Privacy Policy

Policy Effective: 04/15/2024

Policy Last Updated: 04/15/2024

About Us

Equine Register Canada Limited (“Equine Register”, “we”, “us” and similar terms) is a provider of animal identification and registration databases and software solutions and services.

Currently, our services include Digital Stable, a digital platform that offers a range of services designed to support the welfare, protection and well-being of equines. Data that is collected in the Digital Stable or to support service delivery through the Digital Stable is stored in our Central Equine Database, a central data repository that supports the Digital Stable functionality and other objectives related to equine disease control, traceability and animal welfare. Our services also include National ChipChecker, a digital service that enables individuals to conduct a search on information about an equine.

Key Highlights

We understand that your time is valuable.  Therefore, we have set out below some important highlights of our privacy policy. You can obtain more information about how we collect, use, share, protect and otherwise handle your personal information by reviewing our full privacy policy. We encourage you to read our entire privacy policy.

1. What personal information do we collect? If you register for or use Digital Stable, we may collect your full name, home address, billing address, email address, telephone number, date of birth, user identification code, account password, and payment details, as well as information about equines that you own and/or register. If you register to receive our marketing communications and service updates, we may collect your full name, home address, email address, and telephone number. If you enquire about our organisation and its services or otherwise communicate with us by telephone or email, we may collect your full name, home address, email address, telephone number, recordings of your voice, and any other personal information that you share with us in the course of your communications with us. If you visit or use the Website, Digital Stable or National ChipChecker, we may use cookies to collect your IP address, location, browser and device type, referral source, time and length of visit, page visits, number of page views, and unique user ID . For more information, please see our Cookie Policy. We may also collect any other personal information that you provide to us or consent to a third party providing to us, and such other personal information as is permitted or required by applicable law.

2. For what purposes do we collect, use and share personal information? If you register for or use Digital Stable, we may use your personal information to allow you to create and manage your account, verify your name, address and age, support the delivery of services that you choose to use, send you notifications and updates about new and existing services offered, and collect payment for our services. If you register to receive our marketing communications and service updates, we may use your personal information to send you updates about our existing and new products and services. If you open our marketing emails, we may use information about you to track and record that you have opened the email and any response to the email, and to assess the effectiveness of our marketing efforts. If you enquire about our organisation and its services or otherwise communicate with us by telephone or email, we may use your personal information to provide you with the information or updates you have requested, provide customer service, and, if requested by you, to forward your information to a third party to respond to your enquiry. If you visit or use our Website or National ChipChecker, we may use your personal information to deal with enquiries and complaints made by or about you, provide customer service, monitor and improve the efficacy of our Website and services, and, if requested by you, to forward your information to a third party to respond to your enquiry. For more information, please see our Cookie Policy. Subject to applicable law, we may also use your personal information to create aggregated or de-identified data and analyse customer or visitor demographics, to customise, monitor the efficacy of, improve and develop the products and services that we offer, to protect our operating systems and integrity as well as other users, to monitor compliance with and enforce our Terms of Website Use & Data Services and other policies and contracts, to allow you to exercise any rights you may have with respect to your personal information under applicable data protection legislation, to allow you and us to comply with our obligations under applicable laws and contracts, for any other purposes to which you consent, and for such other purposes as are permitted or required by applicable law.

3. With which parties do we share personal information? We may share personal information with third party service providers, including providers of messaging, payment processing, customer support and address lookup services. We may be compelled by legal action to release information in connection with statutory reporting obligations, search warrants, court orders, subpoenas, summons, discovery obligations, bankruptcy or insolvency proceedings or other legal requests or disclosure requirements. We may also disclose personal information to other parties where you consent or instruct us to do so, or where such disclosure is otherwise permitted or required by applicable law.

