The Charter of the French language and its regulations govern the consultation of English-language content.
The Charter of the French language and its regulations govern the consultation of English-language content.
At the SQDC, we understand the significance you place on privacy. We undertake to preserve the confidentiality of the personal information we gather on SQDC.ca or at our stores.
To enhance confidentiality, we minimize the collection of your personal information. We collect your personal information when it is necessary to provide and improve our services, to ensure the management of the SQDC or to ensure its security and that of its employees and customers, for example.
To use each of our services, you will need to consent to the collection of the personal information we need to deliver the service to you and to allow us to administer and improve the service. We provide you with information on this matter whenever your consent is required.
"Personal information" is information about a person that makes it possible to identify that person, directly or indirectly.
The SQDC therefore protects certain data that it collects through technological means, such as cookies, even if they do not directly identify you.
The following sections describe the personal information that the SQDC collects, informing you what information is collected, how it is collected, how it is used within the SQDC and the categories of people who have access to it within the organization, as well as, where applicable, the names of third parties who collect or process this information for the SQDC, and any other relevant information or information required by regulation.
Creating a customer account on SQDC.ca
Security cameras for stores and other buildings
We undertake to collect only the personal information required for the purpose for which it was collected, in particular to successfully run our business, for example:
Access to personal information is limited to groups of SQDC employees who are required to accomplish the purposes for which the information was obtained. Some information is also processed by mandataries or suppliers specifically authorized by the SQDC. These mandataries are required to comply not only with the law, but also with the SQDC's requirements regarding the protection of personal information. They are required to use this information solely for the purposes for which the information was collected by the SQDC, and they may not use the information for any other purpose whatsoever. If you wish to know whether your information will be disclosed by a mandatary or supplier, please review the consent information we provide when obtaining your consent.
Cookies are files that a web server places on your device when you visit a website. They save information that allows SQDC.ca to function properly: for example, they prevent you from having to confirm your age each time you visit a page. They are also used to complete and process your orders, to display information about the SQDC store closest to your device, to better understand how our customers use our website, etc. They also make it possible, in particular, to detect certain potentially erroneous or fraudulent transactions. Furthermore, we use a website analysis service that also uses cookies to evaluate the use of the website by our customers, to compile website activity for our internal experts and our editing service provider, and to provide other services relating to website activity and Internet use.
We employ relevant security measures to protect your personal information from loss, theft, unauthorized access, disclosure, reproduction, unauthorized use or modification, or other incidents. These measures include robust protection measures for our systems, firm contractual undertakings from our suppliers and governance measures. Certain information, such as payment information, is processed separately by an encrypted payment module in accordance with the payment industry's current security and encryption standards (e.g. PCI SSL standard). No information relating to your payment card is kept on our website.
These measures, however, do not guarantee the security of all information that may circulate via the Internet. By disclosing your information to us, you accept the risk that it may be subject to an incident, despite the precautions taken by you or by the SQDC. In particular, the security of the data you send us depends on factors beyond our control and for which the SQDC cannot be held responsible. We strongly encourage you to ensure the security of your information and any communications you send over the Internet. Among other things, you can:
Customer Relations Center: 1 888 551-2161
Person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information: accesalinformation@sqdc.ca
We will only keep your personal information for as long as is necessary for the purposes for which it was collected. Your personal information will then be destroyed in a secure and confidential manner.
You can access the personal information contained in your SQDC.ca customer account by logging in. You can also modify it in the same way.
Furthermore, you can access other personal information about you that can be identified by your name and request its modification. To do so, you can send a request for access to personal information to the attention of the person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information, using the contact details given at the end of this policy. For security and confidentiality reasons, you will be asked to prove your identity before accessing the information kept in your name. The information may be communicated to you, unless it is protected by an exception specifically provided for in the law.
Please feel free to contact our person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information in the following cases:
To do so, please send your written request to our person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information:
Person Responsible for Access to Information and the Protection of Personal Information
Pietro Perrino
Secretary General
Société québécoise du cannabis (SQDC)
7355, Notre-Dame Street East
Montréal (Québec) H1N 3S7
telephone : 514 379-5000 ext. 6940
email : accesalinformation@sqdc.ca
The SQDC is a public body subject to the Act Respecting Access to Documents Held by Public Bodies and the Protection of Personal Information. More information on this subject will be found in the Access to Information section.
Update to the SQDC Privacy Policy
The SQDC reserves the right to modify the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy at any time. Prior to any change, the SQDC will publish a notice of at least 15 days in the section of the SQDC.ca website reserved for the Privacy Policy. You can check whether these procedures have been updated by referring to the "Last Updated" date indicated in this document and by consulting the notices of modification published, where applicable, on SQDC.ca.
Official version
The original French version of the Privacy Policy is the only official version of this policy. In the event of any discrepancy, it shall prevail over any translation that may have been made.
