Who are we?

Universities Canada is a membership organization providing universities with a unified voice for higher education, research and innovation.

This Privacy Notice (“Notice”) outlines how we collect, use, share and protect the information used in our work, through our website and through your dealings with us. The protection and security of your Personal Information is a responsibility we take very seriously.

What is Personal Information?

Personal Information is information that on its own or combined with other data, can be used to identify you as a person. Personal Information includes information collected from you directly or from a third party.

Who does this Notice apply to?

This Notice applies to Universities Canada’s website and primary work as a national member association.

This Notice does not apply to several of our specialized programs, which have their own notices. These programs include:

What Personal Information do we collect and how?

The Personal Information collected depends on your interaction(s) with us. We make every effort to limit the amount of Personal Information we collect, relying where possible on business information. Any Personal Information collected by Universities Canada is done for the purposes set out in this Notice, unless we obtain your express consent.

We may collect your personal information as follows:

Please indicate your preference on the cookie banner upon landing on our website. Alternatively, you can reset your browser to reject cookies. You can manage cookies via your browser under settings. If you choose to decline cookies on your browser, you will reject cookies from all websites, not just ours. You may also lose some functionalities on websites if your browser blocks all cookies.

How do we use your Personal Information?

We process your Personal Information for the following purposes:

We process your Personal Information for the following legal bases:

We may aggregate and de-identify your Personal Information so that the data will in no way identify you or any other individual. We may use this aggregated and de-identified data to assist us to better understand how users are accessing and benefiting from our services and otherwise, improve our services.

Who do we share your Personal Information with?

We do not sell your Personal Information to a third party. We also do not share your information with others for their direct marketing use.

We share your Personal Information with your consent or for a legitimate interest, such as completing a transaction. We limit who we share your Personal Information with and what we share with them to only what is necessary. We do not allow third-party service providers to use your Personal Information for their own purposes.

We share your Personal Information with the following parties:

Where is your Personal Information processed?

All information collected by Universities Canada is processed on Canadian servers, located in both Ontario and Quebec, which means your Personal Information may be stored, shared or processed in a jurisdiction outside of where you reside. For example, if you reside in Quebec or the European Economic Area (EEA), you information may be stored, shared or processed in a different jurisdiction. By accessing and participating in our programs, you acknowledge that your information will be stored or processed in a country or province outside of where you reside.

While we take appropriate safeguards to protect your personal data, when your data is stored or processed in a different jurisdiction, it is subject to the laws of the foreign jurisdiction including foreign governments, courts, law enforcement and regulatory agencies. These jurisdictions may not have the same information protection laws as the country in which your personal data was collected.

When transferring Personal Information outside of the EEA, we enter into contractual arrangements (such as Standard Contractual Clauses) with service providers that offer you a similar degree of protection you would get in the jurisdiction your personal data was collected.

How is the information you collect protected?

We protect your Personal Information with technical, organizational and physical safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of your Personal Information. These safeguards include, but are not limited to:

How long do we keep Personal Information?

We retain your Personal Information as long as it is needed to fulfill both the requirement(s) identified above and Universities Canada’s legal obligations. Emails, financial records and specific event data are deleted after seven years.

Photos may be kept indefinitely as part of our bank of promotional resources.

What are your rights and choices?

Your Choices:

Where we process your Personal Information based on consent, you may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting [email protected].

To manage your cookies on your browser, please see this Notice above under What Personal Information We Collect (c) Automatically from your interactions with our website for instructions on how to make choices.

Your Rights:

Depending on where you reside, applicable privacy laws may give you certain rights relating to your Personal Information and our processing of it.

To exercise your rights, please contact us at [email protected]. We will respond to any request within 30 days. If we need more time to fulfill your request, we will let you know.

You may be required to prove your identity so that we can authenticate that the person making the request is you. If you designated an authorized agent to submit a request to exercise your rights, we will require verification that you provided the authorized agent permission to request on your behalf.

Please note that your rights are not absolute as there may be exceptions that exist in the applicable law. If there are legal reasons why we cannot fulfill your request, we will inform you in our response, including the reason why we cannot fulfill the request.

While we make efforts to always maintain the accuracy of your Personal Information, we rely on you to provide us with up-to-date contact information.

Reporting a privacy complaint

You have a right to lodge a complaint about our processing with a supervisory authority or regulator in the jurisdiction where you believe your rights have been violated. If you are concerned about our Personal Information practices, we would appreciate hearing about it first to try to resolve your concerns. You can contact us through the methods listed above.

If Universities Canada has not responded satisfactorily to your complaint or inquiry and you want to notify the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, you may do so at:

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
30 Victoria Street
Gatineau, Quebec
K1A 1H3

Toll-free: 1-800-282-1376
Phone: (819) 994-5444
TTY: 819-994-6591

Other links

Our website may contain links to other third-party sites. When you click on one of those links, you are visiting a website operated by someone other than us, and the operator of that website has a different privacy policy. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of those sites. We encourage you to read the privacy policies of these third-party operators.

Contact us

Universities Canada has appointed a privacy officer who is accountable for the organization’s privacy program and for compliance with this Notice. For any questions or concerns, please contact:

Privacy officer:
Ahmed Tawakol
[email protected]
350 Albert St., suite 1710
Ottawa, ONK1R 1B1
Phone: (613) 563-1236