Manufacturing a school yearbook outside of
Canada may violate Canadian privacy laws.
For decades, schools across Canada have trusted Friesens to preserve student milestones and memories on the pages of their yearbooks. In addition to our promise of delivering a quality product that students will cherish, you can also be assured that we will manage their personal information with the utmost care and attention.
FAQs
Under the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA or FOIPPA), personal information held by educational bodies includes recorded information such as name, address, telephone number, age, gender, and ethnic origin. The act defines a record as information that is written, photographed, recorded or stored in any manner, on any storage medium or by any means including by graphic, electronic or mechanical means.
Our students sign a media consent at the beginning of the school year, doesn’t that cover the production of yearbooks?
It likely does not if the yearbook company manufacturers your yearbooks outside of Canada. An important provision of FIPPA/FOIPPA is that the personal information of minors must be kept within Canada’s borders unless there is express consent given. The standard media consent form that most schools have their students sign is often not sufficient when it comes to full compliance with FIPPA/FOIPPA legislation. These consents cover using the student’s photo in the yearbook but do not provide express consent for that student’s personal information (i.e. photos) to leave Canada.
If a school is sending a student’s personal information to a yearbook company outside of Canada, FIPPA/FOIPPA compliance requires student consent. This consent must include details such as a start and end date, details about the party that will access and store the student’s information, and identification of the jurisdiction where the information will be stored and accessed from.
Not necessarily. Even if the company your school uses is in Canada, it is common for companies to manufacture outside of the country. If the digital files are shared outside of Canada, it would not be FIPPA/FOIPPA compliant without the student’s express consent.
How does choosing Friesens to produce our school yearbook make FIPPA/FOIPPA compliance easier?
Our yearbook production process remains entirely in Canada. Our servers are located in Manitoba, and all of our customer-facing systems use HTTPS to ensure secure handling of personal information. All data stays in Canada and we print yearbooks in our facilities in Altona, Manitoba.
When you choose Friesens for your school’s yearbook production, you have no worries about being FIPPA/FOIPPA compliant.
How does Friesens protect student information when producing yearbooks?
We take customer privacy seriously. When Canada enacted the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) in 2004, we undertook an internal audit to ensure our compliance. Friesens also adheres to the specific privacy legislation of each province in Canada.
In addition to ensuring that all personal information remains inside Canada, we use student images and names solely for yearbook production and all student information is carefully destroyed after twelve months following the yearbook’s completion.