The Public Fishery Alliance is committed to safeguarding the personal information entrusted to us by our members, donors, and volunteers. We manage your personal information in accordance with British Columbia’s Personal Information Protection Act and other applicable laws. This policy outlines the principles and practices we follow in protecting your personal information.
This policy applies to the Public Fishery Alliance and to any person providing services on our behalf. A copy of this policy is provided to any member or donor, on request.
What is personal information?
Personal information means information about an identifiable individual. This includes an individual’s name, home address and phone number, age, gender, position name and title, financial information, etc.
What personal information do we collect?
We collect only the personal information that we need for the purposes of providing services to our members and financial supporters, including personal information needed to:
- Enrol members into the Public Fishery Alliance
- Send out updates to our members and supporters via email or mail
- Invite members to sign petitions or financially support the Public Fishery Alliance
- Invite you to events
We inform our members and financial supporters before or at the time of collecting personal information, of the purposes for which we are collecting the information. The only time we don’t provide this notification is when an individual volunteers information for an obvious purpose (for example, producing a credit card to provide financial support when the information will be used only to process the payment).
Consent
We ask for consent to collect, use or disclose client personal information, except in specific circumstances where collection, use or disclosure without consent is authorized or required by law. We may assume your consent in cases where you volunteer information for an obvious purpose.
We assume your consent to continue to use and, where applicable, disclose personal information that we have already collected, for the purpose for which the information was collected.
We ask for your express consent for some purposes and may not be able to provide certain services if you are unwilling to provide consent to the collection, use or disclosure of certain personal information. Where express consent is needed, we will normally ask members and supporters to provide their consent orally (in person, by telephone), or in writing (by signing a consent form).
A client may withdraw consent to the use and disclosure of personal information at any time, unless the personal information is necessary for us to fulfil our legal obligations. We will respect your decision, but we may not be able to provide you with certain products and services if we do not have the necessary personal information.
We may collect, use or disclose client personal information without consent only as authorized by law. For example, we may not request consent when the collection, use or disclosure is to determine suitability for an honour or award, or in an emergency that threatens life, health or safety.
How do we use and disclose personal information?
We use and disclose client personal information only for the purpose for which the information was collected, except as authorized by law. For example, we may use client contact information to deliver your membership benefits.
If we wish to use or disclose your personal information for any new business purpose, we will ask for your consent. We may not seek consent if the law allows this (e.g. the law allows organizations to use personal information without consent for the purpose of collecting a debt).
How do we safeguard personal information?
We protect personal information in a manner appropriate for the sensitivity of the information. We make every reasonable effort to prevent any loss, misuse, disclosure or modification of personal information, as well as any unauthorized access to personal information.
We use appropriate security measures when destroying personal information, including shredding paper records and permanently deleting electronic records.
We retain personal information only as long as is reasonable to fulfil the purposes for which the information was collected or for legal or business purposes.
Please be aware that Public Fishery Alliance is not responsible for the privacy practices of other websites that we link to. We encourage you to read the privacy statements of each and every website that requests personal information from you.
Policy updates and changes
We may change this policy from time to time without notice. Changes will be reflected on this page.
Aggregate Data
In some cases, we may aggregate your information with other peoples’ in order to report on campaigns. For example, we may count the number of people who donate or sign a petition based on their postal code. That way, we can show where our members are taking action — with the number (e.g., “200 people from Vancouver have signed this petition”) or by indicating the total on a map. We do not display your actual postal code.
Cookies and Data Technology
We use cookies and other technology on our websites to make them easier to use and so that we can learn about how you use them. Information collected this way may include (but is not limited to) your IP address and internet service provider, the type of web browser and operating system you used and which of our website pages you visited.
We use links in our emails to track open and click-through rates to help us learn what emails appeal to you most.
In some cases, interacting with our websites, social media accounts or emails provides us with “anonymous” data, such as IP address, link clicks, page visits, the time spent on a page, etc. We use Google Analytics on our website to learn where you are, when you’re using our site and what content you find most interesting. This helps us stay relevant.
We may also use 3rd party cookies, beacons and other storage technologies to understand what website content is most important to you so that we can measure our performance and target sponsored and unsponsored content to you on those 3rd party platforms.
It’s possible for us to put anonymous data together with personal information you give us to find out more about you. This helps us respect what we know about you. For example, when we have petitions that are meaningful locally, we try our best to send them to the affected communities and avoid sending irrelevant or too many emails.
Use of Third Parties
In many cases, we don’t actually collect and store personal information in our systems, but instead, use a third-party. For example, we use MailChimp to send out email updates on our activities. Such services have resources dedicated to maintaining security and confidentiality, and we ensure that any third-party partner has written policies about never sharing your information with anyone other than Public Fishery Alliance
Donation and Credit Card Information
In order to donate to us, you may need to provide your credit card information.
In the case of donations made online, the Public Fishery Alliance does not collect your credit card information. Instead, this information is collected and processed by third-party, PCI-compliant services. Donations made by in person, through the mail or by phone are collected by the Public Fishery Alliance and processed then any credit card information is destroyed/deleted. We do not keep any information on file.
Need More Information?
This document is available to the public and explains how we collect, use and disclose information, in accordance with this policy, the Personal Information and Electronic Documents Act, the Personal Information Protection Act and other relevant legislation.
If you have a question or concern about any collection, use or disclosure of personal information by Public Fishery Alliance, please contact: