Legal

Privacy

The ENMAX Personal Information Commitment

Last Revised September 05, 2023


At ENMAX1, your privacy is important to us. We collect and use personal information about you to create and maintain a relationship that allows us to deliver top-quality products and services to you or your business. We are also careful to ensure that information is used responsibly, and only for the purposes for which you gave it to us, unless otherwise permitted or required by law.

The ENMAX Personal Information Commitment to our customers (sometimes referred to as our "Privacy Commitment") outlines the principles that we operate by with regard to the collection, use and disclosure of our customers' personal information.

This Commitment is intended to comply with the Alberta's Personal Information Protection Act (“PIPA”). We have created this Commitment to ensure that we meet the needs of this legislation, and at the same time assure you that we will protect your personal information. It is also intended to meet the requirements under the Code of Conduct Regulation for distribution system 'owners', their 'regulated rate providers' and 'affiliated retailers' to protect customer information from improper use. For the purposes of your electricity service, ENMAX Power Corporation (EPC) is the distribution system 'owner', and ENMAX Energy Corporation (EEC) is EPC's 'regulated rate provider' and is an 'affiliated retailer' of EPC. EEC serves customers on the Regulated Rate Option (RRO) and default rate, and on competitive commodity contracts. If you are a default or RRO customer, EEC may not use your customer information for retail sales and marketing purposes without your active consent.

We want you to understand how and under what circumstances your personal information is collected and used, as well as what we're doing to ensure that your information is used according to good business practices and protected accordingly.

From time to time, we may make changes to this Personal Information Commitment. The Commitment is current as of the "last revised" date which appears at the top of the page.

What is personal information?

There are a number of types of personal information that exist about you that we may collect. This information could be collected in person, over the telephone, through the mail or over the Internet.

The information we may collect or obtain includes but may not be limited to:

  • Your identity or contact information, such as your name, address, phone number, email address and so on;
  • Your transaction history with us for any or all products or services you have obtained from us. This could include billing, rate, consumption or payment information, meter or premise information, current and past usage patterns, or current and past product or service subscriptions.
  • Your credit or financial history with us (for clarification, we do not retain your banking or financial account information);
  • Your transactions with us, such as customer service inquiries, information requested or provided to you, responses to surveys or contests, or online interactions (including on social media).

Why do we collect and use your personal information?

We need basic information about you in order to conduct business and provide products and services to you. We collect personal information only for the following purposes:

  • To create and maintain a responsible business relationship with you and provide ongoing service. When you apply for products or services from ENMAX, we collect information that allows us to verify your identity and method of payment so that we can accurately bill and collect for the products and services that you receive from us. For example, we will collect and use personal information in order to activate or de-activate service, maintain account information, bill you and process your payment. We also use it to protect you and us from error or fraud, respond to inquiries, or communicate with you about account activity or adjustments. We may also collect bank account information if you are interested in utilizing our pre-authorized payment options.
  • To collect, use, and disclose your personal information on behalf of third parties (this may include the City of Calgary or other parties) to maintain and manage your service relationship with them.
  • To maintain our business and operations on your behalf. Knowing how and when our customers use our products is critical to help us manage the systems we use efficiently and plan for the future needs of our customers. We may need to collect or use personal information to provide settlement reports, document where meters are located, or to alert you about environmental incidents or outages in your area.
  • To develop, improve, market or provide products and services. We continually analyze how, when, and where our customers use our products and services so that we can improve them and make them more relevant and useful. From time to time, we may use your usage patterns of our products and services to help us provide alternate or improved product and service recommendations and special offers that we believe will be of interest to our customers.
  • To understand your needs and preferences. In order to develop and offer products that our customers are interested in, we analyze our records of what products and services you receive from us, including usage patterns, payment options used, and so on. We may, from time to time, offer new options or services or ask you to participate in surveys that allow us to determine what you want from our products or services. We may also request information like your e-mail address if you are interested in receiving material on our products electronically.
  • To meet legal and regulatory requirements. Collecting and using personal information is required for us to meet our contractual obligations to you, or our legal and regulatory obligations to others. As an example, we may collect, use, and disclose information in response to an order of the court, to assist in police investigations, or to satisfy requests by the Alberta Utilities Commission or other regulators for information.
  • To plan, build or maintain projects for which your information was collected, and will only be shared with parties who reasonably require the information for that purpose. Such parties may include other industry participants, such as the Alberta Electric System Operator, other electric facility owners, or other industry participants involved in the development of the project.

