FP Chartered Professional Accountants LLP
Effective Date: August 5, 2026
Reviewed: August 5, 2026
1. Introduction
FP Chartered Professional Accountants LLP (“FP CPA,” “the Firm,” “we,” or “us”) is committed to protecting the privacy and confidentiality of the personal information entrusted to us. As a professional accounting firm, we recognize that the information our clients share with us is among the most sensitive information they possess.
This Policy applies to visitors to our website at www.fpllp.ca and to the personal information we handle in the course of providing accounting, tax, assurance, advisory, and related professional services to clients across Canada.
We operate under the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA), which governs private-sector handling of personal information in Manitoba and most other provinces. We are also bound by the confidentiality and professional conduct obligations of CPA Manitoba and the CPA profession, which in many respects exceed what privacy legislation requires.
2. Accountability and Our Privacy Officer
FP CPA is responsible for all personal information under our control, including information transferred to third parties for processing on our behalf. We have designated a Privacy Officer accountable for our compliance with this Policy and with applicable privacy legislation.
- Privacy Officer
- FP Chartered Professional Accountants LLP
- Unit L2 – 880 Fifteenth Street
- Winkler, Manitoba R6W 0H5
- Email: privacy@fpllp.ca
- Telephone: 204-542-0437
All partners, employees, and contractors of the Firm are required to follow this Policy.
3. What Personal Information We Collect
“Personal information” means information about an identifiable individual. It does not include business contact information used solely to communicate with someone in relation to their employment or profession.
3.1 Through our website
Our website is informational. We do not operate a client portal, booking system, or payment processing through www.fpllp.ca. We collect:
- – Contact form submissions — your name, email address, telephone number, and any message content you choose to provide.
– Spam prevention information — our contact form uses Google reCAPTCHA to distinguish human visitors from automated submissions. reCAPTCHA collects technical information about your device and browsing behaviour and processes it on Google’s servers, which are located outside Canada. It is used solely to protect the form from abuse. Google’s practices are described at policies.google.com/privacy.
– Server log information — our web host automatically records standard technical information, including IP address, browser type, and pages requested, for security and site reliability purposes. We do not use this information to identify or profile individual visitors.
We do not use advertising or social media tracking pixels, and we do not sell, rent, or trade information collected through our website.
3.2 In the course of providing professional services
Where you engage us, or where you are an individual connected to a client organization — a director, shareholder, partner, employee, or beneficiary — we may collect:
- – Identification information — legal name, date of birth, address, contact details, and government-issued identification where verification is required.
– Tax and government identifiers — Social Insurance Number, Business Number, GST/HST and payroll account numbers, trust account numbers, and CRA correspondence.
– Financial information — income and expense records, banking and investment details, assets and liabilities, invoices, receipts, ledgers, and supporting documentation.
– Employment and payroll information — where we provide payroll or bookkeeping services, information about your employees including compensation, deductions, benefits, and hours worked.
– Family and personal circumstances — marital status, dependents, and similar information relevant to filings, credits, benefits, or estate and succession planning.
– Engagement records — correspondence, meeting notes, working papers, and records of services provided.
We collect this directly from you wherever possible. We may also collect it from third parties with your consent or as authorized by law — from the Canada Revenue Agency where you have authorized us as your representative, from your financial institutions, from a previous accountant on file transfer, or from your lawyer or other advisors.
Where a client provides us with personal information about a third party, the client is responsible for having obtained that person’s consent to our collection, use, and disclosure of it as described in this Policy and in our engagement letter.
3.3 From job applicants
If you apply for a position with us, we collect the information contained in your application — your résumé, cover letter, references, and any credentials or qualifications you provide. We use it to assess your application and to contact you about the role and about future opportunities that may suit you. We retain applications only as long as needed for those purposes.
4. Why We Collect and Use Personal Information
We identify our purposes at or before the time of collection, and we use personal information only for those purposes:
- – Professional services — preparing and filing tax returns, conducting assurance, review, and compilation engagements, and providing bookkeeping, payroll, and advisory services.
– Government filings and representation — filing returns, elections, and supporting documentation with the Canada Revenue Agency, Manitoba Finance, and other authorities on your behalf.
– Client acceptance — verifying identity and satisfying our conflict-of-interest and independence obligations.
– Communication — responding to inquiries, and corresponding with you about your engagement, filings, and deadlines.
