Privacy statement

The Alzheimer Society of B.C. is committed to protecting the privacy of people whose personal information is collected and held by the Society. We recognize our responsibility to be transparent and accountable in how we use the personal information we have about the people we serve, our donors and various other individuals.

At the Alzheimer Society of B.C. we collect, use and disclose a variety of personal information. We have established this policy in compliance with the Personal Information Protection Act (British Columbia) so that personal information is protected.

Accountability

The Alzheimer Society of B.C. is responsible for personal information in our custody or under our control. We have a designated privacy office responsible for our compliance with this policy, which can be contacted at privacy@alzheimerbc.org.

Transparency and notice

You will find a version of this statement on many of our publications and communications:

The Alzheimer Society of B.C. is committed to protecting your privacy and your personal information. The information you provide will be used to keep you informed of Alzheimer Society of B.C. activities including programs, services, special events, funding needs, opportunities to volunteer or to donate and to issue a tax receipt where applicable. Please visit our website at www.alzheimerbc.org for more information about our privacy practices. If at any time you wish to be removed from any of these contacts, please let us know by calling 604-681-6530, toll-free 1-800-667-3742 or email privacy@alzheimerbc.org.

What is personal information?

Personal information means information about an identifiable individual, including: name, age, home address and phone number, race, ethnic origin, sexual orientation, health information, financial information and education and employment information.

Business contact information, which includes the name, title, business, address, telephone number or other contact information of an individual at a place of business, is not considered to be personal information and can be collected, used or disclosed without consent under applicable laws.

Why does the Society collect, use or disclose personal information?

The Alzheimer Society of B.C. collects, uses and discloses personal information to operate the Society and provide our services in British Columbia and Yukon, including:

Delivery of programs and services to clients and members of the public

• Our advocacy efforts
• Stewardship of our donors, including processing gifts and issuing tax receipts
• Special events for fundraising
• Our research initiatives
• Communications, including updates on our activities as well as opportunities to volunteer and give
• Legal and regulatory purposes

In general, we restrict our collection of personal information, internal distribution of personal information and external disclosure of personal information to the limited extent reasonably necessary for our purposes and programs. Where we disclose personal information, we have agreements in place to protect your data. We do not rent, sell or trade our mailing lists.

How the Society uses and discloses personal information

The Alzheimer Society of B.C. operates some of our programs in collaboration with other organizations. We will clearly communicate this when we do so and will identify which organization we are collaborating with. We may share information with these organizations, such as the Alzheimer Society of Canada who we are affiliated with, the British Columbia Ministry of Health Services and various regional health authorities, as required.

We engage with third parties to help deliver our services and operate the Society. We may share personal information with these third parties. Where we do share personal information, we have agreements in place to protect your data and ensure that they only use the personal information for the intended purpose.

We use technology including artificial intelligence (“AI”) in our day-to-day work. We have policies and procedures to ensure AI is used safely and effectively and in compliance with our privacy obligations.

E-mail communications

From time to time, we may use e-mail in the provision of our services.

We may also use e-mail to provide you with information or keep in touch with you. We will send you e-mail where you have consented to receive it or otherwise in compliance with applicable law. If at any time you decide you do not want to receive e-mail from us, simply let us know using the unsubscribe link included in the e-mail and we will remove your name and e-mail address from our distribution lists. We will do the same with your mailing address and telephone number on request by calling 604-681-6530 or toll-free 1-800-667-3742 or contacting us at privacy@alzheimerbc.org.

Consent

Generally, your knowledge and consent are required before we collect or disclose your personal information in accordance with the Personal Information Protection Act (British Columbia). This consent may be implicit or explicit, depending on the sensitivity of the circumstances.

Implicit and “deemed” consent

Implicit consent exists when the information is provided voluntarily and the purpose would be obvious to a reasonable person. For example, when you make a donation to us, you provide identifiable information in order to receive a tax receipt. We will assume you have “deemed” consent for us to use your personal information to issue the tax receipt, and we will issue you a tax receipt. In addition to issuing tax receipts, this information may be used to keep you informed about Society activities including programs, services, special events, funding needs, opportunities to volunteer or to give. We routinely offer you the opportunity to opt not to have your information used for these purposes, and you will always be given the option to withdraw your consent and opt not to receive this type of material from us.

Explicit consent

Explicit consent means that the Society will obtain written or oral consent from you before collecting, using or disclosing the information. This is usually in the case of more sensitive information. To provide quality support services, sensitive information including personal health information may be asked. This may include diagnosis, relevant health history and physician’s name. Subject to the Personal Information Protection Act (British Columbia), this information is kept confidential, will not be shared with anyone and will only be used for the stated purpose of providing quality support services. We will destroy, erase or make anonymous personal information that we no longer need.

How does the Society protect your personal information?

We are committed to protecting personal information by ensuring appropriate security safeguards are in place. Safeguards will vary depending on the sensitivity of the information and may include measures such as password-protecting electronic documents, locking paper files and ensuring only authorized personnel have access to certain documents.

We strive to keep your personal information as accurate and up-to-date as necessary.

The Society retains personal information for one year if we use it to make a decision that directly affects you. We will destroy documents (including electronic documents) containing personal information when retention of the personal information no longer serves the purpose for which it was collected and is no longer necessary for legal or business purposes.

Privacy and our website

Our website is hosted on the Alzheimer Society of Canada’s platform. The privacy policy of the ASC can be found here on their website.

When you visit our website some general information about your visit will be automatically recorded.

• The Internet domain for your Internet service provider, and the IP address of the computer accessing the website.
• The type of browser you are using.
• The date and time you visit our site and the web pages that you visit on our site.
• The web address of the previous website you were visiting, if you linked to us from another website.

We may also use cookies for statistical analysis to determine the usefulness of our website and to improve the user-friendliness. We may disclose this non-personal information to third parties such as sponsors or clients and/or use it for auditing purposes. If you prefer not to receive cookies while browsing our website, you can set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies and refuse the cookie when your browser alerts you to its presence. You can also refuse all cookies by turning them off in your browser but you may not be able to take full advantage of our website if you do so.

When you leave our website

This policy discloses the Alzheimer Society of B.C.’s privacy practices. However, our site contains links to other sites. Once you link to another

site, you are subject to the privacy and security policies of the new site. The Society is not responsible for the contents of any linked website, any link contained in a linked website or any changes or updates to such websites. The inclusion of any link does not mean that the Society endorses that website.

We encourage you to read the privacy statements of all websites you visit, especially if they request personal information from you.

Your right to access your personal information

You have a right to see and ask for corrections to your personal information that we have on file. We will normally respond to your request within 30 days. You can make a request by mail or by emailing our privacy office. Contact information for our Privacy Office:

Mail: #300 - 828 West 8th Avenue
          Vancouver, BC V5Z 1E2
Email: privacy@alzheimerbc.org
Telephone: 604-681-6530
Toll-free: 1-800-667-3742

Complaint process

We are committed to having an accessible and responsible complaint-handling process in place to provide individuals with an opportunity to express concerns about the Society's compliance with the Personal Information Protection Act (British Columbia).

If you have questions, concerns or complaints relating to our treatment of personal information, please contact our privacy office noted above.

If we are not able to resolve your privacy concerns, you may contact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of British Columbia:

PO Box 9038, Stn. Prov. Govt.
Victoria, BC V8W 9A4
Telephone 250-387-5629 or 1-800-663-7867
Email: info@oipc.bc.ca
Web site: www.oipc.bc.ca