Your Privacy Rights
From January 1, 2004, all businesses engaged in commercial activities must comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, and the Canadian Standards Association Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information, which it incorporates. These obligations extend to all businesses, including the Ontario Principals’ Council. The Act gives you rights concerning the privacy of your personal information.

The Ontario Principals’ Council is responsible for the personal information we collect and hold. To ensure this accountability, we have developed this policy, and trained our staff about our policies and practices. 

Why Does the Ontario Principals’ Council Need Personal Information?
The Ontario Principals’ Council provides professional and legal advice and services and professional development courses, workshops and products to a wide range of Members, Associates and, in some cases, other individuals. In doing so, it produces direct marketing materials concerning its services and communicates regularly with Members and Associates about matters of importance or interest to them. 

What personal information do we collect?
Personal information is any information that identifies you, or by which your identity could be deduced.

If we did not collect and use your personal information we could not provide you with professional or legal advice and services; nor could we provide you with professional development opportunities or ensure you receive appropriate recognition for having taken our various courses. Finally, we require your personal information in order to communicate with you regularly about the activities of the OPC and other matters of importance to Members and Associates.

How do we collect your personal information?
We collect information only by lawful and fair means and not in an unreasonably intrusive way. We collect your personal information directly from you when you become a Member or Associate of OPC.

Sometimes we may obtain information about you from other sources: for example,
• from a government agency or registry (e.g. the Ontario College of Teachers);
• your employer;
• your insurance company or doctor if we are assisting you with an LTD or disability-related matter.


Consent 
In most cases, we shall ask you to provide your consent if we collect, use, or disclose your personal information. Normally, we ask for your consent in writing when you become a Member or Associate, but in some circumstances, we may accept your oral consent. Sometimes, your consent may be implied through your conduct with us.


Use of Your Information
We use your personal information to provide professional and legal advice and services to you, to administer our client databases, to provide you with professional learning opportunities and to ensure you receive the appropriate credit or accreditation for your effort, to communicate with you about matters of interest and importance to Members and Associates and/or to include you in any direct marketing activities. If you no longer wish to be a Member or Associate of the OPC, you may advise us not to send you any further communications or marketing materials.

The Ontario Principals’ Council does not disclose your personal information to any third party to enable them to market their products and services. For example, we do not provide our client mailing lists to other professional associations, except the Canadian Association of Principals, of which all OPC Members are also members. The Canadian Association of Principals shall be advised that it may not disclose your personal information to any third party without your consent.


Disclosure of your Personal Information
Under certain circumstances, the Ontario Principals’ Council will disclose your personal information:
· When we are required or authorized by law to do so, for example if a court issues a summons or subpoena;
· When you have consented to the disclosure; 
· When the professional or legal services we are providing to you requires us to give your information to third parties, your consent will be implied, unless you tell us otherwise;
· When you successfully complete an OPC course or workshop, your consent to relay that information to the Ministry of Education, the Ontario College of Teachers and/or your employer as appropriate, will be implied, unless you tell us otherwise;
· When it is necessary to establish or collect OPC fees;
· If we engage a third party to provide administrative services to us (like computer back-up services or archival file storage) and the third party is bound by our privacy policy;
· If we engage expert witnesses on your behalf;
· If we retain a law firm, on your behalf;
· If the information is already publicly known;
· If the disclosure is necessary because of an emergency which threatens the life, health or security of an individual.

Destruction of your Personal Information
The OPC will retain your personal information for as long as it determines necessary to carry out its functions. OPC may destroy some or all of your records at its discretion in a reasonable and responsible manner taking steps to ensure, to the best of its ability, that the destruction will not prejudice any rights you may have to ongoing service from OPC.

Updating Your Information
Since we use your personal information to provide Member or Associate services and information to you, it is important that the information be accurate and up-to-date. Our Membership Policy requires that you notify us of any changes to your personal information. The OPC shall not be held responsible for any errors in personal information supplied by you.

Is My Personal Information Secure?
The Ontario Principals’ Council takes all reasonable precautions to ensure that your personal information is kept safe from loss, unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. Among the steps taken to protect your information are:
· premises security;
· restricted file access to personal information;
· deploying technological safeguards like security software and firewalls to prevent hacking or unauthorized computer access;
· internal password and security policies.

Access to Your Personal Information
You may ask for access to any personal information we hold about you. Summary information is available on request. This is because “closed files” may be stored at a facility off-site and OPC may incur costs to search for and retrieve it. If you request access to such information, retrieval costs will be charged to you and must be paid before the search will be initiated.

Correcting Errors
If the Ontario Principals’ Council holds information about you and you can establish that it is not accurate, complete and/or up-to-date, the Ontario Principals’ Council will take reasonable steps to correct it.


Can I be Denied Access to My Personal Information? 
Your rights to access your personal information are not absolute. We may deny access when:
· denial of access is required or authorized by law (for example, when a record containing personal information about you is subject to a claim of legal professional privilege);
· information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings against you;
· granting you access would have an unreasonable impact on other people's privacy;
· to protect OPC’s rights and property;
· the request is frivolous or vexatious.

If we deny your request for access to, or refuse a request to correct information, we shall explain why.

The Ontario Principals’ Council does not use your Social Insurance Number as a way of identifying or organizing the information we hold upon you. 

Communicating with Us
You should be aware that e-mail is not a 100% secure medium, and you should be aware of this when contacting us to send personal or confidential information. 

Changes to this Privacy Policy
Since the Ontario Principals’ Council regularly reviews all of its policies and procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time.

Requests for Access
If you have any questions, or wish to access your personal information, please write to our Privacy Officer, Dorothy Dent, at 180 Dundas Street West, 25th Floor, Toronto, ON.

If you are not satisfied with our response, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada can be reached at 
112 Kent Street,
Ottawa Ontario, K1A 1H3
1.800.282.1376.

Employment Inquiries
If you apply to the Ontario Principals’ Council for a job, we need to consider your personal information as part of our review process. We normally retain information from candidates after a decision has been made, unless you ask us not to retain the information. If we offer you a job, which you accept, the information will be retained in accordance with our human resources privacy policy. 

Web Site
Our website contains links to other sites, which are not governed by this privacy policy. On our website, like most other commercial websites, we may monitor traffic patterns, site usage and related site information in order to optimize our web service. We may provide aggregated information to third parties, but these statistics do not include any identifiable personal information.