PRIVACY POLICY

1. Who we are

Cedric Marin Immigration Law Professional Corporation ("Marin Immigration Law", "we", "us") is a Canadian immigration and citizenship law firm based in Ottawa, Ontario. Our lawyers are licensed by the Law Society of Ontario. This policy explains how we collect, use, share and protect personal information when you visit our website, contact us, book a consultation or become a client.

If you retain us, your Legal Services Agreement and our professional duty of confidentiality also apply. If they differ from this policy, they prevail.

2. Our Privacy Officer

Cédric Marin, Principal Lawyer, is our Privacy Officer. You can reach him at contact@marinimmigrationlaw.ca (subject "Privacy"), at 280 Albert Street, Suite 802, Ottawa, Ontario K1P 5G8, or at 613-454-5760.

3. What we collect and why

• When you visit the website: IP address, browser and device type, pages viewed, referring page, approximate location and cookie identifiers. We use them to run and secure the site, understand how it is used, and measure and show our ads.
• When you use the contact form: your name, email and message, to answer general questions. We cannot reply to every message.
• When you book a consultation: your name, email, phone number, time zone, any notes you choose to share and payment confirmation (we do not receive your full card number), to schedule and prepare for the consultation and collect the fee.
• When you complete our intake form or send documents: identity and contact details; citizenship and immigration history; family and ancestry information, including about relatives; birth, marriage and death records; education, work and travel history; and, only when relevant to your matter, information about health, criminal history, sexual orientation or gender identity. We use it to check for conflicts, assess your eligibility and give legal advice.
• When you retain us: everything needed to carry out the work, plus billing and trust records, so we can provide legal services, meet our Law Society obligations and keep proper records.
• When others provide it, with your authorization: records from IRCC and other governments, archives, churches, vital-statistics offices, courts and genealogical databases, and information from family members or representatives you refer to us, to build and support your application or case.

We use personal information only for these purposes, or for others that the law permits or requires. We do not use it for unrelated purposes without your consent.

4. Sensitive information and consent

Much of what clients share is sensitive, including citizenship and immigration status and family history. We collect sensitive information only when your matter needs it, with your express consent, and we protect it under our duty of confidentiality. Please do not send sensitive details through the website contact form.

You can withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal or contractual limits. If you do, we may not be able to continue acting for you.

5. Children

Our website is meant for adults. We do not knowingly collect information online directly from children under 13. Our files often include information about minor children, for example as applicants in citizenship by descent claims or as dependants. We collect it from a parent or legal guardian, use it only for the child's matter and protect it as sensitive information.

6. Cookies and similar technologies

• Strictly necessary (Webflow, Cloudflare Turnstile, the Calendly booking widget): run the site, block spam and book appointments.
• Analytics (Google Analytics 4, Microsoft Clarity): measure visits. Clarity records clicks and scrolling to show us how pages are used; it masks what you type into form fields.
• Advertising (Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising): measure ad results and show our ads to past visitors.
• Social proof and reviews (ProveSource, Shapo): display client reviews and anonymous notices that someone booked a consultation. These notices never show a name or location.

You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings, and opt out of personalized ads through Google's My Ad Center and Microsoft's ad settings. We are adding a cookie settings tool to this site. Once it is live, analytics and advertising cookies will stay off until you accept them.

With that tool, we will treat a Global Privacy Control signal as a request to opt out of advertising cookies and of any sale or sharing for targeted advertising. There is no common standard for "Do Not Track" browser signals, so we do not respond to them.

Our forms are protected from spam by Cloudflare Turnstile, which checks whether a visitor is a person or an automated program. Cloudflare processes technical data such as your IP address and browser information for this purpose.

7. Recordings and AI notes

With your permission, we may record video consultations or use AI note-taking tools (Gemini in Google Meet or Granola) to produce notes for our internal use. We will ask when you book and again at the start of the call. You can say no, and it will not affect our advice. Recordings and notes are kept in your file and are confidential.

8. Artificial intelligence

We use AI tools, including Anthropic's Claude and Google Gemini, to help with research, drafting, organizing documents and catching errors. A lawyer reviews all AI-assisted work. AI tools do not make decisions about you or your matter.

We use the business versions of these tools. Under their terms, the providers do not use our data to train their models by default, and we limit the identifiable information we share. We do not collect, use or sell personal information to train large language models. Clients receive a fuller AI clause in their Legal Services Agreement.

9. Service providers and storage outside Canada

We use carefully selected service providers to run our practice. They may use personal information only on our instructions, under contracts that require confidentiality and security, and we remain responsible for the information we give them. They include:

• Email, documents and video meetings: Google Workspace
• Booking and consultation payments: Calendly and Stripe
• Practice management, trust accounting, client portal and retainer payments: Clio and Clio Payments
• Intake forms and automation: Typeform and Zapier
• Internal collaboration and project tracking: Slack, Linear, Notion, Miro and Dropbox
• Agreements and e-signature: PandaDoc
• AI assistance and meeting notes: Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini) and Granola
• Website, security, analytics and reviews: Webflow, Cloudflare, Google, Microsoft, ProveSource and Shapo

Many of these providers are in the United States or elsewhere outside Canada. Your information may be processed and stored in those countries and may be accessible to the courts, law enforcement and national security authorities there. Google and Microsoft act independently, under their own privacy policies, when they provide advertising services.

10. When we share information

• With government decision-makers and courts, such as IRCC, the Immigration and Refugee Board, provincial nominee programs and the Federal Court, as your matter requires.
• With records holders and specialists who help us, such as archives, vital-statistics offices, churches, genealogists, researchers and translators, under confidentiality.
• With people you authorize, such as family members, representatives or an employer on a work permit file.
• With our professional advisers, our insurer and the Law Society of Ontario, when required.
• When the law requires it. If an authority demands information protected by solicitor-client privilege, we will assert the privilege and tell you, unless the law prevents us.
• If our practice is merged or transferred, subject to Law Society rules and our duty of confidentiality.

We do not sell personal information.

11. How long we keep it

• Website analytics: up to 14 months
• Contact form messages: 24 months
• Consultation records where we are not retained: 6 years, to check conflicts
• Client files: 10 years after the file closes
• Financial and trust records: as required by Law Society of Ontario By-Law 9

We then securely delete or anonymize the information, unless a legal hold applies.

12. How we protect it

We use safeguards suited to the sensitivity of the information, including multi-factor authentication, encryption provided by our platforms, role-based access, staff confidentiality agreements and training, and a secure office for paper records. No system is perfectly secure, and ordinary email is not fully secure. For sensitive documents, ask us for access to our secure client portal.

13. Privacy breaches

If a breach creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as soon as feasible, and others as required by the law where you live.

14. Your rights

You may ask to access or correct your personal information, or withdraw consent. We reply within 30 days, or tell you if we need more time as the law allows. We may refuse or limit access where the information is privileged, concerns someone else, or must be kept by law.

United States residents. Depending on your state, you may have the right to access, correct, delete or obtain a copy of your personal data, and to opt out of targeted advertising, sale or profiling. Email contact@marinimmigrationlaw.ca with the subject "Privacy request". We will verify your identity before acting. If we decline your request, you may appeal by replying with the subject "Appeal"; we will answer within 60 days.

Quebec residents. You also have the rights provided by Quebec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector.

15. Questions and complaints

Contact our Privacy Officer first. You may also complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, or your state attorney general.

16. Changes and language

We will post any update here with a new date, and flag material changes on the website. This policy is available in English and French.