Privacy Policy

The Canadian Fitness and Lifestyle Research institute is committed to ensuring the privacy of study participants, clients and users of our surveys. We have developed a privacy policy in accordance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). This law was established in 2004 and outlines the ground rules for collection, use and disclosure of personal information in the course of commercial activities. It balances an individual’s right to privacy with an organization’s needs for personal information for legitimate business purposes.

PIPEDA established a set of ten principles that organizations must follow when collecting, using and disclosing personal information in the course of commercial activity.

The Principles are:

• Identifying Purposes
• Consent
• Limiting Collection
• Limiting Use, Disclosure and Retention
• Accuracy
• Safeguards
• Openness
• Individual Access
• Challenging Compliance

A more detailed description of PIPEDA may found at: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/P-8.6/

Our privacy policy governs the collection, use, disclosure and disposition of personal information by CFLRI to ensure that all personal information is held secure and used in a responsible and respective manner.

1. Collection of personal information:

The primary purpose of collecting personal information is to be used to analyse our research or service your own requests. You can never be identified by what we publish. We publish statistics based on grouped data, such as broad categories of age, income, education, or community size. Examples of the types of information we may collect (either directly through a study or indirectly through our use of our website) include:

• Name, address, telephone number, age, gender, household income, community size, education level, marital status, province/territory
• IP (internet protocol) address of visitors to our website
• Aggregate information on what pages users visit or access
• Email addresses of those who subscribe to our newsletter or who communicate with us through our contact form

Identifying Purpose

CFLRI, or a third party on behalf of CFLRI, may collect demographic information (gender, age, education, marital status, language, and broad income category), household information, or other personal information from survey participants. Answers provided are voluntary. All data collected will remain strictly private and confidential. You will be informed verbally or in writing on the purpose of collecting such information. No individual, household or personal information will ever be released, but rather are grouped in categories.

For Survey Participants

CFLRI may hire a third party to collect data, contact participants to answer a CFLRI survey and request personal information with your consent. CFLRI will ensure that the third party does not breach CFLRI’s privacy policies. All information collected is strictly confidential and no unauthorized person will see your results at any time. Staff from CFLRI will follow confidentiality guidelines of Statistics Canada in dealing with data. The data are analyzed and do not have any information that identifies respondents. For analysis, we only keep data about general demographic information such as respondent’s age and province of residence so we can group the responses of people who belong to a certain group together. Data are only reported in this grouped format.

Survey Participants and others

Personal information may be provided to us through correspondence, requests for information, surveys, questionnaires, sales of products or services or other forms of communication. This information may be recorded for the purpose of research, processing and receipting an order, recognizing a contribution, identifying attendees at an event, responding to information and product requests, completing shipping orders, and e-mail for updates you have requested, or, providing and evaluating a service.

Benefits of data collection:

Providing your information will help us …

• Analyze data to publish results
• Respond to your requests, update as requested
• Process orders (e.g., customize tabulations)
• Evaluation of services

2. Consent:

CFLRI or a third party shall obtain consent from individuals at the time of data collection prior to the use or disclosure of non-identifiable information. Consent may be written, oral or implied. This may be done electronically, physically or by telephone. Consent shall not be obtained from individuals who are minors and therefore will be obtained from a parent or legal guardian.

3. Limiting Collection, Limiting Use and Disclosure and Retention:

CFLRI or a third party will not trade, sell or share personal information to any other business without your consent, unless required by law. Personal information may be used to process a donation, order, service, materials, or for some other purpose that would be disclosed to you when the information is collected. All data collected will remain strictly private and confidential. No individual, household or personal information will ever be released.

CFLRI will retain employee personal information for certain periods of time in accordance with Canada Revenue Agency or by federal or provincial legislation. Documents shall be destroyed by way of shredding or any other secure way of disposing the information.

4. Accuracy and Safeguarding of Personal Information:

CFLRI stores personal information in databases and files in Ontario, Canada. All employees, volunteers, agents and authorized service providers of CFLRI are required to protect the confidentiality of personal information. CFLRI maintains appropriate technical and organizational safeguards to protect personal information against loss, theft, unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use or modification.

5. Openness and Individual Access:

CFLRI will make our Privacy Policy available on our website. Please feel free to review our Privacy Policy. You may contact us at any time to correct your contact information or have your information removed.

6. Challenging Compliance:

CFLRI is committed to working with clients, participants, and all others to ensure that any complaints, disputes be resolved in a fair and rapid manner. If you have any complaints or issues regarding your personal information handling or CFLRI Privacy Policy, please contact the Institute.

7. Web analytics:

CFLRI uses Google Analytics to collect information regarding web traffic and visits for the purpose of optimizing user experience. Information that may be collected includes:

• IP address
• date and time of visit
• pages visited and documents downloaded
• type of browser or operating system used

8. Third party social media:

CFLRI uses social media to share relevant, and accurate statistical information to facilitate knowledge exchange. CFLRI uses various social media platforms, such as X, Facebook and Youtube. These social media accounts are public and are not hosted on CFLRI’s secure server. We encourage our users to familiarize themselves with the terms and conditions and/or privacy policies of these third-party service providers prior to interacting with CFLRI on social media.

Facebook Data Use Policy

X Privacy Policy

YouTube Privacy Policy

Google Privacy Policy

9. Cookies:

Cookies are files that may be placed on your hard drive by a website to provide information about how you use the site. CFLRI uses session cookies to track traffic patterns. This information will help us improve the efficiency of our website. Please note that the information collected are not shared with a third party and are not in any way linked to any personal information you may have provided. If you wish you may disable cookies to prevent tracking. Disabling cookies will not hinder your browsing experience.