4. Are there any risks associated with our handling of personal information? We reserve the right to disclose personal information in order to comply with the law, applicable regulations and government requests. This may include providing personal information to organisations that have statutory, welfare and biosecurity responsibilities, who may use this information in furtherance of potential litigation, criminal investigation, regulatory action, or otherwise in connection with legal matters which may have adverse impacts on you. Personal information held by a government or other public sector institution could be subject to a freedom of information request pursuant to public sector privacy laws. We may engage third party service providers, who may process or store your personal information outside of Canada, including in the United States and the United Kingdom. Personal information that is processed outside of Canada may be accessible to foreign courts, law enforcement and national security authorities. Although we will implement safeguards to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information that is transmitted or stored via our Website, our products or services or by other electronic means.

Data Protection

We are committed to protecting and respecting your personal information when using our website (located at www.equineregister.ca) (the “Website”) and our services, and complying with data protection law. This privacy policy describes what personal information we may collect from or about you, why we use your personal information, how we may share personal information with third parties, and more generally the information handling practices we maintain.

By providing your personal information to us, you acknowledge that we may use it in the ways set out in this privacy policy. We may provide you with further notices highlighting certain uses we wish to make of your personal information. We may also give you the opportunity to opt-in or opt-out of selected uses, such as marketing, when we collect your personal information, in each case in accordance with applicable law.

If you are registering other people to use our services where you are the key contact, and are providing us with personal information about those individuals, you must ensure that this privacy policy has been drawn to the attention of those individuals and that you have consent to share their personal information with us so that we can use and handle it as described in this privacy policy. Where the individual is under the age of 14 years, you must ensure that you have parental consent to provide us with the personal information relating to the child.

From time to time we may need to make changes to this privacy policy, for example, as the result of government regulation, new technologies, changes to our information handling practices or other changes in data protection laws. You should check the Website periodically to review the most up to date privacy policy. If and only to the extent required by applicable law, we will provide at least 30 days’ notice prior to any new terms taking effect, which will set out the text of the amended clause of this privacy policy and the date the changes will come into force. You will then have a further 30 days after such entry into force to cease your use of our services. Your use of our services after such date constitutes your agreement to those changes.

Who do we collect personal information about?

• Present, past and prospective customers or users of our services;
• Individuals who enquire about our organisation and its services;
• Individuals that sign up to receive our marketing communications and service updates; and
• Individuals who communicate with us by telephone or email.

What personal information do we collect?

If you register for or use Digital Stable, we may collect the following types of personal information: your full name, home address, billing address, email address, telephone number, date of birth, user identification code, account password, and subscription details (including confirmation of your transaction with our third party payment processor, transaction code and the value of the transaction). We will also collect information about equines that you own and/or register including your relationship to the equine, , equine’s photo, UELN reference or identification number (as applicable), microchip number (if applicable), location, name, breed, description, age, vaccination details, medical details (if applicable), competition results (if applicable) and detail of people who are connected to the equine such as livery manager, rider, trainer (as applicable).

If you register to receive our marketing communications and service updates, we may collect the following types of personal information: full name, home address, email address, and telephone number.  If you open our marketing emails. For more information, see our Cookie Policy.

If you enquire about our organisation and its services, we may collect the following types of personal information: full name, home address, email address, telephone number, and any other personal information that you share with us in connection with your enquiry.  

If you communicate with us by telephone or email, we may collect the following types of personal information: full name, home address, email address, telephone number, recordings of your voice, and any other personal information that you share with us in the course of your communications with us.

If you visit or use the Website, Digital Stable or National ChipChecker, we may use cookies to collect your IP address, geographical location (country and province/state), browser and device type, referral source (e.g., the website or social media platform where you click an advertisement or link to arrive at the Website or service), time of visit, length of visit, page visits, and number of page views. For more information, see our Cookie Policy.

We may also collect any other personal information that you provide to us or consent to a third party providing to us, and such other personal information as is permitted or required by applicable law.

How do we collect your personal information?

Depending on how you interact with us, we may collect your personal information using the following means:

• By telephone, including by recording inbound and outbound telephone calls;
• When you email us;
• Via our Website, when you open one of our marketing emails and/or through your use of our services (including through the use of cookies – please see our Cookie Policy for more information);
• Where you have used registration forms on our Website;
• From third party service providers, including our payment processors;
• From individuals who have registered you for our services; and
• From third parties who have introduced you to us, such as breed societies, competition organizers, friends and other equine riders or owners.

