Privacy policy

1 Scope and Objectives

This Privacy Policy (hereafter, “Policy”) applies to Lesters Foods Limited (Hereafter, “Lesters” or “we/us.”).

This Policy applies to all personal information (as defined hereunder) regarding all Website users: https://www.lesters.ca/ (“Website”), our clients, job applicants applying at https://lesters.ca/en/careers/, and our employees (collectively, “you/us”). It clarifies the way we manage and protect it within the limits prescribed by the law.

The following clauses provide information on:

the nature of the personal information we collect and how we carry this out;
the scope of your consent;
the security and governance measures that aim to protect it and which we respect;
the purposes for its use;
how we share and store it;
your rights in this respect and how you can exercise them.

2 Personal Information We Collect

“Personal information” refers to all information about a natural person that allows their identification, whether directly or indirectly.

We collect the personal information required to establish, manage, and maintain our relationship with you.

Usually regarding employees and job applicants, this collection is limited to the following personal information:

Surname, name.
Date of birth.
Email address, mailing address, phone numbers.
Information contained in the CV such as places of employment, length of service, jobs held.
If necessary, upon hiring or during employment, bank details, social insurance number (SIN), and health, insurance, and income tax information.
For Website users, please consult the sections about cookies (see clause 9).

We may collect personal information from administrative forms, from the Website, when signing a contract, or, possibly, through your communications with our employees or representatives whether by email, phone, or in person.

Subject to your consent, we could also collect personal information concerning you from external sources or, if the law permits, without your consent. Thus, we might do background checks on job applicants through a respected specialized agency.

3 Your Consent

Your consent to the collection, use, or communication of your personal information must be manifest, freely given and informed. You must consent to the specific ends and objectives identified in this Policy.

To this end, we have written this Policy in terms that are easily understood. However, should any uncertainty exist, you can contact our person responsible for the protection of personal information; you can find their contact details at the end of this Policy.

Depending on the nature and the sensitivity of your personal information, your consent can be explicit (given verbally, in writing, or electronically) or implicit (as when you share personal information voluntarily).

The personal information obtained on job applicants and employees is needed to enter in and comply with the contracts of employment. We will ask for your consent when we begin collection. Should you refuse, we reserve the right to cancel the job offer or, where relevant, to rescind the employment contract.

As to personal information gathered on the Website, this Policy acts as a request for consent. In other words, whenever you use the Website, you consent to the use of your personal information per this Policy. Should you not consent, please stop using the Website. You can remove your consent at any time, subject to the applicable legal restrictions and the reasonable transmission of a notice. Please note that if you no longer consent to the collection, use, or communication of your personal information, you may no longer have access to certain features of our Website, or we may be unable to provide certain services.

4 Security and Governance

Information security represents a priority for us. Along with the administrative measures detailed in the following clauses, we have implemented reasonable physical and technological measures that consider the sensitive nature of personal information, its use, quality, distribution, and format.

5 Use of Personal Information

We use your personal information for the following purposes:

To identify you and verify this identification for billing purposes.
To process your wages.
To do background checks.
To verify your motive for absence.
To meet regulatory requirements about work health and welfare, or professional illnesses.
To give you access to the Website and ensure its security and optimal performance.
To answer your requests to exercise rights.

All our employees who use personal information are bound by confidentiality and have received adequate training. Furthermore, they can only access the personal information needed to accomplish their work. Should an employee contravene, our governance policies and practices provide for penalties. We only use your personal information as stated above except for exceedingly rare cases where the law allows us to do so without your consent.

6 Disclosure of Personal Information

To whom?

We can disclose your personal information to a third party in specific circumstances permitted by law. In the following chart, we summarize these circumstances and the measures we take to protect your personal information.

To subcontractors.

Purpose : To sign contracts with subcontractors to provide you with a service or to improve current services.

Measures :

The contract requires the subcontractors to:

Use only the personal information needed to deliver a service.
Refrain from disclosing or sharing any personal information without our consent.
Implement thorough security measures.
Allow us to audit these measures.
Warn us immediately of any privacy breach or incident.
Delete the personal information when a contract ends.

To another party during a business transaction. A transaction is as follows: the disposal or leasing of all or part of our business or assets, the modification of our legal status through a merger or other means, the acquiring of a loan or any other financing, or as a security to guarantee one of our obligations (hereafter, “business transaction”).

Purpose : To conclude a business transaction.

Measures :

A prior contract forces the other party to:

Use only the personal information needed to conclude the business transaction.
Implement thorough security measures.
Refrain from disclosing or sharing any personal information without our consent.
Warn us immediately of any privacy breach or incident.
Delete the personal information if the transaction is not concluded or if it is no longer needed to reach its conclusion.

