Legals

Groupe Bel Canada inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliated companies (“Bel”) attach great importance to the protection and confidentiality of the personal information we collect about you and we make every effort to preserve your trust in this regard.

This privacy policy describes how we collect, use, and disclose your personal information when you visit www.bel-canada.ca (the “Site”), when you participate in our promotional activities by, for example, registering for a contest, subscribing to our newsletter mailing list, or when you submit an information request via the Site. This policy only covers activities subject to the applicable provisions of Canadian federal and provincial personal information protection laws and only applies to our Canadian Site. It does not apply to residents of a territory other than Canada or to third-party websites accessible through our Site.

Please read this privacy policy carefully before visiting the Site or transmitting personal information to us.

The term “personal information” means information that concerns a physical person and allows us, directly or indirectly, to identify them.

We collect personal information directly from you when you visit the Site or participate in our promotional activities. For example, you may provide us with information when you register for a contest, subscribe to our newsletter, submit an information request, contact customer service, or respond to surveys.

In general, we collect the following categories of personal information about you, and use them for the purposes described below:

• Contact information. We collect your contact information directly from you, such as your name, mailing address, telephone number, and email address. We use this information to communicate with you, send you our newsletter, respond to your questions or information requests, and inform you of contests or promotional activities.

• Demographic information. We may collect demographic information that you provide to us, such as your age or gender. We use this information to better understand our clientele, personalize our content and offers, and conduct market studies.

• Preferences and consumer habits. We collect information about your preferences when you visit our Site and the comments you submit. We use this information to understand your needs and preferences in order to better meet them, design, optimize, or market products, and improve the content of our website.

• Information about Site usage. We collect information about your use of the Site and other technical information. We use this information to improve the content of our website, conduct market studies, and carry out surveys, studies, and evaluations.

• Contest-related information. If you participate in a contest or promotional activity, we collect the information necessary for the organization of these contests and activities. We use this information to organize contests and promotional activities and communicate with the winners.

Bel may collect, on its Site, information regarding your visits without you having to provide it yourself. There are a variety of technological means, such as connection cookies and flash cookies, that allow for the passive collection of non-personal information about you (the “automatic collection technologies”).

We use the following cookies on the Site:

• Strictly necessary cookies: these cookies are necessary for the proper functioning of the Site and cannot be disabled. They are defined to meet essential service needs such as secure connection, defining your privacy preferences, and filling out a form. You can configure your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the Site will no longer be able to function afterward.

• Analytical cookies: these cookies allow us to evaluate Site traffic and develop resources to improve the Site’s performance. They help us know which pages are the most and least popular and see how visitors navigate the Site. The information collected by these cookies is used only in aggregated form. If you do not authorize these cookies, we will not know when you have visited our Site, and we will not be able to track the Site’s performance.

• Personalization cookies: if you activate them, we may use them to measure and analyze Site usage performance, and offer you personalized content.

• Advertising cookies: these cookies may be placed on our Site by us or by our advertising partners. They can be used to establish a profile of your interests and offer you relevant advertisements on our Site or on other sites. If you do not authorize these cookies, you will see less targeted advertisements.

When you visit the Site, your browser may automatically transmit certain information to it, such as the URL of the site you just visited and the version of the browser you are using. Cookies may allow us to keep in memory certain information about your use of the Site, including the date of your last visit, the pages you viewed, the time spent on each page, the device you use to browse, your geographic area, the language of your browser, and the files you downloaded. Certain elements of the Site may not function correctly without the assistance of automatic data collection technologies.

Most web browsers allow you to delete cookies from your computer’s hard drive, block them, or receive a warning before they are installed. Please consult your browser’s instructions to learn more about these functions. If you refuse cookies, you will still have access to the Site, but it is possible that your browsing experience will be modified and that you may not be able to take advantage of certain features of the Site.

You can at any time restrict the quantity and type of personal information we receive about you by refusing to fill out forms or data fields on the Site. Be aware, however, that certain services offered online by Bel require the transmission of related personal information. You may also need to subscribe to a list to take advantage of certain services, offers, or promotions that may be of interest to you in other sections of the Site.

You may also need to answer questions or check boxes in your browser’s Preferences menu to indicate that you do not want certain of your personal information (such as your username or mailing address) to be stored by cookies and other tracking technologies for your next visits.

