Privacy Policy

Last updated: August 2026

Clinique multidisciplinaire et centre de médiation familiale Octobre (“the Clinic”) takes the protection of your personal information seriously. This policy explains what information we collect through cliniqueoctobre.ca, why we collect it, who we share it with, how long we keep it and what your rights are. It is written in accordance with Quebec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, as amended by Law 25.

Person in charge of the protection of personal information

The Clinic’s person in charge of the protection of personal information is Fatima Awada, founder and director. She oversees compliance with this policy and handles any request or complaint concerning your personal information.

Information we collect

• Contact form: name, email address, phone number and the content of your message.
• Booking: appointments are made through the secure Jane platform, which collects the information needed for your file and applies its own privacy policy.
• Clinical record: information gathered while providing professional services is recorded in your file in accordance with the record-keeping rules of the professional orders involved.
• Technical data: non-identifying browsing data (browser type, pages visited) processed for the security and proper functioning of the site.

Purposes and consent

The information you send us is used only to answer your request, to plan and deliver the professional services you ask for, to follow up on your file and to meet our legal and professional obligations. It is never sold and never used for commercial or advertising purposes.

Your consent is requested in a manner that is clear, free and informed, for each of these purposes and in plain language. You may withdraw it at any time, subject to the information the Clinic is required to keep under the law or under professional regulations.

Where services concern a minor under 14, consent is given by the person having parental authority or by the tutor. From age 14, a minor may consent personally to the collection and use of their personal information in the cases provided by law.

Cookies and tracking technologies

The site currently uses no analytics, advertising, profiling or geolocation tool. Only cookies strictly necessary for the operation and security of the site may be set.

Should the Clinic add a technology that can identify you, locate you or build a profile, you would be informed beforehand, that technology would not be active by default, and you would have a simple way to turn it off.

Automated decisions

The Clinic does not make any decision about you based exclusively on automated processing of your personal information. Every decision about your services is made by a professional.

Sharing and where information is stored

Your information is shared with third parties only where necessary to deliver services or where required by law. The Clinic relies on the following providers:

• Website hosting: Crocweb, whose data centre is located in Montreal, Quebec.
• Booking and records platform: Jane, whose Canadian account data is hosted in data centres located in Quebec and Alberta.

Some of this information may therefore be stored outside Quebec but within Canada. Before entrusting personal information to a provider located outside Quebec, the Clinic carries out the privacy impact assessment required by law and ensures, through a written agreement, that the information will receive adequate protection.

The Clinic may also disclose information without your consent where the law requires or permits it, in particular to prevent an act of violence or a suicide where there is reasonable cause to believe that a serious risk of death or serious injury threatens a person or an identifiable group.

Retention and destruction

Your information is kept only for as long as necessary for the purposes for which it was collected, then securely destroyed or anonymized.

• Professional records: kept for at least 5 years from the date of the last professional service rendered, in accordance with the Regulation respecting the keeping of records and consulting rooms by members of the Ordre des travailleurs sociaux et des thérapeutes conjugaux et familiaux du Québec, and according to the rules applicable to the other professional orders involved.
• Contact form messages: kept for no more than 24 months, then deleted, unless they are added to a professional record.

Security

The Clinic applies security measures that are reasonable and proportionate to the sensitivity of the information: hosting on secure servers, encryption of site communications, access restricted to those who need it, account authentication and secure destruction at the end of the information life cycle.

Your rights

You may exercise the following rights with the person in charge of the protection of personal information:

• Access: confirm that we hold information about you and receive a copy of it.
• Correction: have inaccurate, incomplete or equivocal information corrected.
• Withdrawal of consent: withdraw your consent to the collection, use or communication of your information.
• Portability: receive, in a structured and commonly used technological format, the computerized information you provided to us yourself.
• Cessation of dissemination and de-indexing: request that the dissemination of personal information about you cease, or that any hyperlink giving access to it be de-indexed, in the cases provided by law.

We respond to any request within 30 days of receiving it. These rights remain subject to the limits set out in the Act and to the retention obligations arising from professional regulations.

Governance policies and practices

The Clinic has established internal policies and practices governing the management of personal information, proportionate to its size and the nature of its activities. They cover in particular:

• The information life cycle: the rules for collecting, using, sharing, retaining and destroying information, including the periods set out in the Retention and destruction section.
• Staff roles and responsibilities: everyone working for the Clinic has access only to the information needed to carry out their duties, is bound to confidentiality by contract and by professional ethics, and receives awareness training on the protection of personal information.
• Handling of confidentiality incidents: the Clinic keeps a register of confidentiality incidents. Where an incident presents a risk of serious injury, it takes reasonable measures to reduce the consequences and promptly notifies the Commission d’accès à l’information and the persons concerned.
• Privacy impact assessments: an assessment is carried out before acquiring or overhauling an information system involving personal information, and before any communication outside Quebec.
• Complaint handling: according to the process described below.

Complaint process

If you believe the Clinic has not respected your rights or this policy, you may file a complaint with the person in charge of the protection of personal information, through our contact form, by phone or by mail, using the contact details above. Describe the situation and the outcome you are seeking.

We acknowledge receipt of your complaint, examine it, and give you our conclusion and the measures taken in writing, within 30 days of receiving it. Handling a complaint is free and confidential.

If our answer does not satisfy you, you may contact the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, which may review your request.

Changes

This policy may be amended. Any change is published on this page and the date of the last revision appears at the top. We invite you to review it periodically.

This policy covers the cliniqueoctobre.ca site and the personal information collected by the Clinic. Third-party platforms linked from the site apply their own policies.