Privacy policy

The short version

Your information is held so that we can look after your teeth, run your appointments and bill correctly. Nothing else.
It is stored in Canada, in the Toronto region.
We do not sell it, rent it or share it for advertising. There are no advertising trackers on this website.
Your dental record has to be kept for a minimum period set by professional regulation. That requirement is stronger than a request to delete it, and we will tell you exactly which parts are affected.
You can see what we hold about you and ask us to correct it.

Who is responsible for your information

The dentists at Grace Dental Clinic are the health information custodian for your record under Ontario law, which means the practice is the party answerable for it. The technology provider that builds and runs this website, the patient portal and the clinic desk acts as the practice's agent and electronic service provider, under a written services agreement that limits what it may do with your information and requires it to report any suspected incident to the practice without delay.

The clinic also uses a practice management system for clinical records and for submitting claims. That system is the clinical record of the practice, and it is covered by the clinic's own arrangements with its supplier.

What we collect, and why

Who you are, and how to reach you

Your name, date of birth, home address, phone number and email address. Where a patient is a child, or an adult who is assisted by a family member, we record the guardian and the relationship, because consent has to come from the right person. We never ask for a Social Insurance Number and there is no field to put one in.

Health information you give us

Your medical history, the medicines you take, allergies, and the consent forms you sign. This is collected because dental treatment is not safe to plan without it. The detailed clinical chart, the treatment notes and any X-ray images stay in the clinic's practice management system rather than on this website.

Your coverage

Which private plan or public program you are covered by, the insurer or program name, and a policy or member reference. The reference is encrypted where it is stored, and every time it is read for a claim that read is recorded. We hold the type of coverage only. We do not hold, and cannot see, what your plan will pay.

Appointments, messages and forms

The appointments you book, change or miss, the secure messages between you and the front desk, and the forms you complete before a visit. A form is fixed once staff have reviewed it, and a change after that is recorded as a new version rather than an edit written over the old one.

Documents and money

Treatment plans and estimates the clinic sends you, invoices, payments and receipts. Card details are entered directly with the payment provider and never reach our systems. We see that a payment succeeded and the last digits of the card, nothing more.

Consents

Every time you agree to be contacted on a channel, or withdraw that agreement, we record what you agreed to, the wording you were shown, and when. That record exists to protect you, so that nobody has to rely on memory about what you said yes to.

Questions you type to Grace Buddy

If Buddy cannot answer something, the question is saved as text so a person at the practice can write a proper answer. It is saved without your identity attached, unless you are signed in to the portal and have agreed to it being attached.

What the website itself collects

Very little. There are no advertising identifiers and no analytics that follow you between sites. The portal and the clinic desk keep a sign in session in your browser, and the website remembers that you dismissed the storage notice. That is the extent of it.

Where it is stored

In Canada. The database, the file storage and the backups are pinned to Canadian regions of Google Cloud, with the primary region in Toronto. That choice is made when the systems are created and cannot be changed afterwards without rebuilding them, which is deliberate.

A small number of suppliers are involved in running the service. They are listed here by the job they do rather than left implicit.

Cloud hosting and database. Google Cloud, Canadian regions, for the platform itself, its files and its backups.
Text messages. A messaging provider, for appointment confirmations and reminders sent by text.
Email. A transactional email provider, for confirmations, reminders and password links.
Card payments. A payment provider, on the clinic's own account. Card numbers go straight to them.
Practice management system. The clinic's own clinical system, which is where claims are submitted from.

Each of these is bound by contract to use your information only to provide the service to the practice.

Who can see it

You. Your own record, through the patient portal, and a guardian can see the record of a person they are responsible for.
The clinic team. On a minimum necessary basis, set by the job someone does. A reception role cannot see everything an owner can.
The technology provider. Only where access is needed to keep the systems running or to fix a fault, under the agreement described above, and every access is logged.
Your insurer or your program. Only for a claim, only what the claim needs, and only through the clinic's practice management system.
Anybody else. Only where the law requires it, or where you have told us to.

Every time a staff member opens or exports a patient record in the clinic desk, that is written to an audit log. The log can be added to and read. There is no way to edit it and no way to delete from it.

