How CAIN collects, uses, and protects personal information.

CAIN is the Canadian Accelerator and Incubator Network Association, a registered not-for-profit association (registration no. S0073437). We operate cainetwork.ca, including the public member directory, the member portal, our research publications, and sign-ups for CAIN programs and pilots.

This policy explains what personal information we collect through those services, how we use and share it, and the choices you have. We handle personal information in accordance with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable provincial privacy law. Questions or requests can go to hello@cainetwork.ca at any time.

Information you give us

• Account and sign-in. Your email address, a password if you choose to set one (stored only in protected, hashed form), and optional two-factor authentication enrollment.
• Report access and personalization. Your email address, used to send you a secure sign-in link, and — if you choose to share them — your role, region, and topics of interest so we can tailor what you read.
• Member directory updates.Organization profile details (industries, focus areas, services, programs, a welcome message) and a primary contact’s name, email address, and role.
• Program sign-ups. When you register for a CAIN program or pilot: your name, email address, and organization, plus any optional contact details the program asks for, such as a phone number or preferred chat platforms. Some programs also let you register through an AI assistant connected to our sign-up service — the same information is collected and handled the same way.
• Member portal activity. Content you submit in the portal, such as portfolio company names, bookmarks, and posts.
• Correspondence. Anything you include in emails you send us.

Information collected automatically

• Usage analytics — pages visited, links and downloads clicked, and browser and device type (see section 5 for how this is limited).
• Cookies that keep you signed in, plus one functional preference cookie. We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.
• Standard server logs (such as IP addresses and request data) processed by our hosting infrastructure to deliver and secure the site.

Information from other sources

CAIN maintains a research dataset tracking Canadian startups and the organizations that support them. It is built from public and commercial sources — organization websites, professional and business data platforms, federal and provincial business registries, and patent databases — and is primarily information about organizations, not people. Where individuals appear, it is limited to professional information (name, role, and business contact details) of people in public-facing positions. Members can access insights from this dataset — organization-level information, not personal profiles — as part of our services.

Signing in with Google or LinkedIn is optional — you can always use an email sign-in link instead. If you use it, the provider shares your basic profile with us: your name, email address, and profile photo. We use that information solely to create and sign you in to your CAIN account, matched to any existing account by your verified email address.

We never see your Google or LinkedIn password, and we do not access anything else in your account — no contacts, files, connections, or activity. We do not use the sign-in profile we receive from Google or LinkedIn for advertising, do not sell it, and do not use it to train AI models.

• To operate our services: authenticating you, running the member portal, and tailoring report reading to the interests you share.
• To review and publish member directory updates.
• To run CAIN programs and pilots and contact participants through the channels they chose.
• To send transactional email: sign-in links, submission status updates, and program confirmations. We send newsletters or updates only if you ask for them, and we honour unsubscribe requests across all of our mailings.
• To produce aggregated, de-identified research and network insights — reports and benchmarks that never identify an individual.
• To understand how the site is used and improve it.
• To keep our services secure and meet legal obligations.

We do not sell or rent personal information, and we do not serve third-party advertising.

We use PostHog, hosted in the European Union, for usage analytics, configured to collect as little as possible: session recording is disabled, and analytics run without cookies or local storage — anonymous visits are not tracked across sessions or devices. Names and email addresses are scrubbed from analytics events before they leave our systems; when you are signed in, activity is linked only to an internal account identifier. We also keep a copy of usage events in our own database, hosted in Canada.

The only cookies we set are essential session cookies for authentication and one functional cookie that remembers a reading preference.

Member directory profiles are public: organization name, location, description, industries, focus areas, services, programs, website and social links, and logo. Some profile pages also list an organization’s leadership team — names and job titles — sourced from the organization’s own public website and labelled as such.

Primary-contact details submitted through the directory-update flow are not published. If you are named on our site and would like your information corrected or removed, contact hello@cainetwork.ca and we will address it promptly.

We share personal information only:

• With service providers that host and run our services on our behalf: Supabase (database and authentication, hosted in Canada), Vercel (website hosting), PostHog (analytics, hosted in the EU), Resend (transactional email), and Google Cloud (data processing, Montréal region).
• With Google or LinkedIn during sign-in, if you choose to sign in with them.
• As aggregated, de-identified insights shared with members, partners, and funders — never in a form that identifies an individual.
• Where disclosure is required by law.

Our primary databases — member records, accounts, and the research dataset — are hosted in Canada. Some of our service providers process data outside Canada: website hosting and email delivery in the United States, and analytics in the European Union. While in another jurisdiction, information may be accessible to its authorities under local law. We choose providers with strong security practices and contractual protections consistent with this policy.

We keep personal information only as long as it is needed for the purposes described here or as the law requires, and we delete it on request where we no longer need it.

We protect personal information with safeguards including encryption in transit, role-based access controls on our databases, optional two-factor authentication on member accounts, and access limited to team members who need it. If a breach of our safeguards creates a real risk of significant harm, we will notify affected individuals and the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as required by law.

Our services are intended for professionals in the innovation ecosystem. They are not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect children’s personal information.

• Ask what personal information we hold about you, and request a copy.
• Ask us to correct information that is inaccurate or out of date.
• Ask us to delete your information, or withdraw consent to how we use it.
• Skip any optional field — personalization details, phone number, and chat platforms are always your choice — and sign in by email link instead of Google or LinkedIn.
• Unsubscribe from all CAIN mailings other than essential account email.

To exercise any of these, email hello@cainetwork.ca. If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

When we change this policy, we will post the new version here and update the effective date above. If a change meaningfully affects how we handle personal information, we will flag it prominently on this page.

Canadian Accelerator and Incubator Network Association
hello@cainetwork.ca

Please include “Privacy” in the subject line for privacy inquiries, requests, or complaints.