Privacy Policy

Your privacy is critically important to us. If you have questions about deleting or correcting any personal data you’ve provided to Northern Development Initiative Trust (“Northern Development”) through our ‘Share Your Story’ comment forums, email newsletter subscription, or by other methods, please contact us.

Northern Development operates several websites including northerndevelopment.bc.ca, lovenorthernbc.com and investnorthwestbc.ca. It is Northern Development’s policy to respect your privacy regarding any information we may collect while operating our websites.

1. Website visitors

Like most website operators, Northern Development collects non-personally-identifying information of the sort that web browsers and servers typically make available, such as the browser type, language preference, referring site, and the date and time of each visitor request. Northern Development’s purpose in collecting non-personally identifying information is to better understand how Northern Development’s visitors use its websites. From time to time, Northern Development may release non-personally-identifying information in the aggregate, e.g., by publishing a report on trends in the usage of its websites.

Northern Development also collects potentially personally-identifying information like Internet Protocol (IP) addresses for logged in users and for users leaving comments on the northern duccess stories “Share Your Story” comment forums. Northern Development only discloses logged in user and commenter IP addresses under the same circumstances that it uses and discloses personally-identifying information as described below, except that “Share Your Story” commenter IP addresses are visible and disclosed to the administrators of the northern success story where the comment was left.

2. Gathering of personally-identifying information

Certain visitors to Northern Development’s websites choose to interact with Northern Development in ways that require Northern Development to gather personally-identifying information. The amount and type of information that Northern Development gathers depends on the nature of the interaction. For example, we ask visitors who leave comments on the northern success stories “Share Your Story” comment forums to provide first name, last name, username and email address. Those who sign up for Northern Development’s email newsletter subscription are asked to provide additional information, including as necessary the personal information required to process subscribe a new user. In each case, Northern Development collects such information only insofar as is necessary or appropriate to fulfill the purpose of the visitor’s interaction with Northern Development. Visitors can always refuse to supply personally-identifying information, with the caveat that it may prevent them from engaging in certain website-related activities.

Here are the ways in which you may provide the information and the types of information you may submit. We also provide below some information on how we may use the information.

Contact us

If you communicate with us through the “contact us” link on our websites, we may ask you for information such as your name, email address and telephone number so we can respond to your questions and comments.

Funding requests

If you submit a funding application or enquiry, we ask you to provide details such as your name, email address, telephone number and details as outlined in the funding program’s application guide and application form. We use this information to evaluate your application and to make a funding decision.

Northern success story comment forums

Northern Development operates “Share Your Story” comment forums for each of the northern success stories that are published on www.northerndevelopment.bc.ca. To permit you to leave comments with any northern success story, we collect information on your name and e-mail address, and IP address. We utilize the information obtained from these sites to improve our funding programs and our services. You should be aware that any information you provide in public forums may be read, collected, and used by others who access them. To request removal of your personal information from any forum, contact us. In some cases, we may not be able to remove your personal information, in which case we will let you know if we are unable to do so and why.

Subscribe to our newsletter

You may wish to receive information about funding programs, announcements, important events, and economic development news in central and northern British Columbia. If so, you will be asked to provide your name, organization, telephone number, and e-mail address. If there is any use beyond contacting you using such information, you will be advised of the intended uses at the point that you are being asked to provide any additional contact information.

Enter a contest, offers or promotions

To provide you with contests, promotions or special offers such as our northern success story photo contest, you may be asked to provide us with your name, address and e-mail address information, as well as to confirm that you are of the age of majority in the jurisdiction in which you reside. You may be asked to provide additional information in order to qualify for such contests or promotions. We will also use your personal information to award prizes if applicable. If there is any use beyond contacting you with such information, you will be advised of the intended uses at the point that you are being asked to provide any additional contact information.

Soliciting your opinion, surveys, and feedback

To assist us delivering funding programs and initiatives that meet the needs of central and northern British Columbia local governments, First Nations, businesses, and non-profit organizations, we may solicit your opinions and feedback concerning our funding programs, northern success stories, and economic development initiatives in our region; you may be asked to provide e-mail address information, as well as name, postal address, occupation and the name of your organization, if you have not already done so, as well as the opinions and feedback itself.

Career opportunities

You may be able to submit your resume and other information online to apply for a job with Northern Development. We use the information you submit to evaluate your interest in employment and to contact you regarding possible employment with the company.

