University Affairs Privacy Notice

Who are we?

University Affairs is a magazine produced in digital and print formats to provide news, information, opinion and career advice to higher education faculty, administrators, and post-graduate students. University Affairs is published by Universities Canada. Universities Canada is a membership organization providing universities with a unified voice for higher education, research, and innovation.

This Privacy Notice (“Notice”) outlines how we collect, use, share, and protect the information used in our work, through our website and through your dealings with us. The protection and security of your personal information is a responsibility we take very seriously.

What is Personal Information?

Personal Information is information that on its own or combined with other data, can be used to identify you as a person. Personal information includes information collected from you directly or from a third party.

Who does this Notice apply to?

This Notice applies to the University Affairs website, magazine and job alert newsletters and the digital and print editions of the magazine.

This Notice does not apply to Universities Canada’s other operations. You can access Universities Canada’s Privacy Notice on its website at https://www.univcan.ca/privacy-policy/ .

What Personal Information do we collect and how?

The Personal Information collected depends on your interaction(s) with us. We make every effort to limit the amount of Personal Information we collect, relying where possible on business information. Any Personal Information collected by University Affairs is done for the purposes set out in this Notice, unless we obtain your express consent.

We may collect your Personal Information as follows:

(a) Directly from you:

When registering an account/subscribing to access our content, we may collect information from you such as your name, mailing address and email address.
When subscribing to the hard copy of the magazine, we may collect your name, contact information and credit card number, as required.

(b) From a third party
Information about you may be provided to us by someone within your university program or department who is choosing to register all eligible faculty members for a subscription. This information is typically limited to name and contact information.

(c) Automatically from your interactions with our website
When you visit our website we may send your browser one or more cookies, which are small files containing a string of characters that is sent to your web browser and uniquely identifies your browser. Cookies help us collect information so that we can better understand how users access and navigate our website. We use necessary and session cookies to make our site function. These cookies enable core functionality such as security, session management, and accessibility. They do not collect personally identifiable information.

Please indicate your preference on the cookie banner upon landing on our website. Alternatively, you can reset your browser to reject cookies. You can manage cookies via your browser under Settings. If you choose to decline cookies on your browser, you will reject cookies from all websites, not just ours. You may also lose some functionalities on websites if your browser blocks all cookies.

How do we use your Personal Information?

We process your Personal Information for the following purposes:

To register an account/subscription. To access our content (eg. Newsletters, job alerts, and digital editions), we require that you create an account by providing your name and email address.
To subscribe to the magazine. Information collected is used to send you a copy of the magazine and collect payment, as required.
To Communicate with you. We collect personal information so we may from time to time send you information related to your subscription such as billings, as required, renewal notices, other subscription information/offers, and readership surveys to determine reader opinion about our content
For Reporting. Information collected in your account/subscription is de-identified or anonymized and may also be used to provide demographic analysis about our audience without being able to identify you at all. For example, University Affairs may provide aggregate statistics about our customers, sales, traffic patterns, and related site information to reputable third-party vendors. Information used in these reports is always anonymized and therefore is not considered Personal Information.
To (i) comply with Canadian Circulation Audit Board (CCAB) audit requirements that verify our circulation statements

We process your Personal Information for the following legal bases:

Contract – we will use your Personal Information to register your account and fulfill subscription obligations.

Who do we share your Personal Information with?

We do not sell your Personal Information to a third party.

We share your Personal Information with your consent or for a legitimate interest, such as completing a transaction. We limit who we share your Personal Information with and what we share with them to only what is necessary. We do not allow third-party service providers to use your Personal Information for their own purposes.

We share your Personal Information with the following parties:

Service Providers. To help us perform functions related to our service delivery. For example, we may use service providers to provide us with administrative, financial, or quality assurance services. These parties are bound by confidentiality and are limited in the way in which they can process, access, or store Personal Information based on our instructions.
Third Parties. With your consent, University Affairs subscription mailing list is made available to carefully selected external organizations whose products and services may be of interest to our readers and members. Like many non-profit organizations we do rely on promotional exchanges to build our subscriber base. We do not rent or sell phone numbers or email addresses. You may withdraw your consent by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email or by by phoning, faxing, mailing or emailing us (see What are Your Rights and Choices section below).

Where is your Personal Information processed?

Universities Affairs uses subscription software hosted by an American company using servers in Canada and the US, which means your Personal Information may be stored, shared, or processed in a jurisdiction outside of where you reside. For example, if you reside in Quebec or the European Economic Area (EEA), your information may be stored, shared, or processed in a different jurisdiction. By accessing and participating in our programs, you acknowledge that your information will be stored or processed in a country or province outside of where you reside.

While we take appropriate safeguards to protect your Personal Information, when your data is stored or processed in a different jurisdiction, it is subject to the laws of the foreign jurisdiction including foreign governments, courts, law enforcement and regulatory agencies. These jurisdictions may not have the same information protection laws as the country in which your Personal Information was collected.

