Privacy

Privacy Policy

What we collect, why we collect it, how we protect it, and what you can ask us to do with it.

Effective October 29, 2026 · Last reviewed October 29, 2026

1. About this policy

Incourage Counselling Inc. (“Incourage,” “we,” “us”) provides counselling services in Burnaby, British Columbia and online. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we protect it, and what rights you have in relation to it.

We handle personal information in accordance with British Columbia’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA). Where we serve clients residing outside British Columbia, the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) may also apply.

This policy covers visitors to incouragecounselling.ca, people who contact us with an enquiry, and clients of the practice. Our online booking and clinical records system, Jane, is operated by a third party and is also governed by Jane’s own privacy commitments.

Privacy Officer

As required under PIPA, we have designated an individual responsible for our compliance with this policy. You can contact them with any question, access request, or complaint:

Nelson Szeto, MCP, RCC-ACS, Director and Privacy Officer
nelson@incouragecounselling.ca · 604-352-1705
Incourage Counselling Inc., 37-4429 Kingsway, Burnaby, BC V5H 2A1

2. What we collect and why

We collect only what we need for the purposes described below, and we tell you the purpose at or before the time we collect it.

People who contact us, before becoming a client

What you provide: your name, contact details, and whatever you choose to tell us about what you are seeking help with.
How you reached us: the referral source or online listing that brought you to us.
We use this to respond to your enquiry, match you with an appropriate clinician, arrange a consultation, and follow up if we have not heard back.
Enquiry records are kept separately from clinical records, and we keep the detail minimal by design. We do not build a clinical file for someone who has not become a client.

Clients

Identifying and contact information, emergency contact, and where applicable extended health or third-party billing details.
Clinical information: intake and consent forms, assessment results, session notes, treatment plans, and correspondence relating to your care.
We use this to provide counselling services, maintain the records our professional obligations require, arrange payment and insurance claims where applicable, and meet legal and regulatory requirements.

3. Enquiry records and our client relationship system

When you contact us through our website, by email, or by phone, your message arrives in our intake mailbox, and we record the enquiry itself in a client relationship management system so that we can respond, follow up, and understand which of our outreach efforts are reaching people.

Microsoft (Microsoft 365) stores this information in Canada. Some security and spam-filtering processes may operate outside Canada; where information is processed outside Canada it may be subject to the laws of that country, including lawful access by authorities there. We have taken steps to ensure our service provider offers protection comparable to what PIPA requires, and we remain responsible for your information while it is in their care.

What we keep, and for how long

Two different things reach us when you enquire, and we treat them differently.

Your message. Whatever you write in our enquiry form, or send us by email, arrives in our intake mailbox. You decide how much to tell us, and some people tell us a great deal about what they are going through. We read it to check whether anything needs urgent attention and to match you with the right clinician, and after that we no longer need it. Your message is deleted from our intake mailbox after ninety days, whether or not you became a client.
The record of the enquiry. Separately, we keep a short record: your name, contact details, how you found us, and brief notes on where the enquiry got to. This record holds no description of your situation or your health. If you do not become a client, we keep it for twelve months and then delete it.
If we cannot reach you after three attempts over one to two weeks, we close the enquiry and clear your name and contact details in the monthly review that follows, well before the twelve-month limit.
If you become a client, the clinical information we need is collected properly through Jane and kept as described in Section 4. Your original enquiry message is not copied into your clinical record, and it is still deleted on the ninety-day schedule.
You can ask us to delete both at any time before you become a client, and we will do so unless we are required to keep something for a legal reason.

4. Clinical records

Your clinical records are held in Jane, a Canadian practice management platform designed for healthcare providers, with data stored in Canada. Access is limited to your own clinician and, where applicable, their clinical supervisor.

If your counsellor is a supervised intern or an associate working toward registration, their clinical supervisor has access to your file as part of their supervisory responsibility for your care. This is explained to you before your first session, and your consent form records it.