Last updated on September 22, 2023 (Version 2.0)
Previous update: October 17, 2018. (Version 1.0)
Specific information about the personal information we collect
The SQDC will ask you to fill out a form containing your name, your personal information including your mailing address and the validation of your shopping cart. This information will be stored on the SQDC.ca website platform, which is hosted by our e-commerce platform partner, MDF Commerce.
If you have chosen a click-and-collect option, the information will be sent to the management system of the chosen SQDC store, so that our colleagues can prepare your order and deliver it to you. Once the order is delivered, this information is not retained in the store.
If you have chosen a 90-minute or less delivery option, the information will be sent to the management system of the chosen store, so that our colleagues can prepare your order and hand it over to the delivery person. The information required for delivery will be sent to our delivery partner Eva, so that it can deliver your order.
If you have chosen a same-day or longer delivery option, the information will be passed on to our partner that operates our online order preparation center, Metro Vert logistique. In the case of same-day delivery, the information required for delivery will be sent to our delivery partner E24, so that they can deliver your order. In the case of standard delivery, the information required for delivery will be sent to our delivery partner, Canada Post, so that it can deliver your order.
All fields marked with an asterisk (*) are information required to complete and pay for your purchase, process, save and prepare your order, to communicate with you about your order and to deliver your order to the address provided. If you do not wish to provide this information, you can make your purchases in person by visiting one of our stores.
The information you provide will also be used to follow up on your order in the event of an issue, or to reply to any request you make about your order. Whether we need to contact you or you contact us yourself, our colleagues at the SQDC Customer Relations Center will be pleased to reply to you, and will have access to the information kept in order to serve you and, if necessary, follow up on your request for service (e.g. exchange of an unsuitable product, etc.).
The law allows you to request access to personal information kept by the SQDC and identified by your name in connection with online purchases on SQDC.ca, and to request its correction, if applicable. To do so, we invite you to follow the procedures set out in the "Access to Information" section of our SQDC.ca website or by writing to our person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information, whose contact information is provided at the end of our Privacy Policy. Please note that the person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information will ask you to prove your identity before granting access to your personal information.
Financial information provided at the time of payment
The financial information you provide at the time of payment is that required by our payment solutions partner, Moneris. This partner will process the payment information securely in accordance with PCI-DSS bank payment security standards. The SQDC keeps a record of your payment, including the payment method, payment confirmation and the last four digits of your card number. However, under no circumstances does it save your full payment details, and its employees do not have access to them.
This general information, together with the parameters of your order such as the total amount and the products purchased, will also be anonymized and stored in this format in the SQDC's accounting systems and in the SQDC's statistical database to be used for statistical and analysis purposes. In both cases, this data is not used to identify you.
When your payment is processed, certain statistics related to your use of the commercial section of the SQDC.ca website, the location and type of browsing device used (based on the device's IP address) and certain payment information in redacted format, may be sent to automated statistical analysis software operated by our payment fraud prevention partner, Riskified. This information does not include the content of the information fields you have filled in, nor your name or personal contact details, and is not used to identify you personally. They are used to detect and block potentially fraudulent transactions from an automated system based on probabilistic statistical analysis. These data are not stored by the SQDC.
The SQDC will ask you to complete a form containing your name, email address and date of birth. This information will be saved on the SQDC.ca website platform, which is hosted by our partner MCF Commerce.
This information is required to create an account. It will be used by SQDC to allow you to customize your browsing experience and to provide you with additional browsing features, including, but not limited to, pre-registering your shipping information for future orders, and saving and accessing your current and past orders. In the case of your date of birth, it will be used to validate that you are of legal age to create an account, access the SQDC.ca website and make SQDC purchases.
The SQDC may anonymize certain information obtained from customer accounts on SQDC.ca in order to generate general statistics that will allow it to improve its services or better understand its customers' expectations.
The law allows you to request access to personal information kept by the SQDC and identified by your name in connection with your customer account on SQDC.ca, and to request its correction, if applicable. If you wish to correct your customer account information, you can do so directly in the appropriate section of your profile. For any other access or correction request, we invite you to follow the procedures set out in the "Access to Information" section of our SQDC.ca website or by writing to our person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information, whose contact information is provided at the end of our Privacy Policy. Please note that the person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information will ask you to prove your identity before granting access to your personal information.
The chat tool available on SQDC.ca is not intended to collect personal information. Our cannabis advisors will not ask you for personal information in a chat session, and we ask you to avoid providing any.
Chat conversations remain accessible for 30 days in the management tool provided by our business partner HeyDay. This access allows us to evaluate and improve the quality of the service we offer you, and is not used to identify you.
The SQDC also stores chat conversations for longer through its partner tool, HeyDay, in an anonymous format. The conversations are analyzed by the SQDC's conversational artificial intelligence tool, which uses them to improve its performance. This tool provides our chat advisors with the most relevant answers possible, which they can use to give you better, faster answers, with quick access to quality information. In the chat window, we tell you whether you are communicating with a "virtual advisor" or a human being.
