Terms of Service
By using the services of Distress Centres of Greater Toronto (“DCGT,” “we,” “us”), you agree to the following terms.
1. About This Service
Distress Centres of Greater Toronto is a free, volunteer-run support service and part of a wider network of community support organizations. We offer emotional support and active listening. We are not a government agency, a medical provider, or a licensed counselling service, and our volunteers are not acting as therapists, doctors, or crisis clinicians.
2. If You Are in Immediate Crisis
We are not an emergency service and are not staffed or equipped to respond to life-threatening situations in real time.
If you or someone else is in immediate danger, call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.
If you are experiencing suicidal thoughts or need immediate crisis support, call or text 988 (Suicide Crisis Helpline), available 24/7.
We encourage anyone in acute distress to use these services rather than waiting for us.
3. No Guaranteed Response Time
We are a volunteer-run organization, and call volumes vary. We do not guarantee any specific wait time, availability, or level of service, and calls are answered on a best-effort basis as volunteers become available. We are always working to reduce wait times, but we cannot promise an immediate response.
4. Confidentiality and Call Recording
Your privacy is important to us. Calls may be recorded for quality control and volunteer training purposes. Recordings are handled in accordance with our privacy practices and are not shared outside the organization except where we are required or permitted to do so by law.
5. Respectful Conduct
We ask all callers to communicate respectfully with our volunteers. Harmful or abusive language may result in your call being ended and may lead to restricted or terminated access to this service. This policy exists to protect the wellbeing of the volunteers who make this service possible.
6. No Professional Advice
Support provided through this line is not a substitute for professional medical, psychiatric, psychological, or legal advice or treatment. The service is provided on an “as-is,” best-effort basis, without warranties of any kind, express or implied. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Distress Centres of Greater Toronto, its volunteers, and its affiliated network are not liable for any outcome, decision, or harm arising from the use of, or inability to reach, this service.
Last Revised: 25Aug26
Privacy Policy
The Distress Centres of Greater Toronto (“DGCT”, “we”, “our”, or “us”) is committed to protecting personal information in a manner consistent with fair information principles, including the CSA Model Code for the Protection of Personal Information. Our privacy program is designed around those principles and is administered in a manner appropriate to applicable legal requirements for our services. We will not share your personal information, except as required by law, to protect life and safety, or as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy. We maintain physical, organizational, and technological safeguards to protect your information.
This Privacy Policy applies to all personal information we collect, use or disclose in connection with our services and programs (in person, digitally, online, or offline). The term “personal information” means information about an identifiable individual; it does not include de-identified