Website Privacy Policy

Halton Region is committed to respecting your privacy and protecting your personal information. We have taken appropriate measures to protect the privacy of any personal information that you provide to us or that we collect when you visit our website.

Halton Region’s privacy practices are governed by two Acts:

• Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (external link)
• Personal Health Information Protection Act (external link)

These Acts state how we must protect personal information and personal health information. This privacy statement explains how we may collect, use, disclose and protect your information when you visit our website, halton.ca.

Collection and use of information

When you browse our website, we typically do not ask you to provide your personal information or personal health information to us.

In the event that personal information needs to be provided to us (for example, when applying for a service on-line, paying a fee on-line, etc.), the collection will be limited to that which is absolutely necessary for the transaction. A privacy statement that complies with the applicable privacy law will be provided on the page that you enter your information in to. The privacy statement will, at a minimum, provide the reason for the collection of your personal information, as well as whom you can contact for questions about the collection.

Our servers automatically collect limited amounts of standard and anonymous information through the use of cookies for traffic monitoring and statistical purposes when individuals visit our website. The standard types of information collected may include:

• Internet Protocol (IP) address
• browser Type
• operating system
• date and times of visits
• referring web site addresses

This information is used for operational and performance trends, and for ways to improve our sites and quality of services. It is not used to personally identify you.

Disclosure

• Halton Region is the sole owner of the information collected through this website.
• We do not exchange, rent, sell, or otherwise disclose your personal information to any outside organization or person unless the disclosure is required by law.

Security of personal information

• Halton Region is committed to ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of the personal information you provide to us through our website.
• We use security software, procedures and encryption protocols such as the use of Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocol to protect your personal information from unauthorized access, use or disclosure.
• Please be advised that e-mail is not a secure way to communicate sensitive information. If you choose to send sensitive information via email you are accepting the risks of doing so.
• The Region will not be liable for any security or privacy breaches resulting from emails sent to the Region containing personal information or personal health information.

Use of cookies

When you interact with our website, a browser feature called a “cookie” may be used to collect certain types of information. A cookie is a small data file that websites write to your hard drive when you visit them.

A cookie file can contain information such as:

• the user ID that the site uses to track the pages you have visited
• your ID and password for a page on our site
• the options you have selected on a page that can be customized

The only personal information a cookie can contain is information you supply yourself. A cookie cannot read data off your hard disk or read cookie files created by other sites.

If you have set your browser to warn you before accepting cookies, you will receive the warning message with each cookie.

You can refuse cookies by turning them off in your browser. This may disable some features on our site, but all content will remain available to you.

You can check your browser’s “Help” files to learn more about cookies.

Contact Halton's freedom of information and privacy coordinator

If you have a question or concern with a particular Halton Region web page that asks for your personal information, please contact the person listed in the privacy statement on that page. If a statement is not present, or if you have a general concern about the collection, retention, use and disclosure of your personal information through this site, or by Halton Region in general, please contact:

If you would like more information regarding the Municipal Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (external link) and the Personal Health Information Protection Act (external link), you may check the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario website (external link).

Information pertaining to Canada’s private sector privacy law, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (external link), can be found at the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada website (external link).