When do we share your personal information?

There are some circumstances where we may share some personal information about our customers with an affiliate or another individual or company. For example:

  • Subject to applicable legislation, your personal information may be shared among ENMAX business units and affiliates to serve our customers better and provide them with services which require assistance from different parts of our organization.
  • Your personal information may be disclosed to:
    • ENMAX may collect, use and disclose personal information on behalf of third parties (this may include the City of Calgary or other parties), and those third parties may contact you independently regarding your service relationship with them.
    • a company (including an affiliate) or individual employed by ENMAX to perform functions on our behalf, such as meter-reading, billing and customer service, customer account collections, research, data processing, technology development or support, archival and back-up services, and providing energy insights and usage reporting; or
    • an agent used by ENMAX to evaluate the customer's creditworthiness or to deliver, print, email and/or mail customer materials.

Any such disclosure of your personal information from ENMAX is made on a strictly confidential basis in accordance with all applicable laws and legislation, and the information is to be used only for the purpose for which it was shared.

  • Subject to applicable legislation, we may disclose your personal information to a credit reporting agency, government agency, court, or law enforcement personnel.
  • We may share personal information about you to a person who is seeking the information legitimately on your behalf. For example, we may provide information about a customer's account to the customer's legal representative if we are satisfied that individual is requesting the information on behalf of the customer.
  • We may disclose a customer's personal information to a public authority or agent of a public authority if, in our reasonable judgment, it appears that there is imminent danger to life or property which could be avoided or minimized by disclosure of the information.
  • In order to provide our customers with special offers, programs or other information that may be of interest to them, we may disclose personal information about you to our marketing partners or affiliates, or to third-party agents responsible for, or who may assist with, administering such offers or programs or providing such information.

How do we protect your personal information?

ENMAX values your right to privacy and works hard to protect your personal information. ENMAX:

  • will not collect, use or disclose your personal information for any purpose other than those identified above, except with your consent, or as permitted by law;
  • will protect the confidentiality of your personal information when doing business internally or externally with other organizations;
  • will protect your personal information with appropriate and effective security safeguards;
  • will strive to keep your personal information as accurate and up-to-date as is necessary for the purposes identified above; and
  • will honour any request you may make for access to your personal information, subject to exceptions permitted by law.

Service provider outside Canada

From time to time, ENMAX engages services providers located outside Canada, in the United States and in European countries, to help us to provide products and services to you. Regardless of where our service providers are located, ENMAX communicates its own commitment to privacy as well as its expectations regarding the confidentiality of your information to our service providers.

Accordingly, please be aware that ENMAX transfers personal information to service providers in the United States of America for the purposes of long-term archiving, data retention and storage, significant communications for outage and emergency situations, and providing energy insights and usage reporting. Because of this, personal information may be subject to transfer to another jurisdiction (specifically, the United States of America). Reasonable measures we may take to protect your personal information while processed or handled by these service providers are subject to legal requirements in Canada and the United States of America and other foreign countries applicable to our affiliates, agents and service providers; for example, lawful requirements to disclose personal information to government authorities in those countries. The personal information may be subject to the laws of the applicable jurisdiction and may be accessible by courts, law enforcement and national security authorities of that jurisdiction. If you have any questions about the collection, use, or disclosure of personal information by a service provider outside Canada, please contact our Privacy Compliance team at privacy@enmax.com.

What choices do you have?

