map.ca Data and Privacy Policy

We prioritize privacy and a low friction experience for all participants.

No Storage of Private Information:

We are committed to the principle that we will not store private or personally identifiable information (PII). Our system is designed to facilitate community contribution without requiring traditional accounts or storing personal identifiers.

"No Login" Experience Security:

While we aim for a low-friction experience, the use of "no login" via magic links still involves an authentication flow. To ensure maximum privacy and security without storing private information, we implement technical fixes to protect users:

• We use short token TTLs (time-to-live).
• Tokens are generally limited to one-time use.
• We employ IP and User Agent binding.
• We utilize security services (such as Cloudflare Turnstile) and implement rate limits by IP and category to maintain security.

No Third-Party Trackers:

map.ca loads no third-party session-replay, behavioral, or advertising trackers — no Microsoft Clarity, no Meta/Facebook Pixel, and no Google Analytics. Because nothing here tracks you across sites or stores personal identifiers, map.ca needs no cookie-consent banner.

For basic, privacy-respecting traffic counts and page-performance (Core Web Vitals) measurements, we use Cloudflare Web Analytics, which is cookieless and does not fingerprint visitors or collect any personal data.

The data we generate is geospatial data produced through collaborative group work. This data is not personal; it is designed to serve the community mission.

Data is a Tool for Community Improvement:

We strongly emphasize the value of the information gathered for the benefit of the community. map.ca is defined by the intentions of EDUCATION, ENGAGEMENT, and EMPOWERMENT.

The data collected is essential for the following purposes:

1. Issue Resolution and Analysis: Using mapping technology to identify, understand, analyze, resolve, and disseminate community issues.
2. Empowerment: Participants are equipped with information or data to apply to a community problem or issue.
3. Education and Engagement: Allowing participants to learn about issue(s) important to their community and become more actively engaged in public processes.

The geospatial and usage data generated through this collaborative process is continuously leveraged for system and community improvements. This front facing data should be used for improvements.

• Platform Optimization: Aggregated data informs necessary technical enhancements, ensuring a better user experience, such as addressing potential lag from heavy zooming on mobile devices or optimizing data storage using PostGIS with GiST indexes.
• Performance and Scalability: We use aggregated usage data to make key decisions regarding the geospatial stack, such as fixing clustering issues using server-side queries, or shoring up edge-to-DB latency by choosing optimized regions and using caching.
• Enhancing Community Service: Improvements are made to better facilitate the core mapping process, ensuring the data generated is reliable and available for community analysis and dissemination.

map.ca uses AI to help create pins, suggest tags, summarize, and guide you through the map. Wherever AI produces something you see, we label it so you always know when you are looking at AI output.

Hybrid hosting, Canadian residency:

We run a hybrid model. Today, some AI steps — including ones that can touch personal information — are handled by a vetted third-party AI provider; we minimize and redact the prompts and traces we keep. We are standing up our own open-weights models inside a Canadian VPC so the most sensitive steps can run without leaving Canada, and a model router will send them there as that path comes online.

No training without your opt-in:

We do not use your content to train third-party AI models without your explicit, separate permission — the default is no. This posture is aligned with PIPEDA and Quebec's Law 25.

For the full plain-language explanation of how our AI works and where your data lives, see our AI transparency & data-residency disclosure.

map.ca is a general-audience civic platform intended for adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (under 14 in Quebec). If you are a minor, you may use map.ca only with the involvement of a parent or guardian, who is responsible for your use.

To create an account you must be at least 13(or the age of digital consent in your province). If we learn we have collected a child's information without proper consent, we delete it. Parents or guardians may contact hello@map.ca to review or remove a child's information.