Fondation Pierre Elliot Trudeau
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Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation 1980 Sherbrooke Street West, Suite 600 Montréal (Québec) Canada H3H 1E8

(514) 938-0001

POLICY

Privacy policy

Effective date: November 18, 2025

The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation (“the Foundation”) is an independent, non-partisan Canadian registered charity. It was created in 2001 as a living memorial to the late former prime minister. The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation’s mission is to support the advancement of outstanding, cutting-edge PhD students, researchers and public intellectuals. Our goal is to position the Scholars, Fellows, and Mentors to have meaningful impacts in their communities, institutions and beyond.

The Foundation is defined as a government institution under the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act.

COMMITMENT

The Foundation is committed to protecting the privacy of the personal information of its Scholars, Fellows, Mentors, Members, Directors, employees, advisors and partners. The Foundation values the trust of those we deal with, and of the public, and recognizes that maintaining this trust requires that we be accountable and transparent in how we treat the information that you choose to share with us. The purpose of this privacy policy (“the Policy”) is to explain how and for what purposes we collect, use, share or otherwise process your personal information and how we safeguard the confidentiality of your personal information, whenever you interact with us.

Through its various programmes and activities, the Foundation frequently gathers and uses personal information. Any information collected by the Foundation is subject to the Privacy Act. The purpose of the Privacy Act is to protect the privacy of individuals with respect to personal information held by a government institution and to provide individuals with a right of access to such information.

DEFINITION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

In this Policy, “personal information” means information about an identifiable individual that is recorded in any form including, without restricting the generality of the foregoing, your name, contact information, home address and email address.

COLLECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

The Foundation limits the collection of personal information to what is necessary to fulfill the purposes identified in this Policy. The Foundation may collect the following personal information about you depending on your interactions with us:
Identifiers
Such as your full name, email address, mailing address, telephone number and other information you provide to us when you contact the Foundation or apply for a Scholarship, Fellowship, Mentorship and other awards.
Demographic information

Such as your gender, age group, and languages spoken and other information you provide us when you contact the Foundation or apply for a Scholarship, Fellowship, Mentorship and other awards.

Educational, professional or employment-related information
Which may include some of the information described above, as well as letters of motivation, your resume, references and any additional information you provide when you apply for a Scholarship, Fellowship, Mentorship and other awards.
Any other information you provide to us
Such as when you contact us by email, on the phone or in-person.

USE AND DISCLOSURE OF PERSONAL INFORMATION

All personal information collected by the Foundation about Scholarship, Fellowship, Mentorship and other award applicants is used to review applications, to administer and monitor awards, which are at the heart of the Foundation’s mission of promoting outstanding research in the humanities and social sciences, and fostering a fruitful dialogue between scholars and policymakers in the arts community, business, government, the professions, and the voluntary sector. Consistent with these purposes, applicants should also expect that information collected by the Foundation may come to be used and disclosed in the following activities:

1. As part of the peer review process, applications are disclosed to selection committees composed of experts recruited from all sectors of society. All participants in these review activities are advised of the Foundation’s expectations with regard to the confidentiality and protection of the information entrusted to them.

2. Because the Foundation has a single database, staff are generally aware of nominations or applications submitted. For the purposes of adjudication and award administration, some selection committees are provided with multi-year summaries of an individual’s applications or nominations and awards.

3. The Foundation routinely publishes and disseminates certain details about successful applications or nominations, including the name of the applicant/nominee, a biography, the amount awarded, the institution and department or corporate/not-for profit/government organization where they study or work, the field of research or work, and the project title of their research in the case of Scholars. The information will normally be published on the Foundation’s Website. In the case of Scholars, the following information is also available on the Foundation’s Website:

  • Current residence
  • Language(s) spoken
  • Degrees
  • Current research
  • Past research
  • Awards
  • Social engagement
  • Work experience

4. Files and databases containing personal information may also be used by the Foundation for programme planning, evaluation and review and in audits, and for generating statistics for these activities.

5. The Foundation collects data on gender, age groups, language, disciplines in the case of Scholarships, Fellowships and Mentorships, the locations where candidates and award winners study or work, citizenship, and relevance of the research or work to the Foundation’s themes. With the exception of the relevance of the research or work to the Foundation’s themes, this data is not used in the peer-adjudication process. It is used for statistical purposes and to improve the Foundation’s services to award winners. In the case of data collected on the language capability of individuals, the Foundation ensures that individuals who are eventually consulted as peer reviewers have the language capability to adequately review a given application.

6. The Foundation uses the information in its files and databases to generate mailing lists in order to disseminate its publications and other information to its community.

PRIVACY PRACTICES

Personal information gathered by the Foundation is kept in confidence. Foundation personnel are authorized to access personal information only as required to deal with the information for the reason(s) for which it was obtained. Safeguards are in place to ensure that the information is not disclosed or shared more widely than is necessary to achieve the purpose(s) for which it was obtained. We also take measures to ensure that the integrity of this information is maintained and to prevent its being lost, stolen or destroyed.

The Foundation retains the personal information it collects for such period of time after it is so used as may be prescribed by regulation in order to ensure that the individual to whom it relates has a reasonable opportunity to obtain access to the information. The Foundation retains the personal information it collects for a period of not less than two years following the date on which a request for access to personal information is received. When personal information is disposed of by the Foundation, care is taken to ensure that there is no recoverable trace of the information.

ACCESS TO PERSONAL INFORMATION

The Privacy Act grants all individuals in Canada the right to access any personal information about themselves that is held by institutions such as the Foundation. It also gives individuals the right to request the correction of their personal information where they find it to be erroneous.

For instructions on how to make a formal request of access to personal information pursuant to the Privacy Act, please visit the website of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada at www.priv.gc.ca.

Please note that although the Privacy Act provides for a formal procedure for requesting access to personal information held by the Foundation, regular channels of communication are also available to anyone wishing to obtain information from the Foundation.

UPDATES

The Foundation will review its privacy policy regularly. We may revise our privacy policy, and if so we will provide the revised policy on our website. At all times, the current privacy policy may be viewed online at www.trudeaufoundation.ca.

CONTACT

The Foundation’s privacy officer can be reached at (514) 938-0001, by email at privacyofficer@trudeaufoundation.ca or by mail at the following address:

Privacy Officer

The Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
600 – 1980 Sherbrooke Street West
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3H 1E8