Privacy policy

Effective date: October 6, 2026 · Replaces the version of June 2, 2021

The Association for Canadian Studies (“ACS”) and the Metropolis Institute (“MI”), together “we”, take the protection of personal information seriously. We are committed to handling it in accordance with applicable Canadian privacy laws, including Quebec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector and, where it applies, the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

This policy explains what personal information we collect through acs-metropolis.ca, why, where it is kept, how long, who can see it, and how you can exercise your rights.

1. Person in charge of the protection of personal information

Jack Jedwab, President and CEO, is responsible for the protection of personal information at ACS and MI.

Association for Canadian Studies
850-1980 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal (Quebec) H3H 1E8, Canada
Email: general@acs-aec.ca · Telephone: 514-925-3097

2. What we collect, and why

Information you choose to send us. The website has no contact forms. If you write to us by email (for example, to ask a question, request a program evaluation consultation or apply for a position), we receive your name, your email address and whatever else you include. We use it only to reply to you and provide what you asked for.

Mailing list. Subscribing takes you to a page run by our mailing-list provider, Mailchimp, which collects your email address (and your name, if you provide it) on our behalf so that we can send you our communications. You can unsubscribe at any time using the link in every message.

Technical information recorded automatically. Like almost every website, our servers record each request they receive: the page requested, the date and time, your IP address, the address of the page that linked to ours, and your browser’s identification string. We use these records to keep the site secure and working, to investigate faults, and to produce aggregate visit statistics (for example, how many times a page was viewed). We do not use them to identify you, build profiles, or advertise.

Cookies and tracking. We do not use cookies, tracking pixels, advertising technology or third-party analytics to follow visitors. The website stores only two small items in your browser, neither of which identifies you: a language preference in the Public Opinion Portal, which remembers whether you chose English or French, and a note that you have already answered the invitation to subscribe to our mailing list, so that it is not shown again. A session cookie is used only when staff sign in to manage the website.

The Public Opinion Portal presents aggregate survey results. It does not ask visitors for personal information.

We collect only what is necessary for these purposes, and we will not sell, rent or make commercially available any personal information you provide.

3. Where your information is kept

The website, its database and its files are hosted by Google Cloud in Montreal, Canada, within a Canadian data boundary.

Some of our service providers may store or process information outside Quebec and outside Canada:

• Email is handled by Google Workspace; messages you send us may be stored outside Canada.
• Mailing list subscriptions are held by Mailchimp (Intuit Inc.) in the United States.

When information is communicated outside Quebec, we first assess whether it will receive adequate protection, and we rely on providers bound by contractual confidentiality and security obligations.

4. Who can see it

Personal information is available only to ACS and MI employees, representatives or agents who need it to respond to you or to administer our services (including cloud storage). We may disclose it where required or permitted by law, for example to respond to a legal obligation, to enforce our policies, to respond to claims, or to protect someone’s life, health or safety.

5. How long we keep it

• Emails and the information in them: for as long as needed to respond and to meet our legal and administrative obligations, after which they are deleted.
• Server records: 90 days, then deleted automatically. This includes the words typed into the site’s search box, which are also counted day by day for our visit statistics and deleted after the same 90 days.
• Visit statistics: daily totals, for example how many times a page was viewed. They contain no personal information and are kept for as long as they are useful.
• Mailing list subscription: until you unsubscribe.

6. Security

We protect personal information with technical and organizational measures appropriate to its sensitivity, including encrypted connections (HTTPS), restricted access for authorized staff only, and hosting in Canada. No system is perfectly secure, however, and we cannot guarantee that a third party will never gain unauthorized access. If a confidentiality incident presents a risk of serious injury, we will notify the people concerned and the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, as the law requires.

7. Your rights

You have the right to:

• ask whether we hold personal information about you, and obtain access to it;
• ask us to correct information that is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date;
• receive a copy of information you provided to us, in a commonly used technological format;
• withdraw your consent at any time. Withdrawal stops the processing from that point on, and does not affect processing done before it;
• file a complaint with us.

To exercise any of these rights, write to general@acs-aec.ca. We will respond within 30 days.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (www.cai.gouv.qc.ca (opens in a new tab)) or the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (www.priv.gc.ca (opens in a new tab)).

8. Links to other websites

Our website links to other sites, including YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram and our partners. Their privacy practices are their own, and we encourage you to read their policies. Video thumbnails on our site are served from our own server, so your browser does not contact YouTube until you choose to open a video.

9. Our other websites

This policy applies to acs-metropolis.ca. ACS and MI also operate:

• the Metropolis Conference: metropolisconference.ca (opens in a new tab)
• the Canadian Index for Measuring Integration and Inclusion (CIMII): integrationindex.ca (opens in a new tab)
• uMetropolis, our online learning platform: umetropolis.ca (opens in a new tab)

Those sites work differently from this one — for example, conference registration and payment, online-learning accounts and analytics cookies — so this policy does not describe them. The person in charge named in section 1 is responsible for personal information on all of our websites, and questions about any of them can be sent to general@acs-aec.ca.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. The effective date at the top shows when it last changed.