How long we keep it

This is the part most privacy policies leave vague, so here it is directly. Your dental record has to be kept for a minimum period set by professional regulation, and that requirement overrides a request to delete it. It is not something the practice can waive, and it is not something we would be doing to be difficult.

Everything that is not part of that record can be erased on request. If you ask us to delete your information, we will tell you which parts we are required to keep, why, and until when, and we will delete the rest.

What	How long	Why
Dental records, appointments, forms, treatment plans and secure messages	At least ten years from the last entry. For a patient who was a child at the time, at least ten years past the age of majority.	Record keeping rules for dentists in Ontario. This floor overrides an erasure request.
Invoices, payments and receipts	Seven years	Books and records rules that apply to any Canadian business.
Consent records	For as long as you are a patient, and three years after that	So we can show what you agreed to and when.
Waitlist entries	Until the appointment is filled or the request expires, and no more than twelve months	They have no purpose after that.
Questions Grace Buddy could not answer	Six months	Long enough for a person to write a proper answer.
Audit log	Ten years	It is the evidence that the rules above were followed.

The exact spans in this table are set by professional and tax rules rather than by the practice, and they are confirmed by our advisers. If a rule changes, this table changes with it.

Messages we send you, and how to stop them

There are two kinds of message and they follow different rules.

Messages about an appointment you have. Confirmations, reminders, and the answer to a booking request. These go with the appointment and are not marketing.
Everything else. Checkup reminders that are not tied to a booked appointment, and anything the practice wants to tell you about. These only go out if you have said yes, on that channel, and we keep the record of you saying it.

You can withdraw consent at any time, per channel, and it takes effect immediately rather than in ten days.

Email. Use the unsubscribe link at the bottom of any message.
Text. Reply STOP to any message from the clinic.
Either, or both. Change it yourself in the consent section of the patient portal, or phone the front desk on (416) 744-6323 and ask.

Text reminders are not sent late at night. No message from us, by any channel, puts health information in a subject line or in the body of a text.

Cookies and browser storage

Necessary only. There are no advertising cookies on this website, no tracking pixels, and no third party analytics that follow you elsewhere.

A small record that you have seen and accepted the storage notice.
Your sign in session, on the patient portal and the clinic desk, so you are not asked to sign in on every page.
A display preference or two, such as light or dark on the clinic desk.

The map on the contact page is loaded from a third party, so it only loads after you ask it to. Until you do, nothing is requested from them and nothing about you is sent.

What we do not do

No advertising pixels or ad network tags on any page of this site.
No session replay and no screen recording on any page that shows your information.
We do not sell, rent, trade or share your personal or health information.
No health information in a web address, in an email subject line, or in a text message.
No browser fingerprinting and no cross site tracking.
No real patient information in demonstrations, training systems or test environments. Those run on invented people.

Seeing your record, and correcting it

You have a right to see the personal health information the practice holds about you, and to ask for a correction if something in it is wrong.

To see it. Most of it is in the patient portal already. For a full copy, ask the front desk in writing.
To correct it. Tell us what is wrong and what it should say. If we can correct it, we will. If we cannot agree that it is wrong, we will attach your statement of disagreement to the record so that anyone reading it sees both.
How long it takes. We answer within the time limit that Ontario health privacy law sets for an access request, and sooner where we can.

Asking a privacy question, or making a complaint

Write to the Privacy Officer at Grace Dental Clinic, Unit C, 3005 Islington Avenue, North York, Ontario M9L 2K9, or email info@gracedental.ca, or phone (416) 744-6323 and ask for the person who handles privacy requests.

Put privacy request in the subject line and leave your health details out of it. We will ask for what we need once we know it is really you.

If you are not satisfied with how the practice has handled it, you can complain to the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario, which oversees health privacy in this province.

If something goes wrong

If your information is lost, stolen, or looked at by somebody who had no business looking at it, the practice contains it, works out what happened, and tells you. Where the law requires it, the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario is told as well. The obligation on the technology provider to report a suspected incident to the practice without delay is written into the agreement, not left to goodwill.

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the version and the date at the bottom change with it, and the previous version is kept so that it is possible to see what was in force at a given time. A change that affects what we do with your information is not applied quietly.

Version 1.0.0. Dated 10 September 2026.

This policy is reviewed at least once a year, and whenever the systems behind it change.