How long we keep clinical records

We retain adult clinical records for sixteen years from the date you were last seen.
For clients who were under nineteen at the time of service, we retain records for sixteen years from the client’s nineteenth birthday.
We apply this single standard to all clinical records. It meets or exceeds the record-keeping requirements that apply to our practice, so the period we commit to you does not change as those requirements change.
At the end of the applicable retention period, records are securely destroyed.

5. Confidentiality and its limits

What you share in counselling is confidential. There are a small number of circumstances in which the law or our professional obligations require us to disclose information without your consent:

Where there is a risk of serious harm to you.
Where there is a risk of serious harm to someone else.
Where we have reasonable grounds to believe a child or a vulnerable adult is being abused or neglected. Reporting this is a legal duty, not a choice.
Where we are required to disclose by a court order or subpoena.

Your therapist will review these with you at the start of your first session, before you share anything, so you always know where the limits are.

Outside these circumstances, we do not disclose your information to anyone (including a family member, physician, or referral source) without your written consent. Where you consent to us updating a referring provider on your progress, we share only what you have agreed to.

6. Service providers

We use third-party service providers to operate the practice. Each has access only to the information necessary to provide their service, and each is bound by contract to protect it:

Jane: booking, clinical records, and payments (data stored in Canada).
Microsoft 365: enquiry records, follow-up correspondence and email (data stored in Canada).
GoDaddy: website hosting, with content delivery through Cloudflare (data stored outside Canada).
Website enquiry form: part of our own website. It stores nothing and sends each enquiry to our Microsoft 365 inbox.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it with advertisers.

7. How we protect your information

Clinical records are held in a healthcare-specific platform with encryption in transit and at rest, and access controls limiting each clinician to their own clients.
Access to systems is limited to the people who need it for their role, and is removed promptly when someone leaves the practice or completes a placement.
Team members receive privacy and confidentiality training as part of onboarding, and interns work under supervision that includes handling of client information.
We collect the minimum information needed and keep marketing-stage information deliberately separate from clinical records.

8. Your rights

Access. You can ask what personal information we hold about you, how we have used it, and to whom it has been disclosed. We will respond within the timeframe PIPA requires (generally 30 days), and will tell you if we need more time.
Correction. If information we hold is inaccurate or incomplete, you can ask us to correct it.
Withdrawing consent. You can withdraw consent to a particular use of your information at any time, subject to legal and professional record-keeping requirements. We will explain what withdrawing consent means for the services we can provide.
Deletion. You can ask us to delete enquiry or marketing information. Clinical records cannot be deleted before the end of the retention period, because we are professionally required to keep them.

To make any of these requests, contact our Privacy Officer using the details in Section 1. We do not charge a fee for a routine access request.

9. If something goes wrong

If a privacy breach occurs that could reasonably be expected to create a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you as soon as feasible, and will report the breach to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia. We keep a record of all breaches, including those that do not meet the notification threshold, and we review each one to prevent recurrence.

10. Questions and complaints

If you have a question or concern about how we have handled your personal information, please contact our Privacy Officer first. We take these seriously and will work with you to resolve the matter.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia, which oversees compliance with PIPA. If your counsellor is a Registered Clinical Counsellor, you may also contact the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors.

Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia: PO Box 9038 Stn. Prov. Govt., Victoria, BC V8W 9A4
Telephone 250-387-5629 · info@oipc.bc.ca · oipc.bc.ca
BC Association of Clinical Counsellors: #109–1034 Johnson Street, Victoria, BC V8V 3N7
Telephone 250-595-4448 · toll-free 1-800-909-6303 · bcacc.ca/complaints-and-investigations

Complaints to the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors are made through their online complaints form, linked above.

11. Changes to this policy

We review this policy periodically and will update it when our practices change: for example, if we adopt a new system or change how we measure our website. The effective date at the top of this page shows when it was last updated, and material changes will be noted here.