Refer-a-friend

If you choose to use our referral service to tell a friend about our websites, we will ask you for your friend’s name and email address. We will automatically send your friend a one-time email inviting him or her to visit the site.

Marketing communications

In addition to the purposes described above, we may also use your data to provide you with information about funding announcements, programs, initiatives, economic development news, and website updates through our email newsletter. You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data for such purposes, and you can always instantly unsubscribe from our email newsletter upon receiving it.

3. Aggregated statistics

Northern Development may collect statistics about the behavior of visitors to its websites. For instance, Northern Development may monitor the most popular major projects on the Invest Northwest BC (www.investnorthwestbc.ca) site or the most popular funding partners that are accessed from Northern Development’s northern success story webpages. Northern Development may display this information publicly or provide it to others. However, Northern Development does not disclose personally-identifying information other than as described below.

4. Protection of certain personally-identifying information

Northern Development discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only to those of its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations that (i) need to know that information in order to process it on Northern Development’s behalf or to provide services available at Northern Development’s websites, and (ii) that have agreed not to disclose it to others. Some of those employees, contractors and affiliated organizations may be located outside of your home country; by using Northern Development’s websites, you consent to the transfer of such information to them. Northern Development will not rent or sell potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information to anyone. Other than to its employees, contractors and affiliated organizations, as described above, Northern Development discloses potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information only in response to a subpoena, court order or other governmental request, or when Northern Development believes in good faith that disclosure is reasonably necessary to protect the property or rights of Northern Development, third parties or the public at large. If you are a registered user of a Northern Development website and have supplied your email address, Northern Development may occasionally send you an email to tell you about new features, solicit your feedback, or just keep you up to date with what’s going on with Northern Development and our initiatives. We primarily use our websites and social media accounts to communicate this type of information, so we expect to keep this type of email to a minimum. If you send us a request (for example via an email or via one of our feedback mechanisms), we reserve the right to publish it in order to help us clarify or respond to your request or to help us support other users. Northern Development takes all measures reasonably necessary to protect against the unauthorized access, use, alteration or destruction of potentially personally-identifying and personally-identifying information.

5. Cookies

A cookie is a string of information that a website stores on a visitor’s computer, and that the visitor’s browser provides to the website each time the visitor returns. Northern Development uses cookies to help Northern Development identify and track visitors, their usage of Northern Development websites, and their website access preferences. Northern Development visitors who do not wish to have cookies placed on their computers should set their browsers to refuse cookies before using Northern Development’s websites, with the drawback that certain features of Northern Development’s websites may not function properly without the aid of cookies.

This website uses the following cookies:

Google Analytics:
This cookie allows us to see information on user website activities including, but not limited to page views, source and time spend on website. The information is depersonalized and is displayed as numbers, meaning it cannot be tracked back to individuals. This will help to protect your privacy. Using Google Analytics we can see what content is popular on our website, and strive to give you more of the things you enjoy reading and watching.

Google AdWords:
Using Google AdWords code we are able to see which pages helped lead to contact form submissions. This allows us to make better use of our paid budget.

DoubleClick:
We use remarketing codes to log when users view specific pages, allowing us to provide targeted advertising in the future.

Visitors can opt-out of Google Analytics for Display Advertising and customize Google Display Network ads using the Ads Preferences Manager.

https://www.google.com/settings/ads/onweb/

Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on – https://www.google.com/settings/ads/onweb/

6. Links to other sites

This web site offers links to other web sites that may collect personally-identifiable information. Your use of, and provision of personally-identifiable information to, such other sites are subject to the terms of use and privacy policies of such other sites. Northern Development is not responsible for the privacy policies and practices or content of such sites.

7. Security

Security for all personally-identifiable information is important to us. We strive to take reasonable technical measures to prevent loss or unintended use of information transmitted to us at the time of collection or storage.

8. Privacy policy changes

Although most changes are likely to be minor, Northern Development may change its privacy policy from time to time, and in Northern Development’s sole discretion. Northern Development encourages visitors to frequently check this page for any changes to its privacy policy. Notification of revisions is limited to the actual posting of the revised privacy policy on this site. Your continued use of this site after any change in this privacy policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.

Current revision effective: March 1, 2012