PERSONAL INFORMATION PROTECTION POLICY

Groupe Cérès inc. (hereafter referred to as the “Company,” “we,” “us” or “our”) values your privacy and cares about how your personal information is used.

We collect, use and disclose information on a daily basis to provide our services. Confidentiality is important to us, and an essential part of our relationship with our customers. We adhere to the highest ethical standards when using all information, especially personal information.

This policy on personal information protection is intended to help you understand our practices regarding the collection, use, disclosure and storage of personal information. By providing us personal information (through our Web site, by e-mail, in person, on the phone, or otherwise), you agree to its processing in accordance with this Personal Information Protection Policy, and you authorize the Company, its third parties and service providers to process your personal information for the purposes set out below.

This Policy on personal information protection doesn’t apply to, and the Company is not responsible for, any third-party Web sites that may be accessed through links found on this Web site. If you follow a link to a third-party Web site, that Web site will have its own policy on personal information protection that you should review before providing any personal information.

Who are we and what do we do?

Unless we notify you otherwise, the Company is "the controller" of your personal information; in other words, the Company is the organization that, alone or jointly, for what purposes and in what manner your personal information will be processed or is likely to be processed.

Which personal information do we collect?

When you visit our Web site and contact us, we collect a certain amount of personal information about you.

We may collect and process various types of personal information in the course of our business and provision of services, including the following:

Identity information, such as first or last name;
Contact details, such as name, address, e-mail address and phone number;
Biography information, such as job title, employers, photos and video or audio content;
Marketing information and communication preferences, as well as related information such as comments and survey responses;
Billing and financial information, such as billing address, bank account information or payment data;
Service-related information, such as details of the services we have provided to you;
Recruitment information, such as a resume, educational and employment history, details of professional affiliation, and other information relevant to potential recruitment by or association with the Company;
Web site usage and other technical information, such as details about visits to our Web sites, your interactions with our advertising and online content, or information collected through tracking technologies;
Information provided to us by or on behalf of our customers or generated by us in the course of providing our services, which may, where relevant, include special categories of personal information (such as ethnic or racial origin, politic opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs, trade union membership, health or sexual orientation, etc.);
Identification and other background check data, such as, but not limited to, a copy of a driver's license, passport or utility bill;
Any other personal information provided. Please note that if you provide us with personal information about other people (such as your customers, administrators, directors, shareholders, beneficial owners), you must ensure that you have duly notified them that you are providing us with their information and that you have obtained their consent to such disclosure;
Where applicable, evidence of consent given to us (date, time, means), in circumstances where such consent is necessary for the processing of personal information.

We do not knowingly collect information from children or others under the age of 16. If you are a minor under the age of 16, please do not provide us with any personal information without the express consent of a parent or a guardian. If you are a parent or guardian and you are aware that your children have provided us with personal information, please contact us. If we learn that we have collected personal information from minor children without verification of parental consent, we will take steps to delete that information from our servers.

How do we collect personal information?

We collect your personal information from you and through our interactions with you, including in the course of providing services to you.

We also collect publicly available information on public platforms, including our Web site.

How do we use personal information?

We use your personal information to provide and improve our services to you. We also use it to meet our legal obligations.

We may use personal information in any of the following ways:

In order to provide our services and for the conduct of our business, to administer and perform our services, including fulfilling our obligations under any agreement between you and us;
To respond to inquiries or other requests from visitors of our Web sites;
In order to facilitate the use of our Web sites and to ensure that the content is relevant, and to ensure the content of our Web site is presented in the most effective manner for you and your device;
For marketing and business development purposes, in particular to provide details of new services;
For research and development purposes (including security) – to perform analyses to better understand our customers’ service and marketing requirements and to better understand our business and develop our services and offerings;
For recruitment purposes – to enable us to process job applications and assess whether an individual meets the requirements of the position for which he or she may apply within the Company;
To meet our legal, regulatory or risk management obligations – to comply with our legal obligations and obtain information about a customer;
To prevent fraud and/or conduct other background checks that may be required at any time by applicable law, regulation and/or best practices (if false or inaccurate information is provided or fraud is detected or suspected, information may be forwarded to fraud prevention organizations and may be recorded by us or such organizations). When processing special categories of personal information, we may also rely on important public interest (crime prevention or detection) or legally found claims;
To enforce our rights, to meet our legal or regulatory obligations to provide information and/or to protect third parties’ rights;
To ensure we get paid – to collect payments owed to us and, where applicable, to enforce such collections through debt collection agencies or any other legal means (including taking legal action);
In order to reorganize or change our business – if we undertake a reorganization (for instance, by merging, consolidating or ceding part of our business), we may need to transfer some or all of the personal information to an applicable third party (or its advisors) as part of any due diligence process or transfer to such reorganized entity issue or third party for the same purposes as set up in this policy on personal information protection or for the purposes of analyzing any potential reorganization.