At ENMAX, we believe strongly in the power of choice. We are working hard to ensure we have and maintain your confidence and consent to collect, use and disclose your personal information for the purposes identified above. However, you do have a choice and can refuse or withdraw your consent at any time as follows:

  • You may have your contact information removed from our marketing lists which we use to inform you of new or relevant products, services and special offers that may be of benefit to you.
  • You may refuse to provide personal information to us. You may also withdraw your consent at any time, subject to applicable legal or contractual restrictions and reasonable notice. However, in either case, this may severely limit our ability to provide services to you (e.g., inability to provide power to your residence and/or correctly bill you).
  • You may also ask us about your personal information and notify us of any corrections that may be necessary.

We need your consent to collect, use and disclose your personal information. If you have already provided us with personal information, we would like to continue to use and disclose it for the purposes for which it was collected. If you do not contact us, we will assume that we may continue to do this in accordance with the standards described in this Personal Information Commitment. If you have any questions about our privacy practices, or if you wish to have your name removed from our marketing lists or withdraw your consent to the use and disclosure of some or all of your personal information, please call us at 310-2010 toll-free across Alberta or e-mail us at privacy@enmax.com.

About enmax.com

We frequently communicate with our customers over the Internet, including on social media. We may also provide links to other sites for your convenience and information. We are not responsible for the content and the privacy practices of other sites. Moreover, third party social media accounts are public, and are not hosted on the servers of ENMAX. If you choose to access these other sites or interact with us via social media, we encourage you to read the terms of service and privacy policies of those third party service providers and those of any applications you use to access them.

Any information that you provide over the Internet may be collected and recorded by ENMAX and will be treated in accordance with this Personal Information Commitment.

Cookies and web beacons

Our website collects information every time you visit. We do this through a small file known as cookies (browser cookies, web cookies) that is stored in your browser, as well as web beacons (pixel tags, clear GIFs) which collect information from these cookies.

Cookies are intended to improve your experience by remembering information such as your preferences, the pages you visited or even whether you're logged in. This information helps us understand how people use our website so we can continue to improve your experience when you visit. You can refuse or delete cookies by using your browser's Internet security settings or through security software; however, in some cases, performance of enmax.com may be affected.

We also use these technologies for marketing purposes, such as to remarket to past visitors of our website, and may use third-party service providers, including Google, to serve our ads to you when you visit other sites on the Internet. You are able to opt out of Google's use of remarketing cookies by visiting Google's Ads Settings and turning off "Ads Personalization", or generally, by visiting the Network Advertising Initiative opt-out page.

enmax.com uses three types of cookies:

Session cookies: These act as a memory for the website and remember selections or actions you took from one page to another. Session cookies are automatically deleted when you leave enmax.com.

Persistent cookies: These are saved as a file on your computer and record preferences, such as the city you live in or language you prefer, for reference during the same or subsequent visits to the website. Unless you delete these cookies, they will remain on your computer until they expire.

Conversion beacons: These are bits of computer code that allow us to confirm whether you click on a button as part of a process on our site, or as part of an email. This code is saved in your browser, and similar to a session cookie, is removed once you close the email or leave our website.

Notes:

The ENMAX Personal Information Commitment does not apply to information regarding ENMAX business customers. However, such information is protected by the Code of Conduct Regulation, other ENMAX policies and practices, and through contractual arrangements.

The ENMAX Personal Information Commitment and the practices and principles described in this document are subject to the provisions of all applicable legislation and regulations.

1 In the Personal Information Commitment, the words 'we', 'us', 'our' or 'ENMAX' refer separately and individually to ENMAX Corporation and each of its subsidiary companies, as they may exist from time to time. These include, without limitation, the subsidiaries operating under the following names: ENMAX Corporation, ENMAX Energy Corporation, ENMAX Power Corporation, ENMAX Power Services Corporation, ENMAX Encompass Inc., ENMAX Generation Portfolio Inc. and ENMAX Commercial Services Inc.