OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR PRIVACY Your privacy is important to us at Wishart Law Firm LLP. Our lawyers and staff (collectively referred to as “we”) are committed to handling your personal information in a fair and responsible manner in compliance with our obligations under applicable privacy legislation. To better protect your privacy we provide this electronic notice explaining our information practices and the choices you can make about the way your information is collected and used. To make this notice easy to find, we make it available on our website www.wishartlaw.com.
PERSONAL INFORMATION This notice applies to all personal information as that term is defined in the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, SC 2000, c 5 (“PIPEDA”). As such, for the purposes of this policy personal information means information about an identifiable individual, but does not include the name, title, or telephone number of an employee of an organization.
HOW WE COLLECT, USE, AND DISCLOSE YOUR INFORMATION We collect, use, and disclose personal information only for purposes that a reasonable person would consider appropriate in the circumstances including, but not necessarily limited to, providing you legal services, sending you our invoices, and maintain our internal client database. In accordance with the changes to Canada’s Anti-Spam legislation effective July 1, 2014 we may also use your personal information so that we may send you commercial electronic messages. Unless such messages are sent subject to exemption we will obtain your prior implied or express consent in accordance with this legislation.
CONSENT TO OUR COLLECTION, USE, AND DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION In most cases, we obtain your consent to collect, use and disclose your personal information. If you retain Wishart Law Firm LLP, we assume that we have your implied consent to our collection, use and disclosure of your personal information for the purposes of providing legal services to you, your company or organization; however, we may also ask for your express consent, either verbally or in writing. By providing your personal information to us, you agree that we may collect, use and disclose your personal information as outlined in this Privacy Policy. Pursuant to Regulation SOR/2001-7 adopted under PIPEDA we may collect, use, and disclose your personal information without your consent from the following public sources: telephone directories; professional and business directories; registries for which information is collected under statutory authority; records and documents of judicial or quasi-judicial bodies and publications (including electronic publications) such as magazines, books and newspapers.
HOW WE COLLECT YOUR INFORMATION
Generally we collect your personal information directly from you at the start of your relationship with us. We may also obtain personal information about you from other sources, such as:
other individuals within your company or organization, where we are representing the company or organization;
your insurance company or other financial institution;
your real estate agent in a property transaction;
your legal counsel in another jurisdiction, if we were retained through the other law firm;
from a government agency or registry;
your employer, if we are acting for you; or
your accountant;
DISCLOSURE OF YOUR INFORMATION Please be aware that we may be required by law to disclose your personal information without your consent pursuant to judicial or other government requests, to establish or collect fees, or to an emergency threatening the life, health, or safety of an individual. We may also disclose your personal information if it is already publicly available and the disclosure directly relates to the purpose for which it was publicly recorded. Often your consent to our disclosing your personal information will be implied. For example, when the legal services we are providing to you require us to give your information to a third party (such as to a lender in a real estate mortgage transaction in which we are representing you) we would rely on your implied consent to the disclosure. If our firm is sold or merged with another firm your consent will be implied to transfer your information to the successor firm in order to continue to provide services to you, unless you tell us otherwise. If we are required to contact our insurers in connection with a claim that you have against us, we will assume that we have your implied consent to the disclosure of your personal information to the insurer. In addition, we may transfer your personal information to our service providers for processing. Under PIPEDA, such a transfer is not considered to be a disclosure for which your consent is required. We will use contractual or other reasonable means to ensure a comparable level of protection is provided to your information while it is being processed by our service providers.
HOW YOUR INFORMATION IS STORED All personal information we collect is stored on our password protected computer systems and secure servers.
HOW WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION SECURE We are committed to keeping your information secure and maintaining its accuracy. We employ a variety of technological safeguards to protect against loss, theft, misuse, unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, or alteration of any of your information in our possession. Our safeguards include: security of our physical premises; our professional obligations; security software and firewalls; and internal passwords on all computer systems.
HOW YOU CAN CORRECT YOUR INFORMATION
You may make a written request by e-mail at wishart@wishartlaw.com or by email, mail, or fax to our Privacy Officer (whose contact information is provided for your convenience below) at any time to ask for a copy of the personal information we have in our possession about you and/or to ask us to correct your information on our database. We will respond to your written request for access within 30 days of receipt.
In addition, we will provide an accounting of how we have used and/or disclosed your personal information to third parties.
Requests to access personal information are subject to certain exceptions prescribed by law. For instance if the information you request would reveal personal information about a third party or if the information was collected without consent in the course of an investigation into a breach or agreement or of a law of Canada or of a province your access will be limited or denied. In such circumstances we will provide you a written response setting out our reasons and the recourses available.
We will take reasonable steps to verify your identity before taking any action in respect of such requests.
Lastly, Wishart Law Firm LLP keeps your personal information for as long as it is required to for the reasons it was collected or to comply with its legal or professional obligations. We have procedures in place for the secure deletion and/or destruction of your information once it is no longer required.
OUR WEBSITE We do not collect any personal information through our website. Our website may contains links to other websites which collect your personal information. Wishart Law Firm LLP does not assume any responsibility for the privacy practices, policies or actions of the third parties operating these websites. You should read the privacy policies of these websites and make an informed decision whether or not to provide your personal information to these websites' operators. WHO YOU CAN CONTACT IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS
Questions about this policy and/or complaints can be directed to wishart@wishartlaw.com.
All complaints will be investigated within 60 days of receipt and, where they are found to have merit, appropriate measures will be taken to resolve them.
HOW YOU WILL BE INFORMED OF UPDATES TO OUR PRIVACY POLICY We reserve the right to update and change our privacy policy from time to time. All updates and changes to our privacy policy will be made readily available and accessible through our website www.wishartlaw.com and will also be readily provided upon request through your contact at Wishart Law Firm LLP.