Privacy Policy
Your participation matters. We believe Canadians should be able to participate in public discussion and petition initiatives without surrendering unnecessary personal information.
Canadian Accountability is committed to collecting only the information reasonably necessary to operate the website, facilitate public participation, verify submissions and protect the integrity of its services.
This policy explains how information submitted through Canadian Accountability is handled, particularly in connection with community petitions and public polls.
1 Data Minimization
We aim to collect only the information needed to provide our services, process participation, prevent abuse and respond to inquiries.
Canadian Accountability does not require visitors to create a user account simply to read content, sign a petition or participate in a public poll.
We do not intend to collect unnecessary personal details or make personal contact information publicly available.
2 Petition Signatures
When someone signs a community petition, the information requested includes:
- Name
- Email address for verification
- Canadian postal code
- Confirmation of consent
Email verification is required before a signature is counted.
Names and contact information are not displayed publicly on petition pages. Public pages display aggregate supporter counts rather than personal contact information.
3 Email Privacy & Verification
Email addresses are used to send verification messages and help prevent duplicate signatures on individual petitions.
Pending verification records temporarily contain the information needed to complete the verification process. These records are deleted after successful verification or when email delivery fails.
Permanent signature records use a keyed HMAC hash of the email address rather than retaining the actual email address.
This allows duplicate signature checks without keeping the email address in the permanent signature record.
4 Public Polls
Information requested when participating in a public poll depends on the requirements of that particular poll.
Where email verification is required, a participant must verify their email before their vote is accepted.
Poll results are presented as aggregate totals and percentages. Individual participants' email addresses are not displayed publicly.
Participation requirements and verification methods may vary between polls.
5 Security & Abuse Prevention
We use safeguards designed to protect submitted information and reduce fraudulent or automated activity.
- Email verification for applicable submissions
- CSRF protection and honeypot fields
- Rate limiting to reduce automated abuse
- Secure random verification tokens
- Hashed and keyed-hash identifiers where appropriate
- File locking to help protect stored records
- Restricted administrative access
We use secure connections when available and take reasonable steps to protect information held by the website.
No website or internet transmission can be guaranteed to be completely secure.
6 Cookies & Browser Information
Canadian Accountability uses browser cookies for certain website functions.
For community petitions, a petition-specific cookie can remember that a browser has already completed a signature. This helps prevent repeated signatures from the same browser for that petition.
These petition cookies are configured to expire after one year and use security settings including HttpOnly and SameSite=Lax.
Cookies can be cleared through your browser settings. Clearing cookies may affect certain website functions.
7 Technical Information
The website may process technical information necessary to operate its services and protect against abuse.
For example, IP addresses are used by the petition rate-limiting system. The application stores a keyed HMAC hash for this purpose rather than the raw IP address.
Our hosting provider may independently maintain server logs or technical records under its own policies. We do not control all of the hosting provider's data-retention practices.
8 Retention & Deletion
Information is retained only as needed for the purposes for which it was collected, subject to operational, security and administrative requirements.
Pending petition verification records expire after 24 hours and are removed when verification succeeds or email delivery fails.
Permanent petition signature records and associated verification-prevention records may be retained to preserve petition integrity and prevent duplicate participation.
Rate-limiting records are used for abuse prevention and contain hashed identifiers.
9 Privacy Questions & Requests
Questions or concerns about the handling of information submitted to Canadian Accountability may be directed to the website administrator through the available contact channels.
Requests concerning personal information will be considered in light of the information held, the purpose for which it was collected and applicable legal requirements.
Please avoid including sensitive personal information in an ordinary website inquiry.
Participation Without Unnecessary Data Collection
Canadian Accountability believes that public participation should be straightforward, accessible and respectful of individual privacy. Our goal is to give Canadians a voice without requiring them to create accounts or provide more personal information than necessary.