When you request to use the chat tool to follow up on an order or another matter that concerns you personally, your chat session will be immediately transferred to the Customer Relations Center. Your interaction and the personal information you provide will then be managed and stored in a separate system, the one used by the Customer Relations Center for all its communications (see "Contact us" form). When communicating with the Customer Relations Center, providing your personal information is optional. However, our colleagues may need some specific information in order to reply to your request.
The "contact us" form is administered by our Customer Relations Center. Communications with the Customer Relations Center are saved in the system used to diligently monitor each of our interactions with our customers and the general public. We save these communications in order to follow up on your request and contact you about it, to ensure the quality of our service, to follow up on and analyze complaints and disputes, and to protect the health and safety of our staff and the legal interests of the SQDC. In the interaction tracking system, our agents take note of your name and how to contact you, in order to track their interaction with you and the resolution of your request. An anonymized version of the interactions may also be used for analysis and statistical purposes, in order to improve our services and product offering, and better serve our customers. Given the personal nature of certain requests, the SQDC maintains the confidentiality of interactions with its customers, even in anonymized format.
If you communicate personal information via this "Contact us" form, it will be saved in the same system and in the same way as all other communications using this form.
During your interaction with our colleagues at the Customer Relations Center, you may be asked to provide certain specific personal information, if this information is required to process your request. If you do not wish to provide this information, it may not be possible to satisfy the related request.
The law allows you to request access to personal information kept by the SQDC and identified by your name in the Customer Relations Center's records, and to request that it be corrected, if necessary. To do so, we invite you to follow the procedures set out in the "Access to Information" section of our SQDC.ca website or by writing to our person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information, whose contact information is provided at the end of our Privacy Policy. Please note that the person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information will ask you to prove your identity before granting access to your personal information.
Security cameras are present in SQDC stores and other SQDC buildings. These cameras record the images of people who visit these locations. Anyone who does not wish to be captured by these cameras can avoid it by completing their purchases online.
The SQDC maintains the confidentiality of its video recordings. They are used for the sole purpose of protecting the security of people and assets, preventing and punishing illegal acts, and serving as evidence in a contentious context.
The videotapes are recorded in the SQDC's systems and can be viewed by its internal security department, by the security officer at each store, and by the management of each store. Such accesses may only be used for the purposes for which the videotapes were captured.
For the most part, videotapes are considered necessary for the purposes for which they were collected for a period of a few weeks after they were recorded. In rare cases, such as when an offence, a conflict event or a wrongful or illegal act has occurred, the videotapes may be recorded confidentially in the relevant file and kept until their usefulness has been fulfilled, in accordance with the SQDC's retention schedule.
The law allows you to request access to personal information kept by the SQDC that clearly identifies you in a specific video recording. To do so, we invite you to follow the procedures set out in the "Access to Information" section of our SQDC.ca website or by writing to our person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information, whose contact information is provided at the end of our Privacy Policy. Please note that the person responsible for access to information and the protection of personal information will ask you to prove your identity before granting access to your personal information.
Cookies are pieces of information that a web server saves on your device to identify that device (and not the user). Upon your arrival at SQDC.ca, certain cookies collect information about your session. Although this information is not personally identifiable, we treat it as personal information since certain technologies may make it possible to link it to you through, for example, your IP address, your device or your browser, or through a combination of these elements.
Cookies allow us to support the proper functioning of the website and to offer you a customized experience. We also use them to collect anonymous data, which will be used to guide the development of our platforms.
Many of the cookies used by SQDC.ca are essential cookies. They mainly concern browsing, security, measurement and analysis functions. They are essential for the proper functioning of our website. Consequently, it is impossible to browse SQDC.ca by deactivating them. Unless otherwise specified, these cookies are saved on the SQDC.ca platform on a temporary basis for up to 30 days. These data are accessible only by our e-commerce platform experts and the resources in charge of the platform at our partner that builds and hosts the platform, MDF Commerce. Essential cookies include the following functions:
Certain other cookies used by SQDC.ca are optional. You can therefore browse SQDC.ca even if they are deactivated. These cookies include the following functions:
The law generally gives you the right to access and correct your personal information held by the SQDC. However, in the case of cookies, because of their limited retention period and the fact that the data collected does not allow you to be directly identified, it is impossible for us to identify information about you using your name. It is therefore not reasonably possible for the SQDC to give you access to this information.
The SQDC may conduct various satisfaction surveys and questionnaires. The purpose of these surveys is to gain a better understanding of our customers, their needs and expectations, and their appreciation of the goods and services offered by the SQDC. These surveys may be communicated to you in a variety of ways, primarily by means of a communication sent following an order and to the contact information you provided when you placed the order, by giving you an access code when you visit a store, or directly on SQDC.ca.
Some people may also be contacted on behalf of the SQDC by Ad Hoc, our main partner for statistical surveys of our customers, cannabis users and the general public.
Unless otherwise specified on the questionnaire itself, SQDC surveys are conducted anonymously and are not intended to collect personal information. The raw data from these studies are kept confidential and anonymous by our e-commerce experts and database managers, with the aim of extracting statistics by aggregating the data.