Who we are

Kinara Law Professional Corporation (“Kinara Law”) recognizes the importance of your personal privacy and the sensitivity of your personal information. As lawyers we have a professional obligation to keep confidential all information we receive within a lawyer-client relationship. We are committed to protecting any personal information we hold. This Privacy Policy outlines how we manage your personal information and safeguard your privacy. Our website address is: https://kinaralaw.com.

Your Privacy Rights

All businesses engaged in commercial activities must comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act, (“the Act”) and the Canadian Standards Association Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information, which it incorporates. These obligations extend to lawyers and law firms. The Act gives you rights concerning the privacy of your personal information. The Act makes Kinara Law responsible for the personal information we collect and hold. To ensure this accountability, we have developed this policy, and trained our lawyers and support staff about our policies and practices.

Why Do We Need Access To Clients’ Personal Information

Kinara Law provides legal services to a wide range of clients. In doing so, we require personal information in order to fulfill the terms of our retainers and to fulfill our professional responsibilities. As well, we occasionally produces and distributes materials concerning our services and new developments in the law.

What Personal Information Do We Collect And How Do We Collect It?

Kinara Law collects personal information relevant to our retainers with our clients. According to the Act, Personal information is defined as follows: “personal information” means information about an identifiable individual, but does not include the name, title or business address or telephone number of an employee of an organization. The information we collect may go beyond contact information and include financial or medical information (as an example) depending on the nature of the matter under investigation.

If we did not collect and use personal information we would not be able to provide legal services. In order to provide meaningful advice to our clients, we collect information only by lawful and fair means and not in an unreasonably intrusive way. Wherever possible we collect your personal information directly from you.

Sometimes we may obtain information about you from other sources, for example:

Consent

In most cases, we ask you to consent, if we collect, use, or disclose your personal information. Sometimes, your consent may be implied through your contact with us and the mere fact that we are retained to deal with a matter on your behalf. Kinara Law confirms our client’s consent to the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in the course of our retainer.

Use Of Your Information

In most cases, we ask you to consent, if we collect, use, or disclose your personal information. Sometimes, your consent may be implied through your contact with us and the mere fact that we are retained to deal with a matter on your behalf. Kinara Law confirms our client’s consent to the collection, use and disclosure of personal information in the course of our retainer.

Disclosure Of Your Personal Information

Under certain circumstances, and/or as part of our client agreement, Kinara Law will disclose personal information, including:

• • When we are required or authorized by law to do so

• • When you have consented to the disclosure, expressly or by implication or its disclosure is necessary in the litigation or other matter about which we have been retained.

• • When our retainer requires us to give your information to third parties your consent will be implied, unless you tell us otherwise. However, in litigation, you may have to disclose information and the failure to do so could adversely affect any claim you have.

• • Where it is necessary to establish or collect fees

• • If we engage a third party to provide administrative services to us (like computer back-up services or archival file storage, or our auditors) and the third party is bound by our privacy policy.

• • If we engage expert witnesses on your behalf

• • If we retain other law firms on your behalf

• • If the information is already publicly known

Updating Your Information

Since we use personal information to provide legal services, it is important that the information be accurate and up-to-date. If during the course of the retainer, any of your information changes, please inform us so that we can make any necessary changes. If Kinara Law holds information about you and you can establish that it is not accurate, complete and up-to-date, Kinara Law will take reasonable steps to correct it.

Is Personal Information Secure?

Kinara Law takes all reasonable precautions to ensure that personal information is kept safe from loss, unauthorized access, modification or disclosure. Among the steps taken to protect information are:

• • Premises security

• • Restricted file access to electronic personal information

• • Deploying technological safeguards like password protection, security software and firewalls to prevent hacking or unauthorized computer access

• • Internal password and security policies

• • Procedures for the destruction of personal information when it is no longer required including shredding and the formatting of electronic media

Access To Your Personal Information

You may ask for access to any personal information we hold about you. However, we may ask that we be reimbursed for the time and cost to us of such access at our normal rates.

Can I Be Denied Access To My Personal Information?

Rights to access your personal information are not absolute. We may deny access when:

• • denial of access is required or authorized by law (for example, when a record containing personal information about you is subject to a claim of legal professional privilege by Kinara Law or one of our clients).

• • information relates to existing or anticipated legal proceedings

• • when granting you access would have an unreasonable impact on other people’s privacy

• • when to do so would prejudice negotiations

• • to protect our firm’s rights and property

• • where the request is frivolous or vexatious

If we deny your request for access to, or refuse a request to correct information, we shall explain why. Kinara Law does not use your Social Insurance Number as a way of identifying or organizing the information we hold.

Can A Client Request Anonymity?

The Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act and our Rules of Professional conduct may require us to confirm the identity of new clients. It may also require us to disclose information to FINTRAC in relation to certain large cash transactions.

Credit Bureaus

To help us make credit decisions about clients, prevent fraud, check the identity of new clients and prevent money-laundering, we may on occasion, request information from the files of consumer reporting agencies.

Communicating With Us

You should be aware that email and online form submission is not a 100% secure medium, and you should be aware of this when contacting us to send personal or confidential information. Kinara Law does not take any responsibility for personal information collected by third party marketing firms.

Cookies And Other Tracking Technologies

Some of our web pages utilize cookies and other tracking technologies. A cookie is a small text file that a website transfers to an individual’s hard drive for record-keeping purposes. For example, we may use cookies to collect information about website activity. Please be aware that some features may not function properly or may be slower if you refuse cookies.

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.

When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.

Embedded Content & Links

We may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.

These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.

Please be aware that when you click a link on our website, you could directed to other sites that are beyond our control. The privacy policies of these other sites may be significantly different from this Privacy Policy.

Comments

When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.

An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.

Media

If you upload images to our website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors can download and extract any location data from images on the website.

Website

On our website, like most other commercial websites, we may monitor traffic patterns, site usage and related site information in order to optimize our web service. We may provide aggregated information to third parties, but these statistics do not include any identifiable personal information.

Changes To This Privacy Policy

As Kinara Law regularly reviews all of its policies and procedures, we may change our Privacy Policy from time to time.

Requests For Access

If you have any questions, or wish to access your personal information, please write to us at:

100 King Street West,
Suite 5700,
Toronto, ON
privacy@kinaralaw.com

If you are not satisfied with our response, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada can be reached at:

112 Kent Street,
Ottawa Ontario, K1A 1H3
1-800-282-1376