Privacy Policy (PIPA)

EZtoFind.ca collects personal information under British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA). We collect information you voluntarily provide via forms and Doogie AI chat. We use it solely to respond to your inquiry, provide referrals within our network, and (with your consent) send commercial electronic messages under CASL.

Data is stored on secured servers. You may request a copy of your personal information at any time via our self-service data export tool (a secure download link is emailed within seconds under PIPA s.23). To request correction, withdrawal of consent, or destruction of personal information whose collection purpose has been fulfilled, email info@eztofind.ca.

We do not sell your data. We may share your inquiry with a REALTOR® in our referral network only if it falls outside Doug's focus areas or specialties — and only with your submission of a lead form indicating consent.

Data Residency & Hosting

Personal information collected via EZtoFind.ca is stored in a secure, industry-standard cloud database managed by our platform hosting provider. Data may be transiently processed by our compliance-vetted AI provider (a leading commercial AI service) solely to power the Doogie AI assistant. Personal data may be processed on servers located in Canada and/or the United States. By using EZtoFind.ca you consent to this cross-border processing, which remains subject to Canadian privacy law and this Privacy Policy. All providers are contractually bound to industry-standard security. If our hosting region changes materially, this policy will be updated and posted here.

Retention

Under PIPA s.35, we retain personal information only as long as the collection purpose remains active OR a specific legal or business retention obligation applies — whichever is longer. When neither condition is met, records are destroyed or anonymized. Retention periods are data-class specific:

• Doogie chat messages — automatically purged after 30 days via a database time-to-live policy.
• CASL consent records — retained for 3 years as required by CASL for tamper-evident proof of consent (see below).
• Brokerage transaction records — where a form submission progresses into an active brokerage transaction with Doug (executed offers, agency contracts, deposits, trust-account paperwork tied to a completed transaction), the resulting transaction records are retained for a minimum of 7 years as required by BCFSA under the Real Estate Services Act and Rule 8-5.
• Buyer / seller lead form submissions and REALTOR® network applications that do NOT progress into a brokerage transaction — retained only as long as the collection purpose remains active (typically until the inquiry is closed out or the applicant is no longer under consideration), and are then destroyed or anonymized in accordance with PIPA s.35. Longer retention applies only where you have consented to ongoing marketing communications, or where a specific business purpose (such as an active client relationship) supports it — and, in either case, is subject to your right to withdraw consent at any time.

You may request earlier destruction of any record whose retention purpose is no longer active by emailing info@eztofind.ca. See our full Data Retention Schedule for the specific holding period of every data class we collect (available on request from the Privacy Officer).

Consent Records (CASL)

When you submit a form with consent, we record your email, timestamp, IP address, and browser user-agent as tamper-evident proof of consent, retained for 3 years per CASL requirements. On request, we can provide you with a full copy of your consent record.

Breach Notification

In the event of a privacy breach that could reasonably result in significant harm, we will notify the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia (OIPC BC) and affected individuals as soon as feasible, in accordance with PIPA and our internal Breach Response Policy. Suspected breaches can be reported 24/7 to info@eztofind.ca.

Personalized Homepage (Local-Only)

Returning visitors may see a "Welcome back — picking up where you left off" section on the homepage showing their last search, saved favorites, and a market-change indicator for the last community they viewed. This personalization is powered entirely by your browser's own local storage (device-side). No user identifier, saved search, favorites list, or viewing history is ever transmitted to our servers for this feature — the module simply reads what your browser has stored and queries our same public listing/community endpoints anonymously. You can turn this off at any time by opening Cookie Preferences (footer) and disabling the "Personalization" category, by using the "Clear my browser data" link within the module, or by clearing your browser's site data. This feature falls under the "session" cookie category to which you have already consented via our PIPA cookie banner.

AI Use Disclosure (BCFSA Compliance)

EZtoFind.ca uses artificial intelligence in three specific ways: (1) Doogie, our on-site chat assistant, powered by a commercial AI service via a compliance-vetted provider. Chat messages are transmitted to that provider and, before storage in our system, are automatically scanned to redact personal identifiers such as SIN, credit card numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, postal codes, and street addresses. (2) AI-drafted content — community synopses, weather summaries, and glossary FAQs are drafted by the same AI provider and reviewed and approved by Doug LeMaire, REALTOR® before publication. (3) Compliance guardrails — Doogie is prompt-engineered to never provide financial, legal, tax, or property-specific advice; those matters are directed to the appropriate licensed professional.

Under BCFSA's AI Guidelines, licensees remain responsible for all AI-generated output. Please do not share confidential information (full names, addresses, financial details, negotiations) with Doogie.

AI Translation Disclaimer

Doogie supports chat and lead-form completion in English, French, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Punjabi, Farsi, and Portuguese. All non-English responses are generated by AI machine translation. While the model performs well on general real estate conversation, translation is not warranted to be error-free, particularly for BC-specific tax, regulatory, or legal terminology. BC compliance boilerplate (BCFSA licence numbers, MLS® trademark statements, CREA attribution) is preserved in English exactly as required by BCFSA and CREA rules. If you are relying on any translated content to make a decision involving money, contracts, taxes, or regulatory obligations, always verify the detail with a licensed professional (REALTOR®, lawyer, notary, accountant, or mortgage broker) before acting. EZtoFind.ca and Doug LeMaire, REALTOR® expressly disclaim liability for reliance on machine-translated content.