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Budtenders Association

Privacy Policy

Version 2.1 · Updated: 22 October 2026 · Effective: 11 November 2026

If you create an account, or accept these Terms when we ask you to, on or after 23 October, 2026 they apply to you from your acceptance.

This Privacy Policy replaces our previous Privacy Policy (Version 2.0), which consolidated our earlier Privacy Policy and Data Usage Policy into a single document.

1. WHO WE ARE AND WHAT THIS POLICY COVERS

1.1 Budtenders Association Inc. ("BTA", "we", "our", "us") operates a cannabis research, retail intelligence, and professional development community for consumers, budtenders, retail managers, and retail owners (the "Platform"). BTA is a research and education community: members contribute survey, quiz, and engagement responses, and BTA produces aggregated, anonymized research and intelligence from them. That research is what funds free membership. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, where it is stored, how long we keep it, and the choices and rights you have. It applies to the Platform under the Budtenders Association brand and under any current or future brand of BTA or its affiliates.

1.2 Our Privacy Officer is accountable for our privacy practices. You can reach them at privacy@budtendersassociation.ca (see Section 12). We comply with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable provincial privacy laws, including Quebec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector for our Quebec members.

2. WHAT WE COLLECT

Depending on how you use the Platform, we collect:

  • Account and profile information: name, email, phone number, date of birth, gender, province, how you heard about BTA, and, if you choose to provide it, your income or wage range, along with other profile details you choose to add.
  • Professional information: for retail professionals — your role, employer/store affiliation, and, where we verify your status, supporting documents such as proof of employment or certifications. We keep a record of the verification outcome and delete the underlying documents on the schedule in Section 7.
  • Research contributions: your responses to surveys, quizzes, polls, and ratings ("Research Contributions"). Because our community’s research relates to cannabis — including preferences and consumption habits — we treat this as sensitive information and ask for your express consent at sign-up, separately from your acceptance of our Terms & Conditions, before collecting it. This consent is part of what membership means: producing anonymized research is the Platform’s core purpose and is what keeps membership free, so it is required to hold an account (Section 4).
  • Points and rewards activity: points earned, rewards redeemed, referrals, tier status, and contest entries.
  • Technical and usage information: IP address, browser and device type, pages visited, interactions with Platform features, and whether you open or click the emails we send you.
  • Consent and acceptance records: the version of the terms and consents you accepted, what you were shown, and when — we keep these so we can always show what you agreed to.

3. HOW WE USE YOUR INFORMATION

We use personal information to:

  • Run your membership: create and manage your account, verify eligibility and professional status, deliver rewards, and provide member features.
  • Personalize your experience: tailor content, survey invitations, and recommendations to your role and interests.
  • Produce our research and intelligence products: we analyze member Research Contributions to create market research, industry reports, and commercial intelligence products — such as brand and retail insights, indices, and scores — that we provide to cannabis industry clients, industry organizations, and government. These products are built from anonymized and aggregated data: they do not identify you, and no client can see your individual responses or identity. Before any figure is reported, we apply anonymization safeguards, including suppressing results that describe groups smaller than thirty (30) responses and screening or excluding free-text responses that could identify a person by their content. This research is how we keep membership free.
  • Communicate with you: membership and service emails (welcome, verification, rewards, survey invitations, notices about these policies), and — only if you separately opt in — newsletters and marketing.
  • Keep the Platform safe and lawful: detect fraud and abuse, enforce our Terms & Conditions, and meet legal obligations.

3.1 Automated Analysis. We use analytics and AI tools, including services provided by third-party providers, to help analyze Research Contributions and platform engagement. Identifiable member records never leave BTA’s environment for this purpose: data is anonymized and aggregated — small groups suppressed, identifying free text screened or removed — before it is processed by any external AI service. Our providers are bound by data processing agreements and are not permitted to use information we provide to train their own models.

