Privacy Policy

Our commitment

To care for you, and to meet our legal and professional obligations, we need to collect, use and share some personal information. This policy explains why and how we do so, and how we protect it.

It rests on four principles:

• Your consent to the collection, use and sharing of your personal information by the people who work in our clinic.
• Collecting only the personal information we need.
• Keeping your personal information secure and confidential.
• Being open about our practices and obligations.

Your consent

By giving your consent, you allow our dentists and clinical team to collect, use and share personal information in order to care for you and to meet their legal obligations. This consent remains valid for as long as you are a patient of our clinic.

When you register as a new patient or send us a message through this website, you consent to us using the details you give us to respond to you, register you and contact you about booking your visit.

You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us. We will explain how this would affect our ability to provide care. In some cases, legal or regulatory requirements mean we cannot stop keeping certain information, such as your dental records. If you choose not to give us certain information, we may not be able to provide some services.

What we collect

Personal information is information about an identifiable individual. What we collect depends on the care you need, and may include:

• First and last name
• Date of birth
• Address
• Email address
• Telephone number
• Health information, such as your dental and medical history
• Financial and insurance information, including dental insurance and Canadian Dental Care Plan (CDCP) details

If you give us information about another person, such as a family member you are registering, please make sure you are authorized to do so.

We limit what we collect to what we need to care for you.

How we collect it

We collect personal information from three sources:

• When you ask for our services or contact us, whether in person, by phone, by email or through this website.
• When you receive care at our clinic.
• When you use this website (see “This website” below).

This website

The new patient registration form asks for your name, email, phone number, how and when you would like to be contacted and who you are registering. The contact form asks for your name, email and message. Please don't include health details in these forms; we go over your dental and medical history in person.

Registrations are kept in a secure spreadsheet that only authorized clinic staff can open, and may also be sent to the clinic by email. Messages from the contact form are sent to the clinic by email. We use them only to respond to you and to arrange your care, and we do not sell personal information or share it for marketing.

To run this website we use trusted service providers: website hosting (Vercel), email delivery (Resend) and Google Workspace for the registration spreadsheet. They handle information only on our behalf and under their own security and confidentiality obligations. Some of them may store or process information outside Canada, including in the United States, where it may be subject to the laws of that country.

Like most websites, our servers record basic technical information, such as your IP address and browser type, to keep the site secure and working. We may use Google Analytics to understand how visitors use the site; it uses cookies and does not identify you by name. Our location map and Instagram posts are provided by Google and Instagram, who may set their own cookies when they load. You can block or delete cookies in your browser settings.

Who has access

Access to your information is limited to authorized dentists and staff who need it to do their work. Everyone who works in our clinic is bound to keep it confidential.

If we need to share your personal information with a third party, such as a specialist, a dental laboratory or your insurer, we will tell you and ask for your consent where it is required, and we make sure appropriate safeguards are in place.

Keeping it secure

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the information you give us, both while it is sent and once we receive it. We maintain physical, technical and administrative safeguards against loss, theft, and unauthorized access, use, change or disclosure.

How long we keep it

We keep personal information only as long as reasonably needed for the purposes it was collected for, or as long as the laws and professional regulations that apply to dental clinics in British Columbia require. Registration details from this website that do not lead to a visit are deleted once they are no longer needed. When the retention period ends, we securely destroy the information.

Access and correction

You may ask to see the personal information we hold about you, or ask us to correct it if it is inaccurate or incomplete, for example after a change of address. Please let us know when your details change. To make a request, see “How to contact us” below.

How to contact us

Please send any questions or requests about your personal information to our Privacy Officer, who is responsible for our clinic's privacy practices, at info@bgdentist.ca. Please include your name, how to reach you, the nature of your request, and the name of your dentist or the person you have already been in touch with.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia (oipc.bc.ca).

We may update this policy from time to time. The latest version is always on this page.