– Billing and administration — invoicing and administering our accounts.
– Regulatory and professional compliance — meeting record-keeping obligations under the Income Tax Act and Excise Tax Act, and supporting practice inspections and quality-management reviews.
– Legal claims — defending or advancing legal claims, and obtaining legal, insurance, or professional advice.
– Website operation — understanding how our site is used, and improving its content, performance, and security.
– Recruitment — assessing applications for employment with the Firm.
We will not use or disclose your personal information for any other purpose without your consent, unless required or permitted by law.
5. Consent
We obtain consent before or at the time we collect personal information, except where the law permits or requires otherwise.
Express consent is obtained where information is sensitive, which includes most of what we handle as your accountants. Your signed engagement letter, together with the authorizations you provide for CRA representation, constitute express consent for the purposes described in that engagement.
Implied consent applies in narrower circumstances — submitting an inquiry through our contact form implies consent to our using that information to respond to you.
Withdrawing consent. You may withdraw consent at any time, subject to legal, contractual, professional, and regulatory restrictions, by contacting our Privacy Officer. We will explain the implications. Withdrawal may mean we cannot continue to act for you, and we remain obligated to retain certain records after an engagement ends.
Exceptions. PIPEDA permits collection, use, or disclosure without consent in defined circumstances — including where required by subpoena, warrant, court order, or lawful authority; where necessary to collect a debt owed to us; where reasonable for investigating a breach of an agreement or contravention of law; or in an emergency threatening someone’s life, health, or security.
6. Cookies and Analytics
The only third-party technology on our site is Google reCAPTCHA, which protects our contact form from automated abuse. It operates on the contact form and does not track your browsing, build a profile of you, or follow you to other websites.
Our website does not respond to “Do Not Track” browser signals, as no common standard for them has been adopted.
Our site links to third-party websites, including government resources. We are not responsible for their privacy practices or content.
7. When We Share Personal Information
We do not sell, rent, or trade personal information. We share it only as follows:
- – Government tax authorities — filing returns, elections, and documentation as authorized by you in the course of our engagement.
– Service providers — providers of tax preparation software, accounting and bookkeeping platforms, secure document exchange and file storage, email and productivity software, practice management systems, IT support, and website hosting and analytics. They receive only what they need to perform their function and are contractually required to protect it and use it only as we specify.
– CPA Manitoba and other CPA provincial bodies — during practice inspections and quality-management reviews, which are a mandatory condition of our licensure. Inspectors are bound by strict confidentiality obligations.
– Our professional advisors and insurers — legal counsel, our professional liability insurer, and external quality reviewers, all subject to confidentiality obligations.
– Where required or permitted by law — in response to a court order, subpoena, warrant, statutory demand, or other lawful requirement.
– In a business transaction — if the Firm merges, is acquired, or transfers part of its practice, subject to appropriate confidentiality protections and our professional obligations. We will notify affected clients where required.
Some of the software platforms we use include artificial intelligence features that assist with tasks such as document review and data extraction. Where this applies to your engagement, we provide fuller disclosure, and in some cases request your separate consent, in your engagement letter.
8. Where Information Is Stored
Personal information under our control is stored and processed both in Canada and outside it. Several of the platforms and cloud services we rely on to operate our practice — including document storage, email, and analytics — process or store data on servers located in other countries.
Where personal information is located outside Canada, it is subject to the laws of that jurisdiction. Foreign courts, law enforcement agencies, and government authorities may in certain circumstances be entitled to access it under those laws, and this may occur without notice to us or to you. Those laws may not provide the same level of protection as Canadian privacy law.
We remain accountable under PIPEDA for personal information transferred to a service provider for processing. We use contractual and other means to require a comparable level of protection while it is being processed on our behalf, and we consider data residency when selecting new providers. If you have concerns about this, contact our Privacy Officer to discuss the options available for your engagement.
9. Retention and Destruction
We keep personal information only as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected and to meet our legal, regulatory, and professional obligations.
In compliance with professional standards, we maintain a record of the work we perform. These records and working papers may contain personal information and are retained until they are no longer reasonably required for legal, administrative, audit, regulatory, or professional purposes — which includes the period during which a claim relating to our services could be brought. Contact form submissions and inquiries that do not lead to an engagement are kept only as long as needed to respond and are then deleted.
