Privacy Policy

Overview

Wait Time Canada is a health systems observatory that collects publicly available emergency room wait time data from official provincial health authority websites. We are committed to transparency in our data handling practices.

What Data We Collect

Public Health Data

We collect publicly available wait time data from official provincial health authority sources:

Hospital names and locations
Emergency room wait time estimates
Stretcher occupancy percentages (where available)
Methodology metadata (metric definitions, calculation methods)

This data is already public and contains no personal health information (PHI) or personally identifiable information (PII).

Request and Usage Metadata

We do not use advertising analytics, cookies, or third-party tracking scripts. We do, however, process standard web request metadata as part of normal site delivery and operations.

Hosting and reverse-proxy infrastructure may process IP addresses, hostnames, request paths, and user-agent strings in ordinary access logs.
Our API middleware adds response-timing headers and logs request path, status, duration, and user-agent for observability.
We do not intentionally build advertising profiles or store visitor IP addresses in the application database.

Approximate Location Data

Wait Time Canada offers optional location-aware features for distance sorting and nearby public-health resources.

If you allow browser geolocation, your browser shares your device location with the site for that session.
If browser geolocation is unavailable or denied, the homepage may request coarse IP-based geolocation through our server-side `/api/geolocation` route.
That route reads proxy IP headers and sends the apparent requester IP address, or the server-observed request, to `ipapi.co` to estimate a city-level location.
Geolocation responses are returned with `Cache-Control: no-store`, and the app does not write those location results into the main application database.

Analytics Data

We do not use analytics tracking, cookies, or third-party ad-tech scripts, and we do not use browser fingerprinting for marketing or audience profiling.

No User Accounts

This platform does not require user registration, accounts, or login. We do not collect names, email addresses, or user-submitted profile information from visitors.

How We Use Data

We use publicly available health data to:

Display current emergency room wait times
Analyze and document methodology differences across provinces
Monitor data quality and detect anomalies
Generate aggregate statistics and temporal trend analysis
Support health systems research and policy evaluation

Data Sources

All data is collected from official provincial sources:

Ontario: Health Quality Ontario
Quebec: Ministère de la Santé et des Services sociaux (MSSS)
Alberta: Alberta Health Services (AHS)
British Columbia: Provincial Health Services Authority (PHSA)

We do not collect data from patients, hospitals, or healthcare providers directly. All data originates from publicly accessible government websites.

Canadian Privacy-Law Context

PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act): The platform's core dataset is public health-system data, not patient records or user accounts. Standard web request metadata and optional location-related requests may still involve personal information such as IP address or approximate location when the site is delivered or geolocation features are used. We do not use that information for advertising, profiling, or sale.

PHIPA (Personal Health Information Protection Act - Ontario): This project does not handle personal health information (PHI). Wait time data does not identify individuals, reveal patient conditions, or contain health records.

Data Retention

We store historical wait time measurements for research and analysis purposes:

Raw measurements: Retained for 30 days, then deleted
Aggregate summaries: Retained permanently for temporal trend analysis
Methodology metadata: Retained permanently for research documentation

Third-Party Services

This platform uses the following third-party services:

Mapbox: Map tile rendering for hospital location visualization. Your browser requests map tiles and related assets directly from Mapbox when the map is used. See Mapbox Privacy Policy.
ipapi.co: Server-side IP geolocation for the homepage fallback location flow. Requests to `/api/geolocation` may send an IP address to ipapi.co so the app can estimate a coarse location.
PostgreSQL hosting: Database hosting for public wait-time and resource data. Data is encrypted at rest and in transit.
Official public-data upstreams: some resource routes fetch or enrich data from official third-party services such as Environment and Climate Change Canada GeoMet, Indigenous Services Canada, and Health Canada when you use the related resource views.

We do not share data with advertising networks, data brokers, or marketing platforms.

Your Rights

We do not maintain user accounts or build visitor profiles, but standard request metadata may still be processed by hosting, logging, or third-party geolocation/map providers. If you have a privacy question about those flows, raise it through the project contact paths below. In addition:

You can view all data sources and methodology documentation at /methods
All source code is open source and available on GitHub
Data quality reports are publicly visible at /data-quality

Contact

Questions about data handling practices? Contact us through:

GitHub Issues: github.com/jerdaw/waittimecanada/issues
Repository: See contact information in README

Changes to This Policy

We may update this privacy policy as the project evolves. Changes will be reflected in the "Last updated" date above. Material changes will be documented in the project CHANGELOG.

Important Disclaimer

This is a data observatory, not a medical service. For medical emergencies, call 911. For health advice, contact your provincial health line (811 in most provinces).