Welcome and thank you for choosing the SOPA program to support you during your pre-arrival journey to Canada. Please review the following information carefully.

1) General Terms and Conditions

• Settlement Online Pre-Arrival (SOPA) is an Immigration, Refugees & Citizenship Canada (IRCC) funded program that delivers free pre-arrival services for job readiness, success, and retention. Since SOPA funding has been provided by IRCC, we are required to collect information on behalf of IRCC that assists IRCC to measure results, evaluating the success of the program, and meeting government obligations of accountability.
• In Canada, organizations are required to obtain consent from individuals to collect, use or share personal information (under the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) (www.priv.gc.ca/leg_c/leg_c_p_e.asp ). To support you, the SOPA program must share some of your personal information with IRCC.

2) Privacy, Consent and Confidentiality Statement

• Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) periodically contacts individuals to get feedback on the settlement services they fund. Your consent allows IRCC to contact you. IRCC will use your answers, and answers from other immigrants, to improve services for all immigrants. This is voluntary: you are not obligated to answer IRCC’s questions. IRCC will not use your information to make any decisions about you personally. For the same reason, the SOPA program may also want to contact you in the future to ask you if the services we provided to you have been useful and helped you settle in Canada.
• SOPA may contact you by sending you e-mails, event invitations, and announcements. You may withdraw your consent to receive these communications at any time by emailing info@accesemployment.ca and allowing 5 business days for processing.
• The SOPA Program is committed to ensuring that any personal information collected from clients during the course of SOPA registration and service delivery is protected. This Privacy Policy outlines the principles by which SOPA protects all client personal information collected and is in accordance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), (www.priv.gc.ca/leg_c/leg_c_p_e.asp)
• SOPA will collect, use and disclose personal client information for the following purposes: To review and process client registrations; to develop aggregate information and statistics used for monitoring and evaluation of the overall success of Programs and Services and to identify service areas to improve upon; to create and maintain the SOPA client databases;  to comply with funder requirements.
• SOPA will use appropriate security safeguards to protect client personal information against loss, theft, unauthorized access, disclosure, copying, misuse or modification, regardless of the format in which the information is held.

There are situations where SOPA does not need the consent of a client in order to share their personal information. The exceptions are: a) Section 23 of the Children and Family Services Act states that “Every person who has information, whether or not it is confidential or privileged, indicating that a child is in need of protective services shall report that information to an agency.” b) Section 5 of the Adult Protection Services Act provides that “anyone who has information, confidential or privileged, indicating that an adult is in need of protection must report that information to the Minister of Community Services through designated officials.” c) If you pose a threat of harm to yourself or to another person, SOPA will take whatever steps are required by law, or permitted by law, to help prevent any potential harm from happening. d) A court order, issued by a judge, could require SOPA to release your personal information or could require a SOPA employee to testify in court.

I consent for Settlement Online Pre-Arrival to contact me for future research and/or consultation.