The COC
The Canadian Olympic Committee (“COC”) is a national, private, not-for-profit organization committed to transforming Canada through the power of sport. Its mission is to lead the achievement of the Canadian Olympic Team’s (“COT”) podium success and to advance the Olympic values in Canada. It is responsible for all aspects of Canada’s involvement in the Olympic Movement, including Canada’s participation in the Olympic, Youth Olympic and Pan American Games and a wide variety of programs that promote the Olympic Movement in Canada.
Objectives of this Privacy Policy
Because respecting the privacy and confidentiality of your personal information is important to the COC and the Foundation, this Privacy Policy explains how the COC and Foundation collect, use and disclose your personal information on their website (the “Website”). The Privacy Policy aims to assist you in understanding how we collect, use, and safeguard the personal information you provide to us and to assist you in making informed decisions when communicating with us and receiving news and related content through our Website.
This Privacy Policy describes the way that the COC and Foundation will, subject to applicable legal requirements, adhere to all relevant federal and provincial legislative privacy requirements. This Privacy Policy may be updated or modified from time to time by the COC and the Foundation, to account for the introduction of new technologies, business practices, stakeholder needs or applicable laws and regulations. Your use of our Website following any such change constitutes your agreement to follow and be bound by the terms of this Privacy Policy, as changed.
What is personal information?
Personal information is information about an identifiable individual and could include for example, the name, date of birth, home address and phone number, personal e-mail address, marital status, credit card information or other personal information about such identifiable individual.
How do we collect information?
We will obtain your consent to collect, use or disclose personal information (unless implied). Consent can be provided electronically or it can be implied where the purpose for collecting using or disclosing your personal information would be considered obvious and you voluntarily provide personal information for that purpose. Consent may also be implied where we give you notice and a reasonable opportunity to opt-in/opt-out of your personal information being used and you do not opt-in/opt-out and for the continued use and disclosure of your personal information in accordance with this Privacy Policy. Subject to certain exceptions, you can withhold your consent for the COC and/or the Foundation to use your personal information in certain ways. Your decision to withhold your consent to certain uses of personal information may restrict our ability to provide a particular services or functionalities. We will obtain your express consent before using or disclosing your personal information for any purposes not identified in this Privacy Policy and for the use and disclosure of your personal information for specific types of transactions on the application or other forms used in connection with those transactions.
When you use our Website, in particular when signing up to (i) join the Olympic Club, (ii) participate in games, (iii) receive e-mails and newsletters, (iv) participate in a contest, poll or survey, (v) apply for contract employment or volunteer positions, (vi) purchase any product and/or make a donation, and/or (vi) communicate online with any of our representatives, you may voluntarily give us certain information (personal and/or non-personal information). If you’re using our Website on your mobile device, you may also choose to provide us with location data.
The Website may allow you to provide us with your e-mail address, location and language of preference for communication in order that we may send you information and updates about the COC, the Foundation and the COT as well as to administer such email function. In addition, the COC and the Foundation may include a feature on its Website allowing you to provide an e-mail address of a friend and certain other information about your friend in order to for us to send stories, links, or other information about the COC/Foundation/COT to such friend’s e-mail address. Through the use of such function, you are responsible to ensure that you have the consent of your friend to provide us with their e-mail address and such other relevant personal information.
The COC and Foundation may use social media as an extension of its presence on the web. Social media accounts of the COC and Foundation are public and are not hosted on COC/Foundation servers. We recommend you read the privacy policies of these third-party service providers and those of any applications you use to access them before engaging with us on social media platforms. Also, by signing up to or logging in to our Website using third party platforms (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc.), you may give COC and/or Foundation permission to access your information in such other services. By linking your account on such third party platforms to your COC account (e.g. Olympic Club), this will allow the COC and Foundation to obtain certain information from those accounts.
For example, the following information may be received and used by the COC and Foundation in accordance with this Privacy Policy if you choose to link your third party account to your Olympic Club account on our Website:
- Facebook: public profile, friend list, email address, birthday, interests, current city, personal description and likes.
- Twitter: read tweets from your twitter timeline, see who you follow, update your profile, post tweets for you.
- LinkedIn: full profile, email address, your connections *Note: this could include work product information.
- Google+: basic profile, list of people in your circles, email address, your contacts.
- Instagram: access to basic information including your photos, friend lists and profile introduction.
The information obtained from those third party services depends on your settings and privacy policies for such third party platforms and accounts, which are not controlled by the COC or Foundation and are not subject to the present Privacy Policy. We strongly recommend you check your privacy settings on such third party platforms and understand the terms of applicable third party privacy policies before linking your accounts to our Website.
From time to time, the COC and/or the Foundation may run co-sponsored promotional contests. If you provide a completed contest registration form to any of our co-sponsored contest, we may disclose your name, address and email address to the applicable co-sponsor. Also, activities of contest participants may be photographed, distributed and used by the COC and the Foundation for promotional purposes in any medium or form and without any compensation.
Why do we collect, use and disclose personal information?
Some of the purposes for which COC and Foundation may collect, use and disclose your personal information on this Website are:
- To facilitate communication with you
- To grant you/enable you to access certain special features, services or areas of the Website
- To process any of your requests for information
- To permit you to subscribe to Real Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds to receive updates on COC/COF/COT news, information and Website
- To administer participation in contests, games, surveys and polling
- To administer the “Share” function of the Website to e-mail an item to a friend
- To announce special events
- To advise you of changes to our Website
- To allow you to comment
- To administer research on our audience in order to improve
- To provide an enhanced user experience
Only to administer services and operations via our Website, certain personal information may be housed by authorized third-party service providers. Your personal information will be provided to such third-party service providers only to enable its proper administration of such services and operations. We may use your personal information to operate the features of the Website and to allow you, when you choose to do so, to participate in features available only to registered users (e.g. Olympic Club members) or interactive features of the Website.