With whom do we share personal information?

We may provide your personal information to our service providers and partners. We may also disclose your personal information in order to comply with a legal obligation or to enforce our rights. The personal information we gather may be transferred to, and processed by, any entity in our network. We may also share personal information with certain third parties, including the following:

Third-party service providers and/or partners who provide us with Web site services, application development, hosting, maintenance and other services. These third parties may access or process personal information in the course of their functions. We limit the information we provide to these service providers to that which is reasonably necessary for them to perform complete their functions;
Government authorities and law enforcement agencies where required by applicable law. More specifically, we may disclose personal and other information if we are required to do so by law, or if we believe in good faith that such disclosure is necessary to comply with applicable laws, in response to a court order or summon to testify or government search warrant, or otherwise to cooperate with such government authorities and law enforcement agencies;
The purchaser, successor or assignee in connection with any merger, acquisition, debt financing, asset sale or similar transaction, as well as in the event of insolvency, bankruptcy or receivership involving the transfer of personal information as a business asset to one or more third parties;
We will only use personal information for the primary purpose and the applicable legitimate purpose for which it was collected, or for purposes consistent with that primary purpose.

How long do we keep personal information?

We will keep personal information only as long as necessary for the purposes set out in this Policy of personal information protection and to comply with our legal and regulatory obligations. To find out more about how long we keep personal information, please contact us at the coordinates indicated in the “How to contact us” section.

Where do we store personal information?

Your personal information is currently hosted in Canada.

How do we protect personal information?

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the information submitted to us, both at the time of transmission and once we have received it. We maintain appropriate physical, technical, or administrative safeguards to protect personal information against accidental or unlawful destruction or accidental loss, alteration, unauthorized disclosure or access, misuse or any other unlawful forms of processing of personal information in our possession. We have taken steps to ensure that the only staff members subject to a duty of confidentiality who have access to your personal information are those who have a need to know or whose duties reasonably require such information.

However, no Internet transmission method, or any electronic storage mediums are 100% secure. Therefore, we cannot ensure or warrant the safety of any information you transmit or provide to us, and you do so at your own risk. Nor can we guarantee that such information will not be accessed, obtained, disclosed, altered or destroyed as a result of a breach of our physical, technical or administrative safeguards. If you have reason to believe that personal information has been compromised, please contact us at the coordinates indicated in the “How to contact us” section.

What rights does an individual have regarding his or her personal information?

You have a certain number of rights regarding your personal information.

Under certain circumstances and in accordance with applicable data protection laws, an individual has the following rights:

Access: the right to ask whether we process information and, if so, to request access to personal information. Subject to applicable law and, where applicable, the payment of a certain amount of money, the individual may thus receive a copy of the personal information we hold and certain other information concerning him or her;
Accuracy: we are required to take reasonable means to ensure that personal information in our possession is accurate, complete, non-misleading and up-to-date;
Correction: the right to request a correction of any incomplete or inaccurate personal information we hold.

Furthermore, under certain circumstances, you have the following right:

To withdraw your consent to the disclosure or use of personal information collected at any time.

Finally, it is also possible to lodge a complaint with a data protection supervisory authority.

To exercise any of these rights, please contact us as indicated in the “How to contact us” section.

How to contact us?

If you have any questions or comments regarding this Policy on personal information protection or on your personal information, or if you wish to exercise your rights or file a complaint, please contact our person in charge of personal information protection by e-mail at info@gceres.com or by mail at the following address:

Groupe Cérès Inc.

To the attention of the person in charge of personal information protection

845, route Marie-Victorin, local 02

Québec (Québec) G7A 3S8

How do we update this policy on personal information protection?

We may change the content of our Web site without notice and, therefore, our Policy on personal information protection may change from time to time in the future. We therefore encourage you to review it each time you visit the Web site to stay informed about how we handle personal information.

This policy was last updated in September 2023.