4. CONSENT AND YOUR CHOICES

4.1 How We Ask. At sign-up we present two things, separately: (a) acceptance of our Terms & Conditions and this Privacy Policy; and (b) your express consent to our collection and use of your cannabis-related Research Contributions to produce anonymized research and intelligence products, as described in Section 3. Both are required to create an account. Research participation is integral to membership — it is what keeps the Platform free — and we do not offer membership without it. We keep a dated record of both, including the version you were shown.

4.2 Leaderboards. If you appear on a Platform leaderboard (for example, a top-10 or top-50 list), your display name and rank are visible to other members. You can choose a display name that does not identify you, and you can opt out of leaderboard display in your account settings.

4.3 Opt-In Disclosures. Brand, partner, and sampling-program disclosures: we do not disclose your identity, contact information, or member-level information — including pseudonymized information — to brands, event partners, sampling partners, or any other company unless you expressly opt in to communications from, or a program operated with, that specific company through the Platform. For sampling programs, we ask at the moment you activate a sampling pass: we tell you what would be shared, with whom, and for what purpose, and nothing is shared unless you affirmatively accept. Declining has no effect on your membership. You can withdraw any of these opt-ins at any time and we will stop the disclosure.

4.4 Withdrawing Consent. Consent to research participation is essential to membership, so withdrawing it means closing your account, which you can do at any time through the Request Account Deletion option in your account settings or by emailing privacy@budtendersassociation.ca — no questions asked. When you withdraw: we stop collecting your Research Contributions; your identifiable responses are not used in any research output produced after your withdrawal; and your personal information is handled on the schedule in Section 7 — your account and profile information is deleted or anonymized, and your past Research Contributions are anonymized rather than deleted, so they can no longer be linked to you, except responses given while your research consent was withdrawn, which are deleted (Section 7). Contributions already anonymized and blended into aggregate research can no longer be traced back to you and cannot be recalled from reports already produced. Your access, correction, and complaint rights (Section 10) remain available before and during closure. You can separately withdraw non-essential consents — marketing, leaderboard display, brand and sampling opt-ins — at any time without affecting your membership.

4.5 Members Who Joined Under Earlier Terms. If you joined under an earlier version of our terms or privacy policy, including on our previous website, the consents you gave then continue to apply, and we keep a record of the version you accepted. If you previously withdrew your research consent, we do not use your Research Contributions until you accept our current terms: we will ask you separately at your next login, and if you have not accepted within seven (7) days, your account is locked until you do, as described in Section 14.2 of our Terms & Conditions. Nothing you do on the Platform while your research consent is withdrawn is used in our research.

5. WHEN WE SHARE INFORMATION

5.1 We do not sell your personal information. We share it only as follows:

(a) Service providers. Companies that host our infrastructure, deliver our email, and provide analytics and AI processing, under contracts that limit their use of your information to providing services to us. External AI-analysis services receive only anonymized, aggregated data, as described in Section 3.1;

(b) Industry and government clients. Receive anonymized, aggregated insights only. They never receive your identity or individual responses, except where you have expressly opted in under Section 4.3;

(c) Fulfilment. Contest and reward fulfilment — where a prize partner fulfils a prize you have won, we share your name and delivery details with them for fulfilment only;

(d) Verification. Credential verification — where you have earned a credential, we may confirm your credential status to a third party (such as an employer) that asks to verify it;

(e) Sampling programs. Only with your express opt-in at pass activation, as described in Section 4.3;

(f) Legal. Legal requirements — where required by law, court order, or to protect the rights and safety of BTA, our members, or others;

(g) Business transactions. If BTA is involved in a merger, acquisition, financing, reorganization (including a rebrand to or change of control of a successor entity), or sale of assets, your membership, your recorded consents, and your personal information may be transferred as part of that transaction. Any successor is bound to protect your information consistently with this policy and to use it only for the purposes described in this policy and our Terms as they stood when you accepted them, until changed under the process in those documents. We will notify you of a completed transaction that transfers your information.

