Privacy Policy

Last updated: 11 August 2026

The West Coast Current is a local news publication operated by The Current. This policy explains what
personal information we collect when you read, subscribe to, or contact us, why we collect
it, who else can see it, and what you can ask us to do about it.

We are a small newsroom. We collect as little as we can, we do not sell your information,
and we would rather explain plainly than hide behind legal language.

Who we are and how to reach us

The Current, publisher of The West Coast Current at https://westcoastcurrent.ca.

Questions, requests, or complaints about privacy go to privacy@mycurrent.ca.
We are responsible for the personal information under our control, and we will respond to any
request within 30 days.

A note about our journalism

Canadian privacy law treats journalism differently from ordinary business activity. Personal
information we gather, use, or publish for journalistic purposes — reporting,
interviewing, editing, and publishing news — sits outside the federal Personal Information
Protection and Electronic Documents Act, and this policy does not govern it. If you have a
concern about something we published about you, that is an editorial matter: please contact us
through our contact page.

Everything else on this page — newsletter subscribers, commenters, website analytics,
advertising, and people who fill in our forms — is covered by this policy.

What we collect, and why

When you read the site

Our host and our analytics tools automatically record technical information: your IP address,
browser and device type, the pages you view, the page that referred you, and the time of your
visit. We use this to understand which stories are read and to keep the site running and secure.
We do not try to identify individual readers from it.

When you subscribe to our email list

Your email address, and the fact and time that you confirmed. We ask you to confirm by email
before we send anything, so that we hold a record of your consent. We use your address only to
send the newsletter you asked for. Every email includes an unsubscribe link, and unsubscribing
takes effect immediately.

When you use our contact or story-submission forms

Your name, your email address, your phone number if you choose to provide one, and your
message. We use this to reply to you and, where you are offering us a story, to follow it up
journalistically.

When you comment on an article

Your comment, the name and email address you enter, your IP address, and your browser’s user
agent string. The IP address and user agent help us catch spam. Your comment and the name you
chose are public. Your email address is not published.

We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13.

Cookies and similar technologies

  • Necessary cookies keep the site working — session handling, security,
    and remembering your language choice if you use the translation menu.
  • Comment cookies. If you leave a comment, you may choose to have your name and
    email saved in a cookie so that you do not have to retype them. These are optional and last one year.
  • Analytics cookies (Google) tell us aggregate readership patterns.
  • Advertising cookies (Google) support the advertising that funds the newsroom.

You can clear or block cookies in your browser settings at any time. Blocking necessary cookies
may stop parts of the site from working.

The services we rely on

We are a small operation, so we rely on established third-party providers rather than building
our own systems — for website hosting and security, audience analytics, advertising, our email
list, page translation, and the forms on this site. Each provider receives only the information it
needs in order to do its job.

Some of these providers are located outside Canada, primarily in the United States. Where that is
the case, your information may be stored or processed outside Canada under the laws of the country in
which the provider operates, and it may be subject to lawful access requests by foreign courts and
authorities. Each provider handles that information under its own privacy policy.

If you would like to know which providers we currently use, email
privacy@mycurrent.ca and we will tell you.

Advertising

We show advertising through Google AdSense to pay for local reporting. Google and its partners
may use cookies to measure advertising performance and to personalise the ads you see.

You can control this directly:

What we do not do

  • We do not sell your personal information.
  • We do not rent or trade our email list.
  • We do not use your email address to advertise to you on other platforms.
  • We do not make automated decisions about you that have any legal effect.

How long we keep things

  • Newsletter subscribers — until you unsubscribe, plus a short suppression
    record so that we do not email you again by mistake.
  • Contact and submission messages — up to 24 months, unless the message
    becomes part of our journalism, in which case normal newsroom record-keeping applies.
  • Comments — indefinitely, so that article discussions remain readable. You can
    ask us to anonymise yours, which removes your name and contact details but keeps the text, or to delete
    it outright.
  • Analytics data — on a rolling basis, currently 14 months.
  • Server and security logs — approximately 90 days.

How we protect it

The site runs over HTTPS. Access to subscriber lists and form submissions is limited to the
people who need it and protected by strong authentication, and we keep the platform patched. No
system is perfectly secure, but if a breach ever created a real risk of significant harm to you,
we will notify you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as the law requires.

Your rights

You can ask us to:

  • See the personal information we hold about you;
  • Correct anything that is inaccurate;
  • Delete or anonymise it — we delete your subscription and your messages. For
    comments you choose: we can remove your name and contact details and leave your words in place, or
    delete the comment entirely;
  • Stop emailing you, immediately, using the unsubscribe link in any email;
  • Explain anything on this page that you find unclear.

Email privacy@mycurrent.ca and we will respond within 30 days. We
will not charge you or treat you differently for asking.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy
Commissioner of Canada at priv.gc.ca,
or to your provincial privacy regulator.

Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle personal information we will update this page and move the
“last updated” date. Where a change materially affects our subscribers, we will say so
in the newsletter rather than expecting you to notice.