The Certified General Accountants Association of Ontario (CGA Ontario) believes
that it is important for you to know how we treat your personal information. This
privacy policy explains why we collect personal information (information about
an identifiable individual) about CGAs, students and other individuals who
interact with us,as well as how we handle that information on our
website
and offline. The policy includes the following:
With your consent, we may gather personal information from you in person, at our
office, over the telephone, or by corresponding with you via mail or on the Internet
through CGA Ontario's website. You can visit the public area of
CGA Ontario's website without revealing any personal information, unless you voluntarily choose to provide it. If you seek to visit
non-public areas of the website, where access is restricted to CGAs or students
of CGA Ontario, we will need to validate who you are.
The type of information we may collect about you depends on whether or not you are
a CGA or student of CGA Ontario. The information we may collect includes your
name, contact information, correspondence with us, comments/questions about our organization and financial information required to order our goods/services (including
credit card information). For current or prospective CGAs or students: we may
collect additional information, such as your date of birth, gender, languages spoken,
language preference, place of residence, CGA Ontario contact ID number, course enrolment
information, record of academic results reported by CGA Canada, record of academic
and professional accomplishments outside of the CGA program, and particulars of
current and previous employment, education, professional development and volunteer
activities. For CGAs engaged in professional practice or public accounting as a proprietor,
partner or shareholder of a duly authorized incorporated company: we may collect
further information, such as your firm name, names of partners, preferred areas
of practice, position code, practice review results, and professional liability
insurance information.
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Typically, the personal information collected about you is used by CGA Ontario to
confirm your identity, to respond to your inquiries/comments,
to send you important notices about the profession, to fulfil the legal and legitimate
business requirements of CGA Ontario, to protect the public from unauthorised use
of the CGA designation, and generally to provide you with the goods and services
you have requested.
For current or prospective CGAs or students (including members engaged in professional
practice or public accounting), the personal information you provide is also used
by CGA Ontario to process financial transactions (including tuition payment, membership
fees, and purchases of products such as jewelery or clothing), to process program
transactions (including CGAs or student applications, event registration, continuing
professional development reporting, professional practice registration, practice inspection,
course enrolment, seminar enrolment, academic results processing, advanced standing
requests, transcript distribution, and the employment referral service), to provide
you with required information (including notice of annual general meetings, and
election of governors), and to maintain the legally-required register of member
names for public perusal.
We may also use your personal information to provide you with tailored information
(including information about products available for purchase, notices of professional
development, career and volunteer opportunities including the opportunity to obtain
a public accounting licence, speaking engagements or participation in special interest
groups) that we believe will be of interest to you ("targeted communications").
You may opt-in to such where an opt-in is offered or you can call 1-800-668-1454
ext. 307 or 416-322-6520 ext. 307 or by
e-mail at any time to provide or withdraw your consent to such use and disclosure.
We may also use your personal contact information to support our analysis, research
and management of educational, membership, benefits, marketing, public relations,
and affinity programs. If you do not wish your personal contact information to be
used in this manner, you may opt-out of this use of your information where an opt-out
is offered or you can call 1-800-668-1454 ext. 307 or 416-322-6520 ext. 307
or by e-mail at any time to withdraw your consent
to such use and disclosure.
At times, we may conduct surveys. If you choose to participate in such surveys,
we will use the information you provide to better understand your professional profile,
your needs, and the needs of users of professional accounting services.
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From time to time, CGA Ontario may also share the personal information of CGAs
and students with our affiliates, including CGA Canada
and regional CGA affiliates (provincial,
territorial and international). This
shared information may include your contact information, date of birth, gender,
language preference, academic and professional accomplishments, course enrolment
information, employment information, and place of residence. Our affiliates use
the shared personal information for purposes of certifying CGAs, inter-regional
mobility of members and students, operation of academic programs, provision of goods
and services ordered by members and students, maintenance of membership, managing
use of the CGA designation, and to provide you with important material (for example,
annual reports, notices of Annual General Meetings, group insurance, and information
required by law). Our affiliates may also use your personal contact information
to provide you with other material (for example, relating to professional development
programs, CGA Magazine, surveys, marketing, and public relations). If you do not
wish to receive the latter material, you may opt-out of this use of your information
where an opt-out is offered or you can call1-800-668-1454 ext. 307 or 416-322-6520
ext. 307or by e-mail at any time to provide or withdraw
your consent to such use and disclosure.
For CGAs, CGA Ontario may also share your personal information with government
entities for the purpose of enabling your privileges. CGA Ontario is also legally required to maintain a register of member
names that must be open to public inspection during CGA Ontario office hours. This
roster is also provided to all members to facilitate networking amongst members
and to aid in ensuring the use of the CGA designation for qualified CGAs only. If
you do not wish for your name and contact information to be disclosed to members of
CGA Ontario for these purposes, you may opt-out of such disclosure where an opt-out
is offered or you may call 1-800-668-1454 ext.
307 or 416- 322-6520 ext. 307
or e-mail to provide or withdraw your consent
to this disclosure.
From time to time, CGA Ontario may also share your personal information with our
third-party vendors, suppliers, data processors, and providers responsible for administering
marketing and promotional activities or providing the products and services you
requested, on our behalf. We contractually require the organizations with whom we
share your personal information for these purposes to have policies regarding personal
information consistent with our privacy policy or to abide by our policies as relevant
to the personal information shared with them.
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If you choose to provide personal information to CGA Ontario, we assume that you
consent to the collection, use and disclosure of your personal information as outlined
in this privacy policy or otherwise at the time of collection, use or disclosure.
If you do not consent, please do not provide your personal information or, where
applicable, exercise the opt-in or opt-out options offered. If CGA Ontario requests
additional personal information or intends to use or disclose your personal information
differently than described in this privacy policy, we will advise you at or before
the time of collection, use or disclosure (as the case may be) as to how we will
handle that personal information. CGA Ontario will not collect, use or disclose
personal information other than as described herein, or at the time of collection,
use or disclosure (as the case may be), or as otherwise required or permitted by
law. There are limited instances where CGA Ontario may collect, use or disclose
your personal information without your consent as required or permitted by law,
for example: (1) to collect a debt owed to us; (2) to maintain a register of the
names of all CGAs in good standing open to public examination at our head office
during regular business hours (as required by applicable Ontario legislation); (3)
to meet government tax reporting requirements; and (4) to comply with an order made
by a court.
Consent may be express or implied depending on the circumstances. Please note that,
in some cases, your choice to refuse or withdraw consent to certain collection,
use or disclosure of personal information may impact on your ability to meet requirements
of CGA Ontario or on our ability to provide you with certain products or services.
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CGA Ontario will destroy, erase or render anonymous personal information no longer
required for the stated purposes or for a legal or legitimate business requirement.
CGA Ontario takes precautions to protect your personal information against unauthorised
access, disclosure, inappropriate alternation, and misuse. All safety and security
measures are appropriate to the sensitivity level of your information. Access to
your personal information is restricted to those persons whose job responsibilities
require them to have access. In addition, CGA Ontario uses technological safeguards
such as encrypted passwords, secure socket layer (SSL) and 128-bit encryption technologies.
Given that electronically transmitted data is not 100 percent secure, we make no warranties
as to the security of any such information that you submit, which you do at your
own risk.
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There are a number of measures you can take to protect yourself against fraud and
uninvited intrusion. For example, you should take precautions in handling your CGA
Ontario contact ID number. Your contact ID number is necessary for us to identify
you and authenticate your request to access your personal information. You should
not share your contact ID number with others unless you clearly understand the purpose
of their request and you know with whom you are dealing.
From time to time, CGA Ontario engages in research surveys or promotional campaigns
via telephone, mail and e-mail. If you are unsure or suspect that a person requesting
information via a survey or promotional campaign may not be legitimate, please call
us at 416-322-6520, or 1-800-668-1554 to verify that the request is a legitimate CGA Ontario activity.
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If you wish to request access to, or correction of, your personal information in
CGA Ontario's records, please make your request in writing to CGA Ontario’s privacy
officer by e-mail.
Some information may not be accessed in certain circumstances, for example if it
contains personal information of other persons or for other legal reasons. You can
access some of your personal information online by following the links on our website.
Should you identify any incorrect or out-of-date information, please notify us so
that we can make the required changes where appropriate.
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A technology called cookies may be used to provide you with tailored information.
A cookie is a tiny element of data that a website can send to your browser, which
may then be stored on your hard drive so we can recognise you when you return. You
may set your browser to notify you when you receive a cookie and you may choose
to disable cookies if you wish.
CGA Ontario's site logs IP addresses (or domain names), but not the e-mail addresses,
of visitors. This real time information is aggregated and logged, and used to measure statistical
information about usage of the site, including but not limited to the total number
of visits, average time spent on the site, and pages viewed, both in real-time,
and within a certain historical time frame. CGA Ontario uses this aggregated information
to measure the use of our site and to improve the content and usage of our site.
CGA Ontario’s site may contain links to other Internet sites owned and operated
by third parties. While we try to link only to sites that share our high standards
and respect for privacy, we are not responsible for the content or the privacy practices
employed by other sites. You should review the privacy policies applicable to the
other sites before you provide any personal information on those sites.
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CGA Ontario reserves the right to change this privacy policy from time to time.
If CGA Ontario makes a material change, this privacy policy will be updated accordingly.
We recommend that you review this privacy policy periodically so that you are aware
of any changes. Your continued use of our site following the posting of any changes
to this privacy policy shall constitute your acceptance of these changes.
If you have any inquiries, requests or complaints regarding CGA Ontario's privacy
practices, please contact CGA Ontario’s privacy officer by phone at 1-800-668-1454
ext.307 or 416-322-6520 extension 307 or by e-mail.
This privacy statement was last modified on March 31, 2005.
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