Privacy Policy
Owens MacFadyen Group
Protecting the privacy and confidentiality of your personal information has always been fundamental to the way we do business within Owens MacFadyen Group (herein referred to as Owens MacFadyen). Our employees and business partners assign great importance to the protection of your personal information and have adopted this privacy policy, which has been drafted to comply with current legal standards regarding the protection of personal information. This document informs you of our policy on privacy, and tells you about the ways we ensure that your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal information are protected. In particular, the following measures are in place to ensure your personal information is protected:
1. Collecting, using and retaining personal information
Personal information is information that can be used to identify you as an individual. We ask you for information to serve you as our client and we normally obtain all of our information about you directly from you.
Either before or when we collect information about you, we will explain how we intend to use it and obtain your consent as part of our client onboarding process. We will limit the information we collect to what we need for those purposes, and we will use it only for those purposes. We will obtain your consent before collecting information about you from third parties, such as from your accountant, lawyer or from financial institutions. If you wish to withdraw your consent, you may do so at any time by advising us in writing.
We retain your information only as long as it is required for the reasons it was collected. We may retain your information beyond the end of your relationship with us but only for so long as it is legally necessary for us to have sufficient information to respond to any issue that may arise at a later date.
2. Disclosure of information
Owens MacFadyen does not disclose personal information to other individuals or companies without your permission, unless we are required to do so by law.
Personal information may be disclosed, with your consent, to financial institutions with whom we act as your agents and to your other advisors (e.g. accountants, lawyers, etc.) Only the necessary personal information will be provided in these situations.
We use contractual or other means to provide a comparable level of protection while your personal information is in the possession, custody or control of a third party. Owens MacFadyen will obtain written confirmation from such persons that they will provide a comparable level of protection in respect of your personal information.
If we provide information in response to a legal enquiry or order, we ensure that the order is valid and we disclose only the information that is legally required.
3. Protecting information
We have administrative, technical and organizational security safeguards to protect our systems and your personal information against unauthorized access and use.
We restrict internal access to personal information to the members of Owens MacFadyen staff required to provide the services for which you have engaged us. These staff members have been provided with privacy training, have signed a confidentiality agreement and are required to be familiar with Owens MacFadyen's privacy policies and procedures
We work to protect personal information from loss, misuse, theft, as well as unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use, or modification.
The methods of protection include:
Physical measures, for example restricted access to electronic and paper records;
Technological measures, for example, the use of passwords and encryption; and
Contractual measures, for example, the use of non-disclosure agreements with third parties to which Owens MacFadyen discloses personal information.
We audit our procedures and security measures regularly to ensure that they are being properly administered and that they remain effective and appropriate.
4. Providing information access and accuracy
We will give you access to the information we retain about you upon request. We will make every reasonable effort to keep your information accurate and up-to-date. You can help by keeping us informed of any changes, such as if you move or change telephone numbers. If you advise us of any errors in our information about you, we will correct it and convey this correction to anyone we may have misinformed.
We endeavor to respond to each access request we receive within 30 days.
5. Information collected via our Website
Via the General Inquiries contact form on our website, you may provide us with your personal and contact information, including your name, phone number, email address and additional information about your inquiry. We will use this information in order to respond to your inquiry. Please do not enter any sensitive personal information into this form, as it will be transmitted by email, which is not a secure method of transmission.
Our website may include links to third-party websites, services, or applications. Clicking on these links may allow the third party to collect or share data about you. If you follow a link to a third-party website, please note that these third parties have their own privacy policies. We do not control these third-party websites, and we encourage you to read the privacy policy of every website you visit.
As you navigate through and interact with our website, we may use cookies or other automatic data collection technologies, including session and persistent cookies, to collect certain information about your equipment, browsing actions, and patterns, including information about your computer and internet connection, including your IP address, operating system, and browser type, and details of your website visits and your preferences with respect to our website. We use this information to help us improve our website and to deliver a better and more personalized service, including by enabling us to store information about your preferences, allowing us to customize our website according to your individual interests. We have a cookie banner that you can review upon entering our website. You may refuse to accept browser cookies via this cookie banner or by activating the appropriate setting on your browser. However, if you select this setting, you may be unable to access certain parts of our website.
We also use a web analytics service (currently provided by Google Analytics). This service also uses cookies, which are stored on your device, to help us analyze how our website is used. The web analytics service collects this information on our behalf and compiles statistical reports for our use which help us improve the content and functionality of our website. The use of web analytics does not allow us to identify specific individuals. For more information on Google Analytics privacy policy, visit http://www.google.com/analytics/.
6. Your Privacy Choices
Owens MacFadyen employees and business partners assign great importance to the confidentiality of the personal information you have entrusted to us. We have always treated your personal information confidentially. To respond to any questions or concerns you may have regarding our privacy policy we have designated a privacy officer within our firm. In addition to answering inquiries, the privacy officer is also responsible for ensuring that the Policy requirements and related procedures are being met.
All inquiries or complaints regarding privacy should be directed to the privacy officer by mail, FAX or e-mail at the address below. We endeavor to acknowledge all inquiries within 5 working days and respond within thirty (30) days from the date the Owens MacFadyen Group privacy officer received the inquiry.
Shawn Kodejs
Privacy Officer
Owens MacFadyen Group
1801 Hollis Street, Suite 1001
Halifax, NS B3J 3N4
Phone: 902-429-6400
Fax: 902-429-5444
E-mail: compliance@omg.ca