Privacy Policy

You have choices about how you interact with IAC. If you do not provide us with your personal information, you may not receive the requested service or activity from IAC. 

By interacting with IAC, whether through our Website or by other means, you accept this privacy policy. You also accept IAC’s use of technical information and Website analytics as described in this policy. 

When you interact with IAC, we may collect your personal information such as your name and contact information, including your address, postal code, phone number, fax number, and email address. For IAC members, personal information may further include, for example, financial information such as bank account or credit card details, gender information, occupation, employment and position, qualifications, work experience, professional memberships, or residency status.  

We collect personal information about you only if it is necessary for IAC to meet its purposes and objectives. You will usually know when we collect this information because you will be asked to provide your information.  We may also collect your personal information and other information when you interact with us, such as when you make an inquiry or input information through our Website, when you post content on IAC’s Website, when you apply for a grant, or when you meet with IAC staff.  IAC will only use this information to contact you to answer your questions and requests, to provide you with the information which you have requested, to manage content which you have posted on our Website, to send you communications related to IAC’s events and programs (e.g., updates, reminders, etc.), to improve our services or product offerings, and/or to conduct data analysis for the purpose of tracking our programs and progress, and reporting same to Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada (“ISED”). 

When you apply for a job with IAC, your personal information, including your occupation, employment and position, qualifications, work experience, professional memberships, referee reports, employment history, academic record, and your residency status, is collected to allow IAC to contact you, assess your eligibility for employment, and determine your suitability for the job to which you have applied. A standard criminal background check conducted by the RCMP National Repository of Criminal Records or local police may be part of the hiring process. If an applicant is found to have a criminal record, the nature of the offense(s) will be provided to us by the RCMP so that we may assess the impact this record may have on suitability for employment with IAC. 

IAC does not knowingly collect or solicit personal information from individuals under 18 years of age. If you are under 18 years of age, you should not provide personal information to IAC. If we later obtain actual knowledge that a user is under 18 years of age, we will take reasonable steps to remove that user’s personal information from our systems

We may use accounts on social networks, including LinkedIn and Twitter, to engage with the public. 

IAC’s social media accounts are publicly accessible, and your posts, comments, and replies to, and mentions of, IAC may be publicly visible, depending on your privacy settings. Your privacy and the retention of information on social media accounts are governed by the privacy policies of the parties that operate these social networks. Some social networks may allow you to control the information you make available to IAC. Users should review and agree to privacy policies and the terms and conditions of the parties that operate these networks prior to participating. IAC has no responsibility or liability for the way the organizations that operate such linked platforms collect, use, disclose, secure and otherwise treat your personal information. 

We may collect and measure information available to us about social media activity to provide content that is relevant and potentially interesting to users of these social media platforms. We do not collect personal information during this process. 

We will only use or disclose your personal information for the same purpose or purposes as we collect it, or for a purpose that is consistent with IAC’s objectives. We will not share your personal information to any third party without your explicit consent, except to: (i) ISED only when necessary to fulfill our contractual obligations to ISED; and (ii) external service providers or contractors that we use to facilitate or outsource one or more aspects of the operation of our Website or our business. These service providers or contractors are subject to confidentiality agreements with us and other legal restrictions that prohibit their use of the information we provide them for any purpose other than to facilitate the specific outsourced related operation, unless you have explicitly agreed or given your prior consent to them for additional uses. Where possible, we will anonymize your information prior to disclosure to a third party. 

From time to time, we may be required to provide personal information in response to a valid court order, subpoena, government investigation, or as otherwise required by law, or to collect a debt from or make a payment.  We also reserve the right to report to law enforcement agencies any activities that we, in good faith, believe to be unlawful.  We may release certain personal information when we believe that such release is reasonably necessary to protect the rights, property, and safety of others or ourselves. In all cases, we disclose only the minimum amount of personal information for the legally permitted or required purpose. 

IAC generally maintains your personal information through electronic files. Recognizing that your privacy is important, IAC employs reasonable technical, administrative and physical security measures to protect your personal information against unauthorized access. However, no transmission over the Internet can be guaranteed to be completely secure since “perfect security” does not exist on the Internet. Consequently, IAC does not represent, warrant, covenant or guarantee the complete security of the personal information you provide to IAC using the Internet. 

Our Website uses Google Analytics. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect technical information about your visit to our Website, including your Internet Protocol address, geographical location, information about the operating system of your computer or device, and information about your browser.  This information is processed by Google Analytics to compile statistical reports for IAC about patterns of user visits to our Website, including, among other things, the number of webpage visits, the number of unique webpage views, the average time spent on a webpage, traffic to our Website by hour of the day and day of the week, and geographic location of users. IAC uses this statistical information to determine opportunities for improvement (for example, understanding webpages visited provides IAC with valuable information for improving the content and functionality on certain webpages). The use of Google Analytics does not allow IAC to identify specific individuals.     

Our Website also uses cookies set by IAC or third-party software platforms to map your visit. Cookies are small pieces of data placed on your computer, phone, tablet or other device by Websites or sometimes by emails.  

You can opt-out of Google Analytics by changing your browser settings to refuse cookies or disable JavaScript so that your visit will not be tracked, and thus no information will be collected by IAC. You may also modify your browser setting to refuse, delete or disable cookies or refuse cookies when prompted the option. If you choose to opt-out of Google Analytics and/or refuse, delete or disable cookies, you may not be able to access all or part of the content of our Website. Unless you have adjusted your browser settings to refuse cookies, our system may automatically issue cookies when you access our Website. 

IAC uses HubSpot, SurveyMonkey Apply, Moodle and other third-party platforms. IAC may provide these third-party platforms access to your personal information for IAC’s internal data and document management purposes and may, from time to time, use these third-party platforms to distribute emails to its members or other individuals. For more information regarding how these third-party platforms protect your information and their obligations regarding the collection, use and disclosure of personal information, please refer to their privacy policy and their cookie policy. 

Our Website contains links to other Websites that IAC does not own or operate. We will not provide any of your personal information to these third-party Websites without your consent. We only provide links to third-party Websites as a convenience to visitors to our Website. 

Please be careful whenever sending personal information to us via email.  Email is generally not a secure means of transferring information.  We therefore cannot guarantee that this information will not be lost or used in a fraudulent manner and we encourage the use of email encryption to communicate with us.  

Changes to this Privacy Policy may occur if we make corresponding changes to our management of our Website, to the services we offer, to the personal information we collect, or to our practices for handling your personal information. If there is any material change in our Privacy Policy, the revised policy will be posted on our Website.   

Questions, comments, complaints, inquiries, and requests regarding this Privacy Policy should be sent to our Privacy Officer, Mike McLean, at info@ipcollective.ca.  

This Privacy Policy shall be construed in accordance with and governed by the laws in effect within the Province of Ontario. 

In the event of any conflict between the above Privacy Policy and the French version thereof, the above Privacy Policy will prevail. If you have any questions about the above Privacy Policy, please use the link at the bottom of this page to send us a message detailing your concerns and a member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible.