Privacy Policy

At Amnesty International Canada, we take your privacy rights very seriously.

We have made improvements to our privacy notice so that it is clear and easy for you to exercise the rights you are granted under Canadian privacy law, and for you to choose how you want to hear from us.

The purpose of this notice is to give you a clear explanation about how Amnesty International Canada – and any third parties we work with – collect, use and disclose the personal information you provide to us.

We take care to ensure that we use your information in accordance with all applicable laws concerning the protection of personal information. This privacy notice explains:

If you have any questions regarding this privacy notice, please contact us at: privacy@amnesty.ca

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I unsubscribe from emails, texts or phone calls?

You can change your contact preferences at any time. You can do this by:

  • Clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the footer of our emails to indicate that you do not wish to receive our updates.
  • Asking us to stop sending you marketing texts by sending us an “opt-out” text message – following the instructions we provide you in the text messages you receive from us.
  • Asking us to stop phoning you when you are speaking with one of our representatives.
  • Contacting us at members@amnesty.ca

How do I correct my personal information?

You may change your personal information in our records if it is incomplete or inaccurate. Please contact us at members@amnesty.ca to explain what information needs to be updated and to understand how we can help with this request.

Who can I contact with questions about my personal information?

We want to hear from you and help you with your questions or concerns. Please contact us at members@amnesty.ca for more information on how we handle your information and protect your privacy.

How do I turn off marketing cookies?

You can control the use of cookies through the privacy settings on your device and browser. Check the help menu of your browser for information on how to accept, reject some or reject all cookies. See the Opting out of cookies section [NTD: hyperlink]of our cookies policy for more information on how to disable Google marketing cookies.

Who we are

Amnesty International is a global movement of over seven million people who speak up for humanity and human rights. Amnesty International Canada is part of the worldwide Amnesty movement, and is used as a collective name for Amnesty International, Candian Section (English Speaking), a registered charity in Canada, #11878 5914 RR0001

What information we may collect about you

We collect information about the members and supporters in our movement who campaign and fundraise with us. This information is held securely, as outlined on page 11 of this document. The information we gather may include:

  • Personal information

Name, mailing address, email address, telephone number, date of birth, age, and gender, dietary restrictions or accessibility needs where appropriate (e.g. when registering to participate in one of our sporting or cultural events).

  • Your preferences

We keep a record of what you’ve told us about how you like to be contacted (e.g. emails only) and what you’d like to receive (e.g. petitions about the death penalty).

  • Your interests

Sometimes we collect information about your interests, such as your involvement in Team Amnesty sporting events, so we can contact you with information that is relevant to you.

  • Your affiliations

We may also collect and record any other relevant information you share with us about yourself, including your affiliations with community groups or your employer. For example, we may require your employer’s details to process a payroll gift

  • Payment information

We may collect your bank account details when setting up a regular direct debit, a credit card or debit card number when processing payments by card.

  • Record of your support

We collect and process information about your interactions with us, including:
* Details about our contact with you through email, text message, postal mail, on the phone or in person
* Details about donations you make to us
* Details about events that you register for, or attend * Any other support you provide to us.

As a global movement of people, Amnesty International Canada embraces the fact that our supporters are of all ages. We are committed to safeguarding the welfare of all children and young people involved in our work. We have dedicated programming for youth at http://www.youth.amnesty.ca/ If you are under 13, we will ask for consent from a parent or guardian to collect information about you and to continue to contact you. We may also collect the name and contact details of your parent or guardian, where appropriate. Amnesty International Canada events and petitions have clear rules on whether or not children and young people can take part. We have designed this privacy policy to be accessible to our supporters of all ages, and you can also contact us at youth@amnesty.ca for explanations of any information you do not understand.

Our legal basis for dealing with your information

Amnesty International Canada is committed to complying with Canadian privacy laws, including how we obtain your consent for us to collect, use, and disclose your personal information. In almost all cases, our collection, use, and disclosure of your personal information will fall into one of the following categories:

Where you have provided your consent to allow us to use your data in a certain way. For example:

  • You join an Amnesty International student group at University.
  • Your first action as an Amnesty member is to sign a petition.
  • When you sign the petition you check the box off consenting to receiving email updates.

Where collection or use of your personal information without your express consent is permitted by law, such as:

  • the collection is clearly in the interests of the individual and consent cannot be obtained in a timely way;
  • we believe this information is useful in an investigation into breaking any Canadian or foreign laws;
  • we need this personal information for an emergency that threatens the life, health or security of an individual;
  • the information is publicly available as defined by Canadian privacy regulations;

Where disclosure of your personal information without your express consent is permitted by law, such as:

  • where required to comply with a subpoena, court order, court rules, authorized government request, or similar legal demand;
  • for the purpose of investigating the breach of an agreement, Canadian laws, or preventing fraud or financial abuse;
  • where necessary due to an emergency that threatens the life, health or security of an individual;

How we use your information

We are committed to making it convenient for you to tell us how you want to hear from us. We carefully manage the communications we send you to ensure we are contacting you in the most appropriate way. If you ask us to stop contacting you, we will, unless we are legally obliged to communicate with you.

We may use the information we collect from you to:

  • Provide you with information about us and the work that we do, including products and services that you’ve request.
  • Administer and manage your donation, including handling your personal information relating to contributions, legacies, and raffles.
  • Manage your direct marketing and communication preferences.
  • Ask for your financial support, such as donating to our latest appeal.
  • Encourage you to take action as part of a campaign.
  • Comply with our legal and regulatory obligations.
  • Analyze the performance of our campaign actions and fundraising appeals.
  • Target online advertising effectively, reaching people who share similar interests and characteristics to our supporters.
  • Create a record of your interests, preferences, past donations and actions, and level of potential engagement or donation.
  • Organise and administer attendance at our events.

How we will contact you

Below explains how we will contact you about human rights issues, including direct marketing relating to our campaigns, fundraising appeals and events.

We have processes in place to review how we communicate with you, especially in situations where you have not engaged with us for a while, or where the circumstances of how you interact with us change. Where you tell us that you no longer want our updates, we will act on this as soon as we can.

  • We will only contact you by email if you have given us your express or implied consent along with your email address. In some cases we can imply your consent to receive emails if you make a purchase or donation. In other cases we are permitted to contact you for fundraising purposes. In all cases, you can choose not to receive future emails from us. Email is low-cost and fast to send and respond to, and time is often not on our side when we are fighting to protect the life or freedom of an individual. You can opt out at any time by clicking on the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom of our emails.
  • We will only contact you by text if you have given us your consent along with your mobile phone number. Text messages are a fast and low-cost way to ask you to support a petition, stand up for an individual whose rights are being abused and occasionally, to raise funds. You can opt out at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions in our text messages.
  • We will only contact you by telephone if you have given us your consent along with your phone number. Exceptions to this are where you sign up to fundraise for us (for example, by participating in an event or organising your own), as we will call you about ways you can achieve your fundraising target and how we can support you. If you have already provided us with your phone number, we may call you occasionally. Being able to call our supporters is important to our ability to raise funds quickly, and most of our calling is carried out by Amnesty International Canada staff who share your passion for protecting our human rights. You can opt-out of phone calls at any time by calling 1-800-266-3789, by emailing members@amnesty.ca, or by writing to us at Supporter Services, Amnesty International, 312 Laurier Ave E, Ottawa, ON K1N 1H9.
  • If you have provided us with your postal address, we may send you mail unless you have told us that you would prefer not to receive such information. You can opt-out of receiving mail from us at any time by calling 1-800-266-3789, by emailing members@amnesty.ca, or by writing to us at Supporter Services, Amnesty International, 312 Laurier Ave E, Ottawa, ON K1N 1H9.

Where needed, we may also contact you for administrative purposes using the contact details that you have given us – for example, in relation to donation tax receipts or to send you a product that you bought.

Analytics and research

We use data analytics techniques to target our resources and fundraising activity more effectively, so that we can make appropriate requests to those who have the means and the desire to give more. We do this in the following ways: Due diligence

In order to protect the reputation of Amnesty International Canada, our fundraising policy and procedures (as well as certain legal and regulatory obligations), may require us to use your personal information to carry out due diligence on your donation. We

may need to use publicly available information to conduct ethical screenings on potential donors of a significant gift, to ensure our reputation is protected. This might include researching the sources of the donor’s money, previous business practices and reputation.

