Privacy Policy

1. Who we are and what this policy covers

Clarion is a Canada-first government-relations and public-affairs intelligence platform operated by Clarion (“we”, “us”, “our”). This Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, where it is processed, how long we keep it, and the rights you have over it.

It applies to our marketing website, the Clarion web application, and the emails and notifications we send. It does not apply to third-party websites we link to, or to the public sources we read on your behalf (each of those has its own publisher).

Clarion is a business tool sold to organizations. Most of what the platform ingests — bills, lobbying and gazette registries, public tenders, council agendas, and rosters of elected and appointed officials — is public record published by governments, not personal information that you give us. This policy is about the information that identifies you and your use of the service.

2. What personal information we collect

We collect only what we need to run the service, bill for it, secure it, and support you:

Account and identity information

Your name and email address, managed through our authentication provider, Clerk, when you create or sign in to an account. If you sign in with a third-party identity (for example, a Google account), we receive the basic profile details that sign-in returns.

Billing information

When you subscribe to a paid plan, payments are handled by Stripe. Stripe collects and processes your card details directly — we do not see or store full card numbers. We retain limited billing records such as your plan, billing contact, invoices, and the last four digits and type of card, as needed for accounting and tax.

Usage and log data

Like any web service, our infrastructure automatically records technical information when you use Clarion: your IP address and other online identifiers, browser and device type, pages and features used, timestamps, and error and security logs. We use this to operate, secure, and improve the service.

Content you create in the platform

The topics, watch lists, client and matter names, notes, saved searches, and questions you put into your workspace. This is your content. We process it to deliver the service to you — to match it against public records, summarize results, answer your questions, and send you alerts.

Communications with us

If you email us, book a demo, or contact support, we keep that correspondence and the details you choose to include.

3. Why we collect it (our purposes)

We collect and use personal information for these purposes, and no others without telling you first:

To provide the service

Create and maintain your account, run your topics against public records, generate summaries and answers, and deliver alerts and digests.

To bill you

Process subscription payments, issue invoices and receipts, and meet our accounting and tax obligations.

To secure and operate

Authenticate sign-ins, prevent fraud and abuse, diagnose problems, and keep the platform available and safe.

To support and communicate

Respond to your requests, send service and security notices, and — where you have agreed — occasional product updates you can opt out of at any time.

To improve

Understand how the product is used in aggregate so we can make it better. We do not use your workspace content to train our own models.

4. Legal basis and consent

Under Canadian privacy law, we rely on your consent to collect, use, and disclose your personal information for the purposes described above. By creating an account and using Clarion, you consent to those purposes.

For straightforward, expected uses — running the service you signed up for, billing you, and keeping it secure — your consent is implied by your use. For anything beyond what you would reasonably expect, we will ask for your express consent first. We do not use pre-checked boxes.

You can withdraw your consent at any time, subject to legal and contractual limits (for example, we must keep certain billing records). Withdrawing consent for core processing may mean we can no longer provide the service. See your rights, below.

5. Service providers and sub-processors

We use a small set of trusted service providers to run Clarion. They process personal information only on our instructions, for the purposes above, under contractual confidentiality and security obligations. We remain accountable for the information they handle on our behalf.

Several of these providers process data in the United States. See the cross-border transfer section for what that means and how we address it.

6. Cross-border transfer of personal information

Some of the providers listed above process personal information outside Canada, primarily in the United States. This means your personal information may be stored or processed in another country and may be accessible to that country's courts, law-enforcement, and regulators under its laws — including, in the United States, laws such as the CLOUD Act.

Under PIPEDA, we are accountable for personal information transferred to a service provider for processing and we use contractual and security measures intended to provide a comparable level of protection while it is being handled abroad.

Under Quebec's Law 25, before transferring personal information outside Quebec we assess factors including the sensitivity of the information, the purpose of the transfer, the safeguards in place, and the legal regime of the destination jurisdiction. A summary of this transfer assessment is available from our Privacy Officer on request.

By using Clarion, you acknowledge that your personal information will be processed in the locations described in this policy.

7. How long we keep your information

We keep personal information only as long as we need it for the purposes in this policy, or as long as the law requires.

Account and workspace content is retained while your account is active. When you close your account, we delete or anonymize your personal information within a reasonable period, except where we must keep specific records longer — for example, billing and tax records, which we retain for the period required by law.

Operational and security logs are kept for a limited period and then deleted or aggregated. AI request data sent to Anthropic is subject to that provider's short default retention window described above. If you ask us to delete your information, we will, subject to those legal and operational limits.

8. Your rights

Under PIPEDA and, if you are in Quebec, under Law 25, you have rights over your personal information. These include:

Access

Ask whether we hold personal information about you and request a copy of it, along with how it is used and who it has been disclosed to.

Correction

Ask us to correct information that is inaccurate, incomplete, or out of date.

Deletion

Ask us to delete your personal information, subject to the legal and contractual limits described in this policy.

Withdraw consent

Withdraw your consent to our use of your personal information at any time, on reasonable notice, understanding that this may affect our ability to provide the service.

Portability

Where the law provides it, receive the computerized personal information you have provided to us in a structured, commonly used technological format.

To exercise any of these rights, contact our Privacy Officer using the details below. We will verify your identity, respond within the timelines set by law, and tell you if we cannot act on a request and why. Exercising your rights is free, except that we may charge a reasonable fee for transcription, reproduction, or transmission where the law allows — and we will tell you about any fee before we proceed.

9. Cookies

Clarion uses a small number of essential first-party cookies that are strictly necessary to run the service. These keep you signed in and protect the security of your session, and are set through our authentication provider, Clerk. Without them, you could not log in or stay logged in securely.

With your consent, we also use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to understand site traffic. GA4 is loaded only after you click “Accept” on our cookie banner — never if you decline or ignore it — and it sets its own cookies once enabled. We do not use advertising cookies and do not build advertising profiles.

You can withdraw or change your choice at any time using the “Cookie preferences” link in our footer, or by clearing the bw-consent cookie in your browser. The essential cookies above are strictly necessary and do not require consent.

10. Children

Clarion is a professional tool for organizations. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 18. If you believe a minor has provided us with personal information, contact our Privacy Officer and we will delete it.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the platform, our providers, or the law changes. When we do, we will revise the “Last updated” date above, and for material changes we will provide a more prominent notice — for example, by email or an in-product notice — before the change takes effect. Your continued use of Clarion after an update means you accept the revised policy.

12. Contact our Privacy Officer

We have designated a Privacy Officer who is responsible for our compliance with this policy and with Canadian privacy law, and who handles your privacy requests and questions.

13. How to make a complaint

If you have a privacy concern, please contact our Privacy Officer first — we want the chance to make it right.

If you are not satisfied with our response, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which oversees PIPEDA, or to the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, which oversees Law 25, if you are in Quebec. We will cooperate fully with any investigation.