When transferring Personal Information outside of the EEA, we enter into contractual arrangements (such as Standard Contractual Clauses) with service providers that offer you a similar degree of protection you would get in the jurisdiction where your Personal Information was collected.

How is the information you collect protected?

We protect your Personal Information with technical, organizational, and physical safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of your Personal Information. These safeguards include, but are not limited to:

ensuring staff receive mandatory Privacy training and sign confidentiality agreements;
limiting access to information through the use of role-based permissions in our system;
undertaking Privacy Impact Assessments during the program design phase, to evaluate Privacy risks, data needs, and designing the program to incorporate the protection of Personal Information wherever possible; and
regular review of our own safeguards and those of our service providers.

It is important to understand that no online platform is perfectly secure. We encourage you to also play a role in protecting your Personal Information by limiting what is sent to Universities Canada via email or other means.

How long do we keep your Personal Information?

We retain your Personal Information as long as it is needed to fulfill both the requirement(s) identified above and Universities Canada’s legal obligations. Financial records are deleted after seven years.

Personal Information of Minors

Unless otherwise stated, our programs and subscription content is intended for individuals over the age of 16. They are not intended for or targeted at children under that age and we do not knowingly or intentionally collect information about children under 16. If you believe that we have collected information about a child under 16, please contact us at [email protected] so that we can delete the information promptly.

What are your rights and choices?

Your Choices:

University Affairs subscribers can ‘opt out’ of receiving communications from us and/or our partners.

Email subscribers can unsubscribe from receiving communications from us byclicking on the unsubscribe link in the newsletter or by contacting University Affairs at [email protected].

Print subscribers can unsubscribe by contacting us at [email protected] or

By mail: University Affairs
350 Albert Street, Suite 1710
Ottawa, Ontario K1R 1B1

By Phone: (613) 563-1236

By Fax: (613) 563-9745

Regular hours of operation: Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. – 4 p.m. ET. If providing your request in writing, please specify whether you wish to completely unsubscribe or opt out of receiving all or particular future communications (such as email, newsletter mailings, renewals, or third party mailings).

Please note that unsubscribing from the print magazine may take up to a month to process.

To manage your cookies on your browser, please see this Notice above under What Personal Information we Collect (c) Automatically from your interactions with our website for instructions on how to make choices.

Your Rights:

Depending on where you reside, applicable privacy laws may give you certain rights relating to your Personal Information and our processing of it.

Your right of access and rectification. You have the right to access and correct the Personal Information we have on file for you. To the extent we can fulfill your request to rectify your information, we may need to verify the accuracy of the new information you provide to us.

Your right of deletion. You have the right to request deletion of the Personal Information we have on file for you. In some instances, such as legal reasons, we will not be able to fulfill your deletion request. If we cannot fulfill your request, we will notify you of the reason.

Your right to data portability. You have the right to ask us to transfer your Personal Information to another organization in a structured, commonly used, and machine-readable format.

Your right not to be subject to automated decision-making. You have the right not to be subject to a decision based solely on automated processing, including profiling, which produces legal effects concerning you or significantly affects you.

Your right to restriction/objection of processing. You have the right to ask us to restrict the processing of your Personal Information in certain circumstances, such as if the processing of your Personal Information is unlawful, if you contest its accuracy, or if we no longer need your personal data for processing however it has been retained as permitted by law.

To exercise your rights, please contact us at [email protected]. We will respond to any request within 30 days. If we need more time to fulfill your request, we will let you know.

You may be required to prove your identity so that we can authenticate that the person making the request is you. If you designated an authorized agent to submit a request to exercise your rights, we will require verification that you provided the authorized agent permission to request on your behalf.

Please note that your rights are not absolute as there may be exceptions that exist in the applicable law. If there are legal reasons why we cannot fulfill your request, we will inform you in our response, including the reason why we cannot fulfill the request.

While we make efforts to always maintain the accuracy of your Personal Information, we rely on you to provide us with up-to-date contact information and other information related to your participation in the program.

Reporting a Privacy Complaint

You have a right to lodge a complaint about our processing with a supervisory authority or regulator in the jurisdiction where you believe your rights have been violated. If you are concerned about our Personal Information practices, we would appreciate hearing about it first to try to resolve your concerns. You can contact us through the methods listed above.

If Universities Canada has not responded satisfactorily to your complaint or inquiry and you want to notify the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, you may do so at:

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
30 Victoria Street
Gatineau, Quebec
K1A 1H3

Toll-free: 1-800-282-1376
Phone: (819) 994-5444
TTY: 819-994-6591

Contact Us

Universities Canada has appointed a Privacy Officer who is accountable for the organization’s privacy program and for compliance with this Notice. For any questions or concerns, please contact:

Privacy Officer:
Heather Cayouette, CIPP/C, CIPT
[email protected]
350 Albert St., suite 1710
Ottawa, ONK1R 1B1
Phone: (613) 563-1236