If you choose not to have your personal information analysed for due diligence purposes, we may not be able to accept your donation.

Using publicly available information

When communicating with individuals who have given, or might consider giving, a substantial donation to Amnesty International Canada, we may seek to find out more about that individual, their interests and their motivations for giving, and may invite them to become more involved in supporting our human rights work.

We do this by collating biographical, financial, corporate and philanthropic information from a wide variety of sources, including information that is held on our supporter database and information that is publicly available. This publicly available information could be obtained by searching for positions held, statements made, or media coverage about an individual.

If you would prefer for us not to use your information in this way, please contact us. Amnesty International Canada does not sell your information to third parties, and we do not purchase contact lists from third parties. In order to find new supporters Amnesty International Canada sometimes makes our direct marketing annual donor list available on a one-time reciprocal basis to other charities. By allowing us to do this, it helps Amnesty find more supporters for our critical human rights work. Our direct marketing donors are asked annually if they do not wish to have their name made available and given an opportunity to opt out permanently.

Targeted supporter communications

We want to ensure our updates are as interesting and engaging as they can be to our supporters, so we tailor our communications based on what we know about our supporters’ interests and experiences. This also helps us with using our resources as efficiently as we can.

We do this by using profiling and analysis techniques to target our marketing communications. This involves analyzing responses to our previous campaigns and fundraising appeals, to look for patterns amongst our current supporters which we can then use to tailor who we send communications to in the future. We also use commercially available information, provided to us at the postcode-level, to analyze geographic and demographic trends. This is so we can send relevant campaigns and fundraising appeals to supporters who would be the most interested in them.

Who might we share your information with

Amnesty International Canada does not sell your information to third parties. We do not make cold telephone calls to members of the public and we do not purchase contact lists in order to do so.

We will, except as indicated below, only share your details with third parties if you ask us to or where we believe we are under a legal or regulatory duty to do so. If you have explicitly notified Amnesty International Canada that you wish to be identified as a voting member of Amnesty International Canada then you may have your name and contact information shared with other Amnesty International Canada members for governance-related purposes (this is required by the Canada Not-for-profit Corporations Act).

Third parties

We use external service providers to help us send you communications and provide you with our services. These providers may include payment processors, fundraising agencies, mailing services, digital marketing providers and software platform providers. In some cases these service providers require access to your personal information, such as to send newsletters to your email or postal address or to fulfill your instruction to donate to us using a payment card.

Everything an external service provider does is strictly governed by a contract. As part of this agreement, the provider needs to comply with security measures, may not use

your personal information for unrelated purposes, and must destroy information when it is no longer needed.

From time to time, Amnesty International Canada may work in partnership with other organizations on a fundraising activity or campaign. For example, if you sign up to run a marathon on our behalf, you may receive joint communications from Amnesty International Canada and the marathon sponsor, if you have indicated that this is okay.

If you would like to learn more about how and when we share personal information with external service providers, please get in touch.

Online Advertising and Behaviour Analysis

We work with third parties to help us understand how supporters connect with us and to reach new supporters through campaigns and advertising.

We participate in Facebook’s Custom Audience and Lookalike Audience programs, which enable us to display our content to our existing or potential supporters on Facebook. We provide personal information such as your email address or phone number to Facebook which securely encrypts it. That personal information is then deleted by Facebook if it does not match with a Facebook account or once they confirm you have an account. If you do not want your information to be used in this way, please contact us.

We also use Google, Facebook and other online platforms to track the effectiveness of advertising that we place on other websites.

We use services such as Google Analytics to understand how people use our websites, so that we can improve the content and format of our sites. We use digital tools like cookies to gather the information needed for those analytics. To learn more about cookies please review our Cookies Policy

How long we store your information

We only hold your personal information on our systems for as long as is necessary for the purposes outlined above. We remove personal data from our systems once it is no longer required, in line with our guidelines on how long important information must remain accessible for future use or reference, as well as when and how the data can be destroyed

In certain situations we may keep personal information for a longer period of time. For example where a supporter has told us they are going to remember Amnesty International Canada with a gift in their will, we will retain their details so that we can effectively administer the gift and communicate appropriately with their next of kin or executor.