Where required by applicable law, we ensure that the privacy settings on technological products or services we offer to the public that collect personal information provide the highest level of confidentiality by default.

Purposes for which we will collect, use and disclose your personal information

If you register for or use Digital Stable, your information will be transferred to and stored in our Central Equine Database. We may use your personal information to allow you to create and manage your account, verify the name and address that you have given us, verify your age, support the delivery of services that you choose to use, send you notifications and updates about new and existing services offered, deal with enquiries and complaints made by or about you, provide customer service, collect payment for our services, and enable us to comply with any legal request or requirement.

If you register to receive our marketing communications and service updates, we may use your personal information to send you information, notifications, newsletters and other updates about our existing and new products and services. If you open our marketing emails, we may use the information that we collect using cookies to track and record that you have opened the email and any response to the email, and to assess the effectiveness of our marketing efforts.

If you enquire about our organisation and its services, we may use your personal information to provide you with the information or updates you have requested, provide customer service, and, if requested by you, to forward your information to a third party to respond to your enquiry.

If you communicate with us by telephone or email, we may use your personal information to provide you with the information or updates you have requested, provide customer service, and, if requested by you, to forward your information to a third party to respond to your enquiry.

If you visit or use our Website or National ChipChecker, we may use your personal information to deal with enquiries and complaints made by or about you, provide customer service, monitor and improve the efficacy of our Website and services, and, if requested by you, forward your information to a third party to respond to your enquiry. For more information, see our Cookie Policy. Where you submit personal information for publication on our Website (including by utilizing any feature of the Website that allows you to upload content or make contact with other visitors to or users of our Website), we will publish and otherwise use that information in accordance with the license you grant to us.  For more information, please see our Terms of Website Use & Data Services.

Subject to applicable law, we may also use your personal information to create aggregated or de-identified data and analyse customer or visitor demographics as well as statistics about registered equines, to customise, monitor the efficacy of, improve and develop the products and services that we offer, to protect our operating systems and integrity as well as other users, to monitor compliance with and enforce our Terms of Website Use & Data Services and other policies and contracts, to allow you to exercise any rights you may have with respect to your personal information under applicable data protection legislation, to allow you and us to comply with our obligations under applicable laws (including, without limitation, equine welfare and biosecurity laws) and contracts, for any other purposes to which you consent, and for such other purposes as are permitted or required by applicable law.

Withdrawing your Consent

You may withdraw your consent to our continued collection, use, disclosure and communication of your personal information, subject to legal or contractual restrictions, reasonable notice and such other exceptions as are permitted or required by applicable law, by:

• Clicking on the "unsubscribe" link in any email from us;
• Logging into our services at equineregister.ca and changing your details or exercising available options to withdraw your consent; or

• Writing to The Data Protection Manager at Equine Register Canada Ltd. 135 Laurier Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario.
• K1P 5J2., or by email to privacy@equineregister.ca.

If you do withdraw your consent to our continued collection, use, disclosure or communication of your personal information, you may not be able to access or use some of our services and/or Website features, and/or receive our future information, notifications, newsletters and other updates about our existing and new products and services. Any withdrawal of consent will not have retroactive effect, and we cannot control continued or further use or distribution of personal information published on our Website by third parties, to the extent that such personal information has already been published or otherwise made available to persons outside of our control.

How long will we retain your personal information?

We only keep your personal information for as long as it is necessary to fulfil the purposes for which the information was collected, unless longer retention is permitted or mandated by applicable law.

If you register for or use one or more of our services, we will generally retain your personal information for at least the length of time that you are registered for and use the service(s).

If the purpose of collecting and using the personal information is achieved and any applicable retention period is over, we will destroy or anonymize (where permitted by applicable law) the information without delay, unless we are permitted or required to retain the information under applicable law.

Personal information printed on paper is destroyed by shredding, crushing or incinerating, and personal information stored by electronic means is deleted using a technical method that cannot be reproduced.

What will we share with third parties?

