Privacy Policy

Welcome to the House Tonic Inc. (“House Tonic”) website (“Site”) Privacy Policy. House Tonic is committed to protecting your Personal Information and maintaining the accuracy and security of your Personal Information that we collect throughout our business processes, in accordance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (“PIPEDA”), and other applicable laws and regulations governing collection, use and disclosure of Personal Information (together “Privacy Laws”).

“Personal Information” throughout this Privacy Policy means any identifiable information about an individual, which may include your name, address, telephone number and credit card number or other financial information.

House Tonic’s privacy practices are in accordance with the 10 guiding principles of PIPEDA and applicable provincial privacy legislation and are as follows:

Accountability. We have appointed a Privacy Officer to ensure compliance with our Privacy Policy and practices. We take responsibility for maintaining and protecting the Personal Information under our control, and any information that we may transfer to third parties who provide services to House Tonic.

Identifying Purposes . House Tonic will only use your Personal Information for the purposes identified at the time of collection. These purposes may include:

In order to process your registration so that you are eligible to use the Site;
to answer any of your questions or send you information you have requested;
in order to contact you to verify accuracy of information you have provided;
for marketing purposes in order to provide you, by electronic mail, with information on services or products that may interest you (you may opt out of receiving any marketing information by following the links provided to you or contacting House Tonic as provided below);
to better understand your needs and improve the delivery of our services;
to understand our market and create statistics with aggregate non-identifiable data in order to secure advertising;
with your express consent, to conduct surveys regarding your satisfaction with the services we may have provided to you; and
to comply with any legal and statutory requirements; and

Except as permitted by law, we will obtain your consent if we collect, use or disclose your Personal Information for purposes other than the ones outlined above.

Consent . Your provision of Personal Information to House Tonic means that you agree and consent that we may collect, use and disclose your Personal Information for the purposes which were identified at the time of its collection and in accordance with the terms of this Privacy Policy. If you do not agree with these terms, you are requested not to provide any Personal Information to House Tonic. However some of House Tonic’s services can only be offered if you provide Personal Information to us. Consequently, if you choose not to provide us with any required Personal Information, we may not be able to offer you certain services.

Limiting Collection . We will not collect your Personal Information for purposes other than those identified above without your consent or except as provided for and in accordance with Privacy Laws. If you are a Service Provider (as described in Section 3 of the Terms of Use), you may decide to provide House Tonic with your profile information that will allow you to describe and showcase the home renovation and other services that your organization provides. Imbedded in this business information may be certain Personal Information including your name, e-mail address and information regarding your skill set as prompted by the Services’ registration form (such information being the "Registration Data"). If you are a User, i.e. a person or organization other than a Service Provider that wishes to use the Site and the Services, certain sections of this Site will only be accessible to you with the use of a username and password that may be provided to you by House Tonic upon your completion of House Tonic’s User registration form located at register@housetonic.com. Upon submission of the User registration form (including name, address, username, email address and other optional demographic information) to House Tonic, House Tonic may provide you, at its sole discretion, which may be unreasonably withheld, with a username and password via electronic mail to the address submitted by you to access the secure sections of this Site.

Limiting Use, Disclosure and Retention. House Tonic does not sell any Personal Information it collects to third parties. Personal Information under our control may be processed by third parties, but only after they agree to maintain the security and confidentiality of such information. Personal Information collected by House Tonic may be subject to transfer to another company in the event of a sale of all or some of the assets of the company. This will occur only if the parties have entered into an agreement under which the collection, use and disclosure of the information is restricted to those purposes that relate to the business transaction, including a determination whether or not to proceed with the business transaction, and is to be used by the parties to carry out and complete the business transaction.

There are circumstances where the use and/or disclosure of Personal Information may be justified or permitted or where House Tonic is obliged to disclose information without consent. Such circumstances may include:

Where required by law or by order or requirement of a court, administrative agency or other governmental tribunal;
Where House Tonic believes, upon reasonable grounds, that it is necessary to protect the rights, privacy, safety or property of an identifiable person or group;
Where it is necessary to permit House Tonic to pursue available remedies or limit any damages that House Tonic may sustain; or
Where the information is public.

Where required to disclose Personal Information without consent, House Tonic will not disclose more Personal Information than is required.

House Tonic will only retain your Personal Information for as long as is necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected or to meet legal or contractual requirements.

Accuracy . House Tonic is committed to ensuring that your Personal Information is up-to-date, accurate and complete as necessary for the purposes for which House Tonic uses that data. You can correct any Personal Information which is inaccurate, incomplete or out-of-date by sending a written request to our Privacy Officer updating your profile at privacy@housetonic.com. In situations where your Personal Information has been provided to House Tonic by a third party, we will refer you to that third party.

Safeguards . House Tonic uses technical and organizational security measures in order to protect the Personal Information we have under our control against accidental or intentional manipulation, loss, destruction or against access by unauthorized persons. We help ensure the security of your Personal Information by using the following:

physically secure data centres and premises;
internal security policies and procedures;
limiting access to trained and essential House Tonic employees and contractors; and
electronic access controls such as password protection and encryption technologies.

Openness . If you have questions about the collection, use or disclosure of your Personal Information by House Tonic you may contact our Privacy Officer. Requests for access, and any questions or concerns regarding the our Privacy Policy should be made in writing to the attention of the Chief Privacy Officer at the following address.

E-mail: privacy@housetonic.com

Access . House Tonic will respond to requests for access in accordance with applicable Privacy Laws. You may request access to your Personal Information at any time by submitting a written request to our Privacy Officer. House Tonic may require a minimal fee in order to respond to an access request, and it will advise you of such fee in advance. House Tonic will only refuse access to Personal Information in those circumstances permitted or required by applicable Privacy Laws. If House Tonic refuses access, it will provide the reasons for its refusal.
Challenging Compliance . If you are dissatisfied with House Tonic ’s handling of Personal Information, you may make a written complaint to the Privacy Officer. The Privacy Officer will investigate the matter and take corrective action where necessary. The Privacy Officer will advise you of any steps taken to correct the problem. If you are still dissatisfied with the response from House Tonic , you may make a written complaint to the federal or provincial Privacy Commissioner (where applicable).