Keeping your personal information safe

Amnesty International Canada works to protect our physical and technical systems from unauthorized access. We take appropriate precautions to protect all personal information we handle, including using encryption and monitoring access to our secure networks and systems.

We also take care to ensure we have secure systems for processing your payment information, such as your credit card or debit card details. Our current payment service providers use a range of methods to protect your personal information including secure payment gateways, fraud screening and IP address blocking.

Despite our best efforts to protect your personal information electronically, the security of information sent over the internet cannot be guaranteed and may be illegally intercepted or changed after it has been sent. This is a risk that you should consider before providing personal information to us, as Amnesty International Canada cannot accept liability for such events.

We also provide training to all our staff and volunteers involved in handling personal information on how to protect this data appropriately and use it only in compliance with privacy laws.

Managing your contact preferences

You can change your contact preferences at any time. This includes telling us that you don’t want us to contact you for marketing purposes.

You can do this quickly and easily by:

  • Clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link at the footer of our emails to indicate that you do not wish to receive our fundraising or campaigning updates.
  • Asking us to stop sending you marketing texts by sending us an “opt-out” text message – following the instructions we provide you in the text messages you receive from us. * Contacting our Supporter Communications Team at members@amnesty.ca.

Your privacy rights

You are in control of how we collect, use and disclose your personal information and you have the right to ask us to stop handling this information. You also have the right to request a copy of the information we hold about you.

You may also contact us with the following requests at any time:

  • Where we are handling personal information based on your consent, you can withdraw consent at any time. Please see ‘Managing your contact preferences’ for more information on how to do this.
  • You may change your personal information in our records if it is incomplete or inaccurate.
  • You may request the deletion or removal of your personal information in certain circumstances, including where it is no longer necessary for us to hold it for the purposes for which we are handling it.
  •  You can challenge the collection, use and disclosure of your data if there is disagreement about its accuracy or legitimate usage.

Access Requests

If you would like to know what personal information Amnesty International Canada keeps on file about you, please contact us to submit an access to personal information request. We may require information from you about the scope of information you want, or identification to prove you are the person whose information is requested, before we can respond to the request.

Anyone can make a request for details of the information that Amnesty International Canada keeps on file about them free of charge. We will only charge an administrative fee to provide copies of the information if the cost to us would be unreasonable, or if the request is excessive or repetitive.

Making a complaint

Listening and responding to feedback from our supporters and members is very important to us.

You can make a complaint or raise a concern about how we handle your personal information by contacting us directly.

If you are not happy with how we have handled your complaint, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (which is responsible for upholding privacy rights in Canada). You may choose to contact the Privacy Commissioner directly, regardless of whether you have raised the complaint with us first.

Changes to this privacy notice

This privacy notice may change from time to time. For example, we may update this notice to reflect any relevant changes to legislation and regulation, and any changes to Amnesty International Canada policy.

Please visit this website section periodically to keep up-to-date with the changes in our notice.

Facebook Policy

We want to get your views, content and comments on our Facebook pages – it’s your input that makes them. But we also need to make sure they’re welcoming to everyone, including our younger supporters.

To help us achieve that please respect our Facebook house rules:

  • Please don’t post content only available in another language. We’re unable to be sure of its suitability for our younger supporters, and will delete it.
  • Please don’t post videos or images people may find distressing, such as videos of graphic violence.
  • Don’t post content that is racist, sexist, homophobic, abusive or otherwise discriminatory or offensive. We will delete posts we deem offensive.
  • Please keep on-topic, and don’t flood a post with the same comments repeatedly. 
  • Don’t use our page to advertise products or services for profit, or to advertise a group or charity not related to human rights.
  • Please respect each other. We welcome debate and different opinions, but don’t resort to personal attacks.
  • Please don’t swear. It’s just polite not to.

If you repeatedly ignore our house rules, we will remove you from our Facebook pages without warning.

You can find us on Facebook at facebook.com/amnestycanada

Contact Us

Please contact our Team if you would like to:

  • change your personal information
  • change how we communicate with you
  • request more detail about the personal information we hold about you and how we use it

You can contact us:

  • In writing: Supporter Services, Amnesty International, 312 Laurier Ave E, Ottawa, ON K1N 1H9.
  • By email: members@amnesty.ca
  • By telephone – 1-800-AMNESTY (266-3789)