To the legitimate authorities.

Purpose : We may have to provide personal information to a regulator, or to comply with an order or a court decision, including a valid search warrant.

Measures : The laws that govern these authorities force them to implement measures to respect and preserve the privacy of your personal information. Generally, we refuse access to it if the request is not legally binding.

To our lawyers or to prosecutors.

Purpose : To ensure our legal defence or to assert our rights, we may, in certain instances, share your personal information.

Measures : The law and the mandate letters we sign compel our lawyers to protect the confidentiality of all our communications with them.

Where?

In the course of our service transactions, we share your personal information solely within the Province of Québec.

If we must share such information out of the province, we will evaluate the factors that impact your privacy and will take the following into account:

the sensitive nature of the personal information;
the purpose of its use;
the protective measures afforded; and
the legal framework applicable in the State where this personal information will be communicated.

We will only proceed with this communication if the evaluation demonstrates that the personal information will be adequately protected in terms of the generally accepted principles for the protection of personal information. This communication will also be subject to a written contract that considers the conclusions of the whole evaluation.

7 Conservation

We only retain your personal information for the duration required to complete the purpose for which we collected them, to conform to the statutory requirements for the conservation, and for the time needed to protect our legitimate business interests. From time to time, we reserve the right to introduce policies for the destruction of personal information. Should you request the destruction of your personal information, we will make reasonable efforts to grant this request as soon as possible.

We will delete your personal information within thirty (30) days following the request. Please note that as concerns our joint venturers and employees, and despite your request for deletion, we may have the right to conserve certain personal information to assert our rights. For any questions about this subject, please consult the person responsible for the protection of personal information for further answers.

8 Your rights

Please note that you must address any requests about the exercise of rights to our person responsible for the protection of personal information.

As pertains to your personal information, you have the following rights:

The right to be informed of its use, communication conservation, and deletion.
The right to have access to your personal information, and to receive additional information on how we use, communicate, conserve, and delete it.
The right, in certain instances, to restrict, or withdraw your consent, or be opposed to these operations through the reasonable transmission of a notice emailed to the address found at the end of this Policy.
The right to have your personal information corrected if it is inaccurate or ambiguous, and to have it amended if it is incomplete.
The right to have your personal information deleted subject to our legal obligations.
The right to be notified of any privacy breach or incident of your personal information liable to cause you serious prejudice. We keep a record for this purpose where we consign all privacy incidents, and we evaluate all the prejudices they may cause.

You can exercise these rights by email at the address found at the end of this Policy.

We will answer within 30 days of the receipt of your request unless the law allows for an additional delay. Subject to the restrictions prescribed by law, if we refuse to provide you or correct your personal information, we will communicate the reasons supporting our refusal and offer information about your recourse and the applicable sections of the law.

Should we refuse to amend your personal information, we will allow you to add your written comments about the corrections to your personal information that met with a refusal. Additionally, we will keep the personal information for which an access request was made as long as necessary to allow you to exhaust all recourse provided by law.

9 Cookies

Your use of the Website allows us to gather certain elements of information known as cookies. They may include:

your computer’s Internet Protocol address (IP address);
your geolocation;
the operating system you use;
your language preference;
the identity of your Internet provider;
the date and time when you accessed the Website;
the previous site you visited which provided you a link to our Website; and
the content you consulted and uploaded from our Website, or the number of visits you made.

The cookies we use usually grouped into two categories:

Technical cookies: Technical cookies are used throughout navigation so that using our Website is easier. For example, a technical cookie can be used to remember your username to help with your connection, and to remember your preferences or the options you selected.
Analytical cookies: These cookies are anonymous and are used to collect statistics about the use of our Website.

Please note that we do not use publicity cookies.

You may, if you so desire, configure your browser so that it notifies you when cookies are present, or allows you to refuse them. You can erase cookies from your computer’s hard drive, block all cookies, or receive a warning before a cookie is stored. Should you choose to do this, your use of our Website could be adversely affected, and you might not have access to all its functions. We invite you to consult the following websites: Ads Setting and Network Advertising Initiative as well as the instructions and the help section of your browser for additional information about cookies.

10 Person Responsible for the Protection of Personal Information

The person responsible for the protection of personal information at Lesters is our I.T. Manager, Stéphan Rheault.

Should you have any questions or requests regarding this Policy, you can contact him by email at: [email protected]

Lesters reserves the right to modify this Policy at any time. Any changes will appear on our Websites and be brought to your attention when you sign in. We recommend that you print a copy of this Policy for your files and consult this section of our Website now and again.