6. WHERE YOUR INFORMATION LIVES

6.1 Your personal information is stored with reputable cloud infrastructure providers. Our primary database and file storage are currently hosted in the United States, and some of our service providers — including email delivery and AI-analysis providers — also process data in the United States. When your personal information is stored or processed outside Canada, it is protected by data processing agreements and contractual safeguards, but it may be accessible to authorities in those jurisdictions under their laws.

7. HOW LONG WE KEEP INFORMATION

  • Active accounts: For the life of your membership.
  • Closed accounts: Account and profile personal information is deleted or anonymized within 90 days of closure (including accounts deactivated after twelve (12) months of inactivity under our Terms & Conditions), unless a longer period is required by law or listed below.
  • Research Contributions: Anonymized rather than deleted when your account closes or upon a deletion request — identifiers and links to you are removed so the responses can no longer be traced back to you: we delete your name, email, phone number, and other contact details, replace your date of birth with an age range, and replace your specific store with general details such as store type, banner or chain, province, and community size — and retained indefinitely in that anonymized form as part of our research dataset, for long-term research such as year-over-year trends. Once anonymized, they no longer identify you and are no longer personal information. Responses you gave while your research consent was withdrawn are deleted rather than kept.
  • Verification documents: Underlying documents (e.g., proof of employment) are deleted within 90 days of the verification decision; we keep the outcome and date.
  • Transaction, points, and reward records: 7 years, for audit, tax, and compliance purposes.
  • Consent, acceptance, and opt-in records: Kept for as long as needed to demonstrate your consents, including after account closure.
  • Contest records: Winner and release records kept as required by law; entry records deleted with account data.

8. COOKIES AND ANALYTICS

8.1 We use a small number of necessary cookies for core functions — age confirmation, login sessions, authentication, and security. These cannot be turned off because the Platform does not work without them. For analytics, we run a self-hosted, cookieless analytics tool on our own infrastructure: it sets no cookies, does not track you across other sites, and is not shared with or accessible to any third-party analytics vendor. For visitors who are not logged in, it collects no personal information; for logged-in members, page views and interactions are associated with your account so we can understand how members use the Platform. Your cookie preferences can be managed via "Cookie Settings" in the site footer.

9. KEEPING YOUR INFORMATION SAFE

9.1 We protect your information with industry-standard measures, including encryption in transit (TLS), secure authentication, access controls limited to those who need it, and regular security reviews. No system is perfectly secure, but if a breach creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we will notify you and the appropriate privacy regulator(s) as required by law.

10. YOUR RIGHTS

You can, at any time:

  • Access: request a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
  • Correct: update your profile yourself, or ask us to correct inaccurate information.
  • Close and delete: close your account and request deletion of your personal information through the Request Account Deletion option in your account settings or by emailing privacy@budtendersassociation.ca. We respond to your request within 30 days and complete deletion or anonymization within 90 days. Account and profile information is deleted or anonymized on the schedule in Section 7; your past Research Contributions are anonymized rather than deleted, as described in Section 7, so they can no longer be linked to you; responses given while your research consent was withdrawn are deleted. Closing your account is also how you withdraw research consent (Section 4.4).
  • Port: for our Quebec members and wherever the law provides it, request computerized personal information you provided to us in a structured, commonly used technological format.
  • Withdraw consent: as described in Section 4.4.
  • Complain: contact our Privacy Officer first — we respond within 30 days — and you may also complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada or your provincial privacy regulator, including the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec for Quebec residents.

11. AGE

11.1 The Platform is for individuals who have reached the legal age for cannabis purchase in their province or territory of residence. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under that age, and if we learn we have, we will delete it promptly.

12. CHANGES AND CONTACT

12.1 Changes. We may update this policy from time to time. For material changes, we will notify you by email and on the Platform at least fifteen (15) days before the change takes effect, and each version is dated and archived. The updated policy applies from its stated effective date. If a change includes a consent you previously withdrew, we will ask you separately to accept it at your next login, as described in Section 18 of our Terms & Conditions; until you accept, your earlier choice stands.

12.2 Contact. Privacy Officer, Budtenders Association Inc. — privacy@budtendersassociation.ca. We respond to privacy requests within 30 days.