We maintain internal retention guidelines specifying retention periods for each category of record. When information is no longer required, we destroy, erase, or de-identify it using methods appropriate to its sensitivity: paper records are cross-cut shredded or destroyed by a bonded destruction service, and electronic records are securely deleted.
10. Safeguards
We protect personal information using physically secure facilities, industry-standard security tools and practices, and clearly defined internal policies. Our safeguards are appropriate to the sensitivity of the information, and because we handle highly sensitive financial and tax information, we hold ourselves to a correspondingly high standard.
Measures are in place to prevent the loss, misuse, unauthorized access, and alteration of personal information under our control. Records are held in secure environments that are not accessible to the public, including restricted-access premises and locked storage for paper files. Personal information held in electronic form is protected in a secure electronic and physical environment.
Access is limited to personnel who require it to perform their duties. All partners, employees, and contractors are bound by confidentiality obligations and receive guidance on their privacy and security responsibilities. We assess the security practices of any platform before adopting it for client work, and we maintain a documented incident response process.
Secure communication. Standard email is not a secure medium. While we take reasonable precautions, we cannot guarantee the security of information sent to us by email or through our contact form. Please do not send Social Insurance Numbers, banking details, or complete tax documents by ordinary email — contact us to arrange secure transfer.
Breach response. If a breach of security safeguards occurs that creates a real risk of significant harm, we will report it to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, notify affected individuals as soon as feasible, and maintain a record of the breach, as PIPEDA requires. We will also notify CPA Manitoba where our professional obligations require it.
11. Accuracy
We make reasonable efforts to keep personal information accurate, complete, and current — particularly where an inaccuracy could result in an incorrect filing or an adverse consequence for you.
Because filings depend on the information you provide, please notify us promptly of changes to your name, address, marital status, dependants, banking details, or other relevant circumstances.
12. Access and Correction
You have the right to request access to the personal information we hold about you, to be told how it has been used, and to know to whom it has been disclosed.
To make a request, write to our Privacy Officer at privacy@fpllp.ca or at the address in Section 2. We may ask for information to confirm your identity and to locate the records you are seeking.
Our response. We will respond within 30 days. If we need an extension, we will tell you within that period and explain why. Access is generally provided at no cost; if a request requires substantial effort, we will estimate any cost in advance and proceed only with your approval.
Corrections. If you believe our information is inaccurate, you may request a correction. Where we agree, we will amend the record and, where appropriate, notify third parties who received it. Where we do not agree, we will note your requested correction in the file.
Limits. In limited circumstances we may be unable to provide access — where doing so would reveal personal information about another individual, where the information is subject to solicitor-client or litigation privilege, or where disclosure is prohibited by law. If we refuse, we will explain why in writing and inform you of your right to complain.
13. Electronic Communications
Where we send commercial electronic messages such as firm updates or tax deadline reminders, we comply with Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL): each message identifies the Firm, provides our contact information, and includes a working unsubscribe mechanism.
Unsubscribing does not affect messages directly related to an active engagement, such as correspondence about your filings.
14. Children’s Privacy
Our website is directed at businesses and adults, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children through it. Where we handle information about minors in the course of professional services — dependants named on a return, trust beneficiaries, or family members in an estate plan — we collect it from the parent, guardian, or authorized representative and protect it as described in this Policy.
15. Changes to This Policy
We may update this Policy to reflect changes in our practices, our technology, or the law. The current version is always posted at www.fpllp.ca with the review date shown at the top. Where changes are material, we will take reasonable steps to notify clients directly.
16. Questions and Complaints
If you have a question about this Policy, a concern about how we have handled your personal information, or a request to access or correct it, please contact our Privacy Officer first:
Privacy Officer
FP Chartered Professional Accountants LLP
Unit L2 – 880 Fifteenth Street
Winkler, Manitoba R6W 0H5
Email: privacy@fpllp.ca
Telephone: 204-542-0437
We take privacy concerns seriously. We will acknowledge your concern, investigate it, and respond in writing with the outcome and any corrective action taken.
If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada:
Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada
30 Victoria Street, Gatineau, Quebec K1A 1H3
Toll-free: 1-800-282-1376 · www.priv.gc.ca
You may also contact CPA Manitoba regarding concerns about our professional conduct.
This Privacy Policy is provided for the information of website visitors, clients, and prospective clients of FP Chartered Professional Accountants LLP. It does not form part of, and does not modify, the terms of any engagement letter between the Firm and a client.