By signing up to take part in programs or initiatives that we may initiate, or to receive online and/or email communications, we may use the information that you provide to maintain appropriate databases and otherwise to operate and facilitate such programs, initiatives and communications.
The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and/or stored at, a destination outside Canada for processing by third-party service providers contracted by us. If you submit personal information, you specifically consent by doing so to such transfer, storing or processing. We will take reasonable steps to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
In certain circumstances, the COC and Foundation may disclose your personal information if reasonably believed that we are required to do so in accordance with the applicable law or regulation, court order, or any competent governmental, statutory or public authority or to protect our rights and property. We may also co-operate with law-enforcement agencies in any official investigation, and we may disclose your personal information to such agencies in doing so.
Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation
The COC and Foundation are committed to meet the requirements of Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation, including through any commercial electronic messages sent by the COC and/or the Foundation to you and/or your friend. You may “Unsubscribe” of receiving such any applicable communications from the COC and/or Foundation at any time and your electronic address will be removed from our databases.
Personal information of Children?
The COC and Foundation are strongly committed to protecting the online privacy of children under the age of 18. Parents and legal guardians are strongly recommended to monitor the use of the internet by their children.
How do we use certain technologies on our Website?
The Website uses cookie technology to make your use of the Website more convenient. A cookie is a text file which enables the Website to store any information about your activities on the Website, for instance the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our Website, and the websites visited just before and just after our Website. Personal information about your visits to the Website is used on an aggregate basis, which means it is used for statistical purposes to assist us in enhancing your online experience, or to evaluate the materials that we may carry on the Website. Cookies may also be used to monitor polling results. The cookies will monitor results to discourage voting twice in one poll. This will give us the ability to properly count activity reports and polling results. In addition, the cookie will store your e-mail address, which is your unique identifier, so that on return visits the Website will be able to match you to your identity in the database. This is an opt-in feature which will only be made operational if you choose to do so. If you choose to disable cookies associated with the Website, this may affect your use of the Website and your ability to access certain features of the Website.
Web beacons (also called “clear GIFs” or “pixel tags”), which are small strings of code that are placed in a web page or in an email message, may be used in conjunction with cookies to track activity on our Website. As they are used in combination with cookies, if you disable cookies the web beacons will only detect an anonymous website visit.
Our Website may also use services to advertise on third party websites to previous visitors to our site (for example Google AdWords, Facebook Conversion Pixel and Twitter remarketing). Third-party vendors use cookies to serve ads based on someone’s past visits to our Website. In such case, any data collected by the COC/Foundation will be used in accordance with this Privacy Policy, and for those other platforms, through their respective privacy policies.
Links to other sites
This Website may contain links to other websites which are not operated by the COC or the Foundation. COC and Foundation have no responsibility or liability for, or control over those websites, or internet resources or their collection, use and disclosure of your personal information. We recommend you refer to the privacy policy and terms of use contained in any linked site you choose to go to, and familiarize yourself with that website’s terms and conditions of use.
How long do we retain your personal information?
The COC and Foundation will retain your personal information only as long as necessary to fulfill the identified purposes or a legal or business purpose in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
How do we ensure accuracy of your personal information?
We will make reasonable efforts to ensure that your personal information is accurate and complete. You may request correction to your personal information in order to ensure its accuracy and completeness. A request to correct personal information must be sent at privacy@olympic.ca and provide sufficient detail to identify the personal information and the correction being sought. If such personal information is demonstrated to be inaccurate or incomplete, we will correct the information as required and send the corrected information to any third party to which we may have disclosed the personal information previously in accordance with this Privacy Policy.
How do we protect your personal information?
The COC and Foundation endeavour to maintain appropriate procedural and technological measures and storage facilities to prevent any unauthorized use or disclosure of your personal information. COC and Foundation are taking commercial reasonable efforts to protect any personal information that is provided to it through this Website. We cannot, however, guarantee the security of any personal information provided to us in an email or in online form while it is being transmitted to us, as the internet is a potentially non-secure method of information transfer. Any such transmission is at your own risk.
How can you access or correct your personal information?
If you have any questions about the collection, use, or disclosure of your personal information by the COC, the Foundation or through this Website, if you simply want to know whether we have any of your personal information on file, or if you want to access information we have collected about you may reach us at privacy@olympic.ca and we will respond to your requests for access in accordance with applicable privacy legislation and this Privacy Policy. In the event that we refuse access to you, reasons for our refusal will be provided upon your request. For example, your request could be refused because it may include information about other individuals, information that cannot be disclosed for legal, security, or commercial proprietary reasons, and information that is subject to solicitor-client or litigation privilege.
How to limit the use and disclosure of your personal information?
You may withdraw at any time your consent to our use and disclosure of certain personal information by notifying us in writing through email at privacy@olympic.ca. Please note that your withdrawal request may take up to 30 days to implement. Also note that withdrawing your consent may preclude us from providing you with certain information or may prevent your use of certain features and functionalities of this Website.
Miscellaneous
This terms and conditions under which you use this Website (including as it relates to this Privacy Policy) are governed by and interpreted solely in accordance with the laws of the Province of Ontario, without regard to any conflict of law provisions. Any litigation relating to the terms and conditions of use of this Website (including as it relates to this Privacy Policy) shall be resolved exclusively by the provincial and federal courts of the Province of Ontario. If any portion of these terms is held to be unenforceable, the unenforceable portion shall be construed in accordance with applicable laws to the greatest extent possible and the remainder of the provisions shall remain in full force and effect.
Questions or Concerns
If you have any questions or concerns regarding our collection, use and disclosure of your personal or about this Privacy Policy, you may contact us at the following email address: privacy@olympic.ca.