We may share personal information with third parties whose products or services we use (or may rely on them to use) in order to provide our services. More specifically, we may share personal information with, or permit the collection of personal information by, the following third parties:

• Messaging services, including Twilio and Mailchimp, who may process your full name, email address and telephone number for the purposes of sending you notifications relating to our services;
• Payment service providers, including Stripe, Apple and Google, who may process your full name, billing address and payment card and transaction details for the purposes of collecting payment for our services and in accordance with the terms of their own privacy policies;
• Intercom, who may process your full name, telephone number, email address and any other information required for the purposes of managing customer support requests you may submit relating to our services; and
• Address lookup services, including Google Mapping Services, who may process your home and billing address for the purposes of streamlining the user experience and standardising address formats.

Please note that we may change or add third party service providers at any time, in our sole discretion, either in Canada or elsewhere. We encourage you to review our privacy policy from time-to-time to obtain updated information about our service providers.

You should carefully review the privacy policies of the above third parties to obtain more information about how they collect, use, share and otherwise process your personal information, and you may contact them directly for further information.

By submitting personal information for publication on our Website, you acknowledge that such information will be available to the public and may be re-used and disclosed by any viewer, recipient or other third party worldwide for any purpose. We are not able to control the use or disclosure of your personal information by such third parties.

Subject to applicable law, we may also disclose your personal information to third parties in connection with loans or other financing that we seek or in connection with a prospective or completed business transaction, including a merger, sale or transfer involving all or part of Equine Register or its assets or as part of a corporate reorganization or restructuring or other change in legal form or corporate control.

Equine Register reserves the right to disclose personal information in order to comply with the law, applicable regulations and government requests. This may include providing personal information to organisations that have statutory, welfare and biosecurity responsibilities, such as the CIFA and enforcement agencies who may use this information in furtherance of potential litigation, criminal investigation, regulatory action, or otherwise in connection with legal matters which may have adverse impacts on you. Personal information held by a government or other public sector institution could be subject to a freedom of information request pursuant to public sector privacy laws.

We may also be compelled by legal action to release information in connection with statutory reporting obligations, search warrants, court orders, subpoenas, summons, discovery obligations, bankruptcy or insolvency proceedings or other legal requests or disclosure requirements.

We may also disclose personal information to other parties where you consent or instruct us to do so, or where such disclosure is otherwise permitted or required by applicable law.

How do we protect your information?

We implement physical, organizational and technical safeguards to protect personal information in our control, including monitoring our systems and data for indicators of unauthorised access, encrypting personal information in transit and at rest, conducting regular staff security training, implementing least privilege access to certain systems and data, and reviewing vendors’ security practices.

We may engage third party service providers who may process or store your personal information outside of Canada, including in the United States and the United Kingdom.

Personal information that is processed outside of Canada may be accessible to foreign courts, law enforcement and national security authorities.

If you are located in Quebec, please note that your personal information may be communicated outside Quebec.

If you are located in Alberta, you may contact The Data Protection Manager at Equine Register Canada Ltd. 135 Laurier Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario. K1P 5J2. or by email to privacy@equineregister.ca.  to obtain written information about our policies and practices with respect to service providers outside Canada; or (ii) ask questions about the collection, use, disclosure or storage of personal information by service providers outside Canada for or on our behalf.

Unfortunately, the transmission or storage of personal information via the internet or other electronic means is not completely secure. Although Equine Register will implement safeguards to protect your personal information, we cannot guarantee the security of your personal information that is transmitted or stored via our Website, our products or services or by other electronic means; any such transmission or storage is at your own risk to the extent permitted by applicable law.

Roles and responsibilities within our organization

The personal information that we collect is accessible to our technical, customer service, finance, marketing and operational personnel.

Our Information Security Officer has overall responsibility for our compliance with applicable privacy laws and for ensuring:

1. responsibility for the day-to-day administration and implementation of our privacy program, such as developing and delivering privacy training to relevant personnel, establishing and publishing relevant policies and procedures, investigating and responding to complaints and potential violations of our privacy policies or relevant laws, responding to requests from individuals to exercise their rights under applicable privacy laws, and regularly reviewing and identifying opportunities to improve our privacy program; and
2. preparing a written information security program, assisting with breach prevention, response and containment, and evaluating and implementing information security controls.

