Personal Information:
Related and Secondary Purposes
Like most property managers, we also collect, use and disclose information for purposes related to or secondary to our primary purposes. The most common examples of our related and secondary purposes are as follows:
To collect rents and other fees on behalf of the landlord.
To advise tenants and others of new developments in the area of landlord and tenant relations (e.g., a newsletter sent to a home address of a tenant).
We review tenant and other files for the purpose of ensuring that we provide high quality services, including assessing the performance of our consultants, suppliers and staff. In addition, external consultants (e.g., auditors, lawyers, business consultants) may on our behalf do audits and continuing quality improvement reviews of our operations, including reviewing tenant or client files and interviewing our staff.
Various government agencies (e.g., Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, Information and Privacy Commissioner, Human Rights Commission, etc.) have the authority to review our files and interview our staff as a part of their mandates. Also, we believe that we should report information suggesting serious illegal behaviour to the authorities. These reports could include personal information about a tenant or other individual to support the concern (e.g., illegal drug activity), although we try to keep this disclosure to a minimum. In these circumstances, we may consult with professionals (e.g., lawyers, a private security service) who will investigate the matter and report back to us.
If a tenant’s rent or fees are paid for by a third party (e.g., employer, your trustee, the government) we may be asked to provide them with certain information. These third party payers often have tenant consent or legislative authority to direct us to collect and disclose to them certain information in order to demonstrate tenant entitlement to and responsible use of this funding.
Tenants, or other individuals we deal with may have questions about the services they received. We also provide ongoing services for many tenants over a period of months or years for which previous records are helpful. We retain tenant and client information for a minimum of ten years after the last contact to enable us to respond to those questions and provide these services.
If WJ Properties or its assets were to be sold, the purchaser would want to conduct a ?due diligence? review of the organization’s records to ensure that it is a viable business that has been honestly portrayed to the purchaser. This due diligence may involve some review of our accounting and service files. The purchaser would not be able to remove or record personal information. Before being provided access to the files, the purchaser must provide a written promise to keep all personal information confidential. Only reputable purchasers who have already agreed to buy the organization’s business or its assets would be provided access to personal information, and only for the purpose of completing their due diligence search prior to closing the purchase.
You can choose not to be part of some of these related or secondary purposes (e.g., declining to receive our newsletter, by not having a third party pay your rent). We do not, however, have much choice about some of these related or secondary purposes (e.g., external regulation).