In certain circumstances, Bel may share or grant access to your personal information as follows:

• Within Bel: We may share your personal information within Groupe Bel Canada inc. and its subsidiaries and affiliated companies. Only employees who need this information in the course of their duties have access to it. Our employees receive training on the protection of personal information and proper practices for processing this information.
• Service providers: We may communicate your personal information to service providers who help us carry out our activities, including delivery service providers who ship and deliver your orders (for example, if you win a contest); marketing service providers, including advertising and promotion agencies; data processing, document management, and office services providers; and providers of our products and services, in order to respond to your comments or questions. These providers may only use your personal information for the purposes for which it was communicated to them. Bel takes necessary measures, particularly by contractual means, to ensure that these providers treat your personal information confidentially and guarantee a level of protection comparable to that which Bel reserves for them. Some of these providers may be located outside Canada.
• Business transactions. We may share your personal information in connection with a merger, sale of assets, financing, or acquisition of all or part of our business by another entity or investors, or during negotiations relating to these business transactions.
• Joint program partners: When you register for a program administered jointly with another company, we may, with your consent if required by law, communicate to that company the personal information necessary for the administration of the program. We will not communicate your personal information to promotional partners without your consent.
• Other purposes authorized by law: In certain circumstances, we may disclose your personal information without your consent, notably: to a lawyer or other legal representative of Bel; to a court order; or in any other circumstance required or authorized by law.

Our processing of your personal information may involve a transfer of information outside Quebec and/or Canada, and your personal information may be subject to the laws of a foreign jurisdiction, including any law authorizing or requiring the disclosure of information to the government, governmental agencies, courts, and law enforcement authorities in that jurisdiction.

We protect and retain your personal information using physical, technical, and administrative security measures appropriate to the volume and sensitivity of the information, the purposes for which it is intended, and the format in which it is stored, including security measures to protect your information against loss and theft, as well as against unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, use, or modification. Specifically, we implement the following measures to protect your personal information:

• Internal policies and procedures that define the roles and responsibilities of our employees, representatives, and service providers throughout the information lifecycle and that limit their access based on what is necessary for them to know;
• Physical, technical, and administrative security measures compliant with current standards to protect personal information;
• When information is collected or stored in electronic format, technical safeguards such as encryption, firewalls, passwords, antivirus software, and similar measures;
• A designated personal information protection officer to monitor Bel’s compliance with applicable information protection laws;
• Procedures for receiving, investigating, and responding to complaints or information requests concerning Bel’s information processing practices; and
• Contractual protections to ensure that the service providers with whom we share personal information maintain adequate protections and security standards.

We are committed to protecting the privacy of children and we do not knowingly solicit personal information from minors under 18 years of age. If a child has already provided us with personal information, their parents or guardians can ask us to delete it by contacting us in one of the ways described below (see the section “How can I contact Bel?”). Bel will ensure the situation is corrected with you.

Under the personal information protection laws applicable in the region where you reside, you may have the following rights with respect to your personal information, subject to the limited exceptions provided by these laws:

• Right to information: You have the right to ask us questions about the processing of your personal information, including questions related to the categories of people who have access to your personal information within Bel and the applicable retention period.
• Right of access: You can ask us if we hold personal information about you and, if so, you can request access to this personal information. Depending on the laws applicable in the region where you reside, you may have the right to ask us to communicate to you (and to a third party, where applicable) the personal information you have provided to us in a structured and commonly used technological format.
• Right of rectification: You have the right to ask us to correct any personal information that you consider incorrect or equivocal and to complete any information that you consider incomplete.
• Right to withdraw consent: You may withdraw your consent to the processing of your personal information to the extent permitted by law and our contractual obligations. However, you understand that, in this case, you will no longer be able to benefit from our products and services.

To exercise your rights regarding the protection of personal information, please contact us using the contact details provided in the section “How can I contact Bel?” below.

We retain your personal information only for the reasonable duration necessary for the purposes for which we collected it or for compliance with legal requirements, whichever is longer. We establish retention criteria based on the type of information collected.

If you have questions about our personal information protection practices or wish to exercise your rights under applicable laws, please contact our personal information protection officer at the following address:

Groupe Bel Canada inc.
Attn: Personal Information Protection Officer
500 Place d’Armes, bureau 2095
Montréal (Québec) H2Y 2W2

 Or via email: [email protected] 

This policy is in effect as of the effective date indicated above and may be modified from time to time at our sole discretion. We recommend that you periodically review this policy, as it may be updated or revised from time to time. If we make significant changes, we will take reasonable measures to inform you, notably by publishing the revised policy on our Site with sufficient notice.