PRIMA collects personal information through the following: (i) upon the Client’s voluntary disclosure of personal information to an authorized PRIMA representative, and/or (ii) upon the Client’s use of the Web Sites.

Generally speaking, the Web Sites are not used to collect personal information; their main purpose is to communicate information regarding PRIMA’s mission, activities, achievements, commitments, publications, partners, management team and members. Clients may use the Web Sites, along with PRIMA’s profile page on various third-party platforms (LinkedIn, X (Twitter) and Flickr), to communicate with PRIMA representatives. When doing so, Clients may be asked to identify themselves to the PRIMA representative using the personal information described in Section 2.

PRIMA may collect the following personal information:

• Your full name and contact details (street address, e-mail address, telephone number);
• Your discussions and communication history with PRIMA and its representatives (communications via e‑mail and third-party platforms);
• The personal information you generate throughout your relationship with PRIMA (proof of consent, notices, comments and survey responses);
• The personal information you generate through membership applications, job applications and service offers to PRIMA (your first and last name, your contact information [street address, e-mail address, telephone number], your gender (or gender identity), your date of birth, spoken languages, education, professional experience, and professional affiliations);
• The personal information PRIMA requires or requests due to the nature of your relationship with PRIMA (photographs, social insurance number, employee-related financial information, and identification documents for each of PRIMA’s administrators);
• Personal information involving the transactions you wish to conduct with PRIMA, either in person at PRIMA’s offices, in accordance with Section 12 below, or through the Web Sites (first and last name, street address, e-mail address, telephone number, and payment information, along with a user name and password for payments made through the Web Sites); and
• Personal information that is automatically collected when using the Web Sites (cookies, web beacons and log files), all of which is fully described in Section 10 of the Policy.

PRIMA collects your personal information for the following purposes:

• To provide information, tools, financing and/or support when developing advanced materials projects in Quebec (collectively, the “Services”);
• To develop, improve and promote PRIMA’s various programs and tools, particularly by generating and publishing de-identified statistical data gathered from the personal information of several Clients;
• To provide PRIMA member Clients with access to electronic platforms via the Web Sites;
• To provide you with information and to respond to your questions regarding PRIMA and its Services;
• To review your membership application, job application, or service offer to PRIMA;
• To fulfill our obligations and/or exercise our rights when acting as your employer, when acting as the non-profit organization for which you are a member and/or administrator, or when acting in any other capacity whatsoever;
• To process your transactions with PRIMA.

Subject to the exceptions that appear in the applicable legislation, PRIMA will request your consent before using your personal information for any purpose beyond those listed above.

Please note that you are responsible for obtaining consent from any natural person whose personal information you submit to PRIMA. Furthermore, PRIMA will not knowingly collect personal information from any natural person under the age of fourteen (14).

In general, PRIMA will strictly use its Clients’ personal information for internal purposes. PRIMA may, however, disclose your personal information to the following persons or entities:

1. PRIMA employees and representatives who require access to such personal information when achieving any of the tasks listed in Section 3 above;
2. External service providers who have signed a contractual agreement with PRIMA, obligating such external service providers to take all appropriate measures to:
   (i) Protect the confidentiality of personal information;
   (ii) Ensure that the personal information disclosed is used strictly to deliver the services required by PRIMA;
   (iii) Ensure that the personal information disclosed is not retained after the termination of the aforementioned contractual agreement;
   (iv) Promptly notify PRIMA of any breach or attempted breach by any person of any obligation involving the confidentiality of the personal information disclosed; and
   (v) Allow PRIMA to verify the confidentiality of the personal information disclosed.
3. When personal information is collected and disclosed in connection with a funding application, or any evaluation involving a program offered by PRIMA in partnership with the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade, the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources, Canada Economic Development, or any other partner, in accordance with the contractual agreements signed by PRIMA and the partner involved; and
4. Any other person or entity prescribed or permitted under the applicable legislation, or through the Client’s consent.

PRIMA may disclose your personal information to persons or entities located outside the province of Quebec when such persons or entities belong to the above-mentioned categories. In such cases, PRIMA will conduct a privacy impact assessment in accordance with the applicable legislation prior to any such disclosure. PRIMA will only disclose your personal information if the privacy impact assessment confirms the person or entity’s ability to provide adequate protection for this personal information, particularly when it involves generally accepted privacy principles.

PRIMA uses the appropriate physical, technological and administrative safeguards to protect your personal information and reduce the risk of unauthorized and/or unlawful access, use, disclosure and destruction.

Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, PRIMA:

• Requires each of its employees and representatives with access to personal information to sign a confidentiality agreement;
• Ensures that all employees with access to personal information are trained and sensitized to the importance of every privacy protection and cybersecurity issue involved;
• Implements and monitors the application of various internal policies designed to reduce the risk of a privacy incident, among other things;
• Retains personal information on locked physical media located inside locked premises accessible only to authorized PRIMA employees and representatives;
• Stores personal information on secure technological media, namely (i) Microsoft Canada Inc. cloud servers located in the province of Quebec, and (ii) Datto, Inc. cloud servers located in Canada; and
• Limits personal information access to authorized persons who require such access when achieving any of the tasks listed in Section 3 of the Policy.

PRIMA maintains a privacy incident register in accordance with the applicable legislation. In the event of any privacy incident that puts you at risk of serious harm, PRIMA will take all necessary steps to notify you in accordance with the applicable legislation. Assessing the risk of serious harm involves criteria that consider the sensitivity of the personal information involved in the privacy incident, the anticipated consequences of its use, and the likelihood that it will be used for harmful purposes.

In accordance with our secure personal information retention and destruction procedure, PRIMA only retains your personal information until the tasks listed in Section 3 of the Policy have been fulfilled, or until it has fulfilled its statutory obligations, whichever is later.

PRIMA reserves the right to destroy a Client’s file if it has not undergone any administrative action for a minimum period of five (5) consecutive years or, for PRIMA employees, a minimum period of seven (7) consecutive years, starting on the date of the employee’s termination, unless subject to a statutory obligation that provides for a different minimum retention period. File closures involve the complete and definitive destruction of the personal information they contain, or the anonymization of this information for serious and legitimate purposes.

The term “anonymization” in the Policy refers to the process in which personal information can no longer be irreversibly identified, directly or indirectly, with the person involved.

PRIMA recognizes its Clients’ right to access, correct, update or obtain a copy of their personal information by providing PRIMA with a written request to this effect at the coordinates indicated in Section 12 below. After receiving this written request, PRIMA will respond in writing and with diligence within a maximum period of thirty (30) days. Requests for corrections may be justified in some circumstances, particularly when the personal information is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date.

Should PRIMA approve a Client’s request for a digitized copy of its personal information, it will provide the Client (or any person or organization legally authorized to collect such personal information, in accordance with the Client’s specifications) with the aforementioned copy in a structured, commonly used technological format. This paragraph will not apply (i) if forwarding the copy in this technological format raises serious practical difficulties, and/or (ii) to any digitized personal information created or inferred from other personal information.

Should PRIMA refuse to grant any access, correction or updating request issued by a Client, it will inform the Client of the reasons for this refusal and of the remedies available to the Client in the circumstances, along with the time limit involved when exercising such remedies. Upon the Client’s request, PRIMA will help clarify the reasons for the refusal.

Upon written request from the Client, PRIMA may also cease the dissemination of any personal information involving the Client and de-index or re-index, as the case may be, any link attached to the Client’s name, subject to the applicable legislation.

In principle, a Client’s use of the access rights described in this section will be free of charge. However, the Client may be charged a reasonable fee to offset the transcription, reproduction and transmission costs associated with their personal information. In such cases, the Client will be notified of the monetary amount involved before the request is processed.

Subject to your contractual obligations with PRIMA and the applicable legislation, you may withdraw or modify your consent regarding the collection, use or disclosure of your personal information. To do so, you must provide PRIMA with a written request to this effect at the coordinates contained in Section 12 below.

Please note that withdrawing or modifying your consent may limit PRIMA’s ability to provide its services, or prevent it from fulfilling, or continuing to fulfill, any of the tasks for which your information was collected, as described in Section 3 of the Policy, including your access to, and use of, the Web Sites.

In addition, please note that withdrawing or modifying your consent will have no effect on personal information that has been destroyed or anonymized in accordance with the Policy.

The Web Sites may occasionally use cookies and similar technologies to recognize users who return to the Web Sites. A cookie is a small data file stored by a Web server on the user’s device. Cookies are used to help identify users who return to the Web Sites in an effort to tailor the information they receive when browsing the Web Sites, among other things. Cookies are used to generate data to better understand the profile of the Web Sites’ users, as well as their behaviour when using the Web Sites. You may refuse cookies at any time if your device permits it by installing, among other things, an add-on to your browser, but this refusal could prevent you from accessing certain parts and/or features of the Web Sites. A table containing information on the cookies used by the Web Sites has been attached to the Policy under Appendix A.

Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, PRIMA uses the Google Analytics Web analysis service provided by Google Inc. to collect, compile and analyze non-personal information, along with aggregated and anonymous statistical data to better understand how the Web Sites are used. This data is primarily used to monitor and analyze the use of the Web Sites while improving their functionality and accuracy in order to select their content and graphic design, all of which is intended to meet the expectations of the Web Sites’ users. You can also prevent Google Inc. from collecting and processing data generated by cookies that track your use of the Web Sites by downloading and installing the plug-in available at the following link: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout?hl=en.

The Web Sites’ pages may contain small graphic images called “Web beacons” (also known as “Web bugs”), which help us collect specific and limited information regarding the Web Sites’ users, like the type of device requesting the Web beacon, the device IP address where the Web beacon is being transmitted, and the moment the Web beacon has been viewed. Web beacons may be invisible to the user but, in general, any electronic image that appears on a Web page or in an e-mail message, including HTML content, can act as a Web beacon. PRIMA may use Web beacons to count the number of visitors to the Web Sites, or track the browsing habits of the Web Sites’ users; it may also include Web beacons in e-mail messages to count the number of messages that are opened by recipients, along with those that elicited a response.

When visiting the Web Sites, PRIMA may collect and store information using log files, which contain data, such as the name of the host used to access the Internet, the IP address of the device used to access the Web Sites, the browser used to access the Web Sites, the operating system of the device used to access the Web Sites, the date and time of the access, the Internet address of the Web site used to access the Web Sites, the Web site visited after leaving the Web Sites, and the number of clicks made by the user on the Web Sites. We collect this information to analyze user trends and improve the Web Sites accordingly.

The Web Sites may contain links to other Web Sites or third-party products and services (collectively, “Third‑Party Products”). Third-Party Products may be subject to usage terms and privacy policies that differ from those of PRIMA. PRIMA will not be responsible or bound by any obligations regarding the content of usage terms and/or privacy policies used by such Third-Party Products. Without limiting the generality of the foregoing, PRIMA will not be responsible or bound by any obligation regarding any personal information that may be collected, used, disclosed or retained by any person or entity in connection with your access to, or use of, such Third-Party Products.

The Web Sites’ use of links to Third-Party Products in no way implies or signifies PRIMA’s endorsement or responsibility toward the content or use of such Third-Party Products. PRIMA makes no representations regarding the quality, safety, suitability or reliability of Third-Party Products, or the content and materials contained therein. When accessing or using Third-Party Products, you are responsible for reviewing their usage terms and privacy policy.

Without limiting the generality and scope of the foregoing, the Web Sites use plug-ins that create links between the Web Sites and PRIMA’s account on various social media:

1. We use the X (Twitter) plug-in, recognizable by the X logo, to establish a connection between your browser and X’s servers. For more information on the scope, purpose and nature of X’s data collection and processing procedures, please consult X’s privacy policy at https://twitter.com/en/privacy;
2. We also use the Flickr plug-in, recognizable by the Flickr logo, to establish a connection between your browser and Flickr’s servers. For more information on the scope, purpose and nature of Flickr’s data collection and processing procedures, please consult Flickr’s privacy policy at https://www.flickr.com/help/privacy; and
3. Finally, we use the LinkedIn plug-in, recognizable by the LinkedIn logo, to establish a connection between your browser and LinkedIn’s servers. For more information on the scope, purpose and nature of LinkedIn’s data collection and processing procedures, please consult LinkedIn’s privacy policy at https://www.linkedin.com/legal/privacy-policy?.

We are responsible for your personal information. We have therefore designated an individual to act as PRIMA’s Chief Privacy Officer. To exercise any of your rights, to submit questions and comments, or to file a complaint regarding the Policy or the way in which we treat your personal information, please contact the Chief Privacy Officer at the following coordinates:

C/O: Ms. Marie-Pierre Ippersiel
President and CEO, Chief Privacy Officer
Pôle de recherche et d’innovation en matériaux avancés du Québec (PRIMA Québec)
505 De Maisonneuve Blvd. West, Suite 1050
Montreal, Quebec H3A 3C2
Toll-free: (514) 284-0211
E-mail: info@prima.ca