, use or disclosure of personal information by contacting us by any of the means noted herein.
Gathering and Sharing of Information
Where appropriate, we share aggregated statistical information and other pertinent information in furtherance of the aims and objectives of the Canadian Mental Health Association within the Canadian Mental Health Association head office and/or its divisions, who shall be bound by comparable privacy constraints.
Your Right of Access to Your Personal Information
CMHA-YR will permit you the reasonable right of access and review of your Personal Information. We will endeavor to provide the information in question within a reasonable time and no later than 30 days following receipt of your request. If we require additional time, or if we feel that we have grounds to refuse your request, we will notify you of new timing parameters for our reply and/or the reasons for our extension or refusal. CMHA-YR reserves the right to charge for copies of your records, however we will always let you know in advance if there is any such charge. CMHA-YR will provide information from its records in a form that is easy to understand. To protect you, CMHA-YR may require sufficient information to allow us to confirm that the person making the request is authorized to do so before granting access or making corrections.
For How Long and Where Does CMHA-YR Keep My Personal Information?
We keep personal information only so long as is needed in order to meet the purposes set out in this Policy, including to enable us to meet any legal or regulatory requirements. CMHA-YR has retention standards for customer information and records management which set out these timelines. We have retention policies in place that govern the destruction of personal information.
How to Contact CMHA-YR
CMHA-YR takes its responsibility to protect your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal information very seriously. There may be questions that you may have about this Privacy Policy, or you may feel that you have privacy concerns relating to CMHA-YR’s use of your personal information. In order to address your privacy concerns, please contact:
Mr. Neil Howard, Privacy Officer
1091 Gorham Street, Suite 300
Newmarket, Ontario
L3Y 8X7
Changes to Privacy Policy
Although our commitment to privacy will not change, in order to accommodate changes based on new legislation, legal developments (such as court decisions), or if the products and/or services that CMHA-YR offers changes, we reserve the right to amend this Policy from time to time. You will see that the date of the last update of this Policy (the “Effective Date”) is listed below. If we update this Policy, the Effective Date will be changed to indicate when the last update was made.
Canadian Mental Health Association, York Region Branch
Effective Date: July 1, 2009