Privacy & cookies

1. Who we are

Pacific Standards ("we", "us") operates https://www.pacificstandards.ca. We are the controller of the personal information described in this policy. For anything privacy related, contact us at ashley@pacificstandards.ca.

2. What we collect

• Contact form submissions. Name, business name, email address, and the message you write. You provide these directly when you use our contact form.
• Correspondence. Emails you send us, and our replies.
• Technical and usage data. Standard server logs collected by our hosting provider (IP address, browser type, pages requested, timestamps), and, only if you consent, anonymized analytics about how the site is used.
• Client engagement information. If you become a client, the business information needed to run an assessment or build: workflows, documents, and system access you choose to share, governed by our engagement agreement.

We do not collect payment card details through this site, and we do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16.

3. How we use your information

• To respond to enquiries and provide our services.
• To run assessments and deliver builds for clients.
• To operate, secure, and improve this website.
• To meet legal, tax, and accounting obligations.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for third party advertising.

4. Our use of AI

AI is our trade, so we are explicit about how we use it ourselves:

• Drafting and analysis. We use AI assistants (for example Anthropic's Claude) to help draft documents, analyze workflows, and build client systems. A human reviews and approves anything AI helps produce before it reaches you.
• Your enquiry data. We may use AI tools to help triage and draft replies to enquiries. Every outbound reply is human approved.
• Client data in engagements. Where an engagement involves processing client information through AI services, we use business tier services configured so that your data is not used to train the provider's models, and we tell you which providers are involved before we start.
• No automated decisions. We do not use AI to make automated decisions that produce legal or similarly significant effects about you.

5. Cookies and similar technologies

This site is intentionally light on cookies. We use browser storage in two categories:

• Strictly necessary. A single localStorage entry (ps-cookie-consent) that remembers your cookie choices. Without it we would have to ask you on every visit. It contains no personal information and never leaves your browser.
• Analytics (only with your consent). If you allow analytics, we may use privacy respecting, cookie light analytics to understand which pages are read. We do not load any analytics until you say yes, and declining changes nothing about how the site works.

You can change your choices at any time via the Cookie settings link in the footer. Consent expires after 12 months, and we will ask again. We honour withdrawal of consent immediately.

Third parties: our contact form posts to Formspree (form processing), the site is served by our hosting provider, and links to LinkedIn take you to LinkedIn's own service, governed by their policies. None of these set advertising cookies through our site.

6. Legal bases and applicable law

We comply with Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA). Where the EU or UK General Data Protection Regulation applies to a visitor, our legal bases are: consent (analytics, marketing communications), performance of a contract (client engagements, responding to your enquiry), and legitimate interests (site security, defending legal claims), balanced against your rights.

7. Sharing and processors

We share personal information only with service providers who help us operate:

• Formspree, Inc. (contact form processing, servers in the United States).
• Our website hosting provider (content delivery and server logs).
• AI service providers used in client engagements, as disclosed per engagement.
• Professional advisers and authorities where the law requires it.

Where information leaves Canada, we use providers with appropriate contractual safeguards. We never sell or rent personal information.

8. Retention

• Enquiries that do not become engagements: deleted within 12 months.
• Client engagement records: kept for the engagement plus 7 years, to meet tax and legal obligations.
• Consent records: 12 months, then re-requested.
• Server logs: retained by our host on a rolling short term basis.

9. Your rights

You can ask us to access, correct, or delete your personal information, to withdraw consent, or to explain how we have handled your data. Email ashley@pacificstandards.ca and we will respond within 30 days. If you are unsatisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia or the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada; EU and UK visitors can contact their local supervisory authority.

10. Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and for material changes we will say so plainly on this page. Continued use of the site after a change means the new policy applies.