In addition, all personnel are responsible for: protecting the confidentiality and security of any personal information they handle in connection with their employment; following our security measures and policies and procedures for handling personal information; refraining from any unauthorized access, use or disclosure of personal information; facilitating data subject requests; and reporting security or confidentiality incidents.

Other Websites

Please note that clicking on links and advertisements on our Website or with our services may result in your transferal to another website, where data privacy practices may vary to that of Equine Register. If you are transferred to another website, you should consult the privacy policy for that website, as we are not responsible for and have no control over information that is submitted to or collected by these third parties.

Keeping your personal information accurate

You must inform us immediately if any of your personal information changes. It is your contractual responsibility to do this. Failure to do so could invalidate your use of our service or prevent our ability to deliver the service to you.

You can inform us of a change to your personal information by logging into your account on the Website, or by contacting us at Equine Register Canada Limited, 135 Laurier Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario. K1P 5J2, or privacy@equineregister.ca.

Your Rights

The right to access your personal information

Subject to any relevant restrictions or exemptions permitted or required by applicable law, you are entitled to request to access the personal information we hold about you and to request certain information about how we use, disclose or communicate your personal information. To exercise your rights to access your personal information or request such information, please contact us at Equine Register Canada Limited, 135 Laurier Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario.K1P 5J2, or privacy@equineregister.ca.

The right to rectification

We take reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we hold about you is reliable and as accurate and complete as is necessary for its intended use, but you are entitled to ask us to update or amend any inaccuracies in the personal information that we hold about you, subject to any relevant restrictions or exemptions permitted or required by applicable law. To request us to update or amend any personal information we hold about you, please contact us at Equine Register Canada Limited,  135 Laurier Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario.

K1P 5J2. Canada, or privacy@equineregister.ca. You may also log into our services on the Website and change your details within your account profile.

The right to opt-out of marketing

You are entitled to opt-out of receiving future marketing material from us at any time. You can exercise this right by clicking ‘unsubscribe’ on any marketing email you receive from us or by contacting us at Equine Register Canada Limited, 135 Laurier Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario. K1P 5J2 or privacy@equineregister.ca.

The right to deletion or de- or re-indexation

In certain circumstances, depending on the jurisdiction where you are located, and subject to any pre-conditions and permitted or required restrictions or exemptions under applicable law, you may be able to request that we delete or cease disseminating your personal information, or that we de-index or re-index any hyperlink attached to your name that provides access to your personal information by a technological means. In such case, some or all of our products or services may not be available to you, where your personal information is needed to provide the product or service. In some cases, we may be unable to delete your personal information where we have, or an organization to which we have disclosed your personal information has, a statutory obligation to keep such information. You can exercise this right by contacting us at Equine Register Canada Limited, 135 Laurier Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario.

K1P 5J2 or privacy@equineregister.ca.

Your right to ask questions or complain

If you have any questions or complaints about this privacy policy or our collection, use, disclosure, communication or other handling of your personal information, you may contact The Data Protection Manager at Equine Register Canada Limited, 135 Laurier Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario.     K1P 5J2, or privacy@equineregister.ca.  

Our process for dealing with complaints related to the protection of personal information generally includes:

1. Acknowledgement of receipt without undue delay;
2. Appropriate steps to confirm the identity of the complainant, and to obtain the details of the complaint as well as any relevant documentation;
3. Consideration of applicable laws;
4. An appropriate, fair and impartial investigation; and
5. Communicating the outcome of the investigation to the complainant, including any remediation measures we take (where justified).

Currently, our Information Security Officer acts as our person in charge of the protection of personal information and can be reached at Equine Register Canada Limited, 135 Laurier Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario. K1P 5J2 or privacy@equineregister.ca

Verifying your identity

In order to verify the legitimacy of and process any of the above-listed requests, questions or complaints, we may require you to provide:

• Your full name;
• Signed consent form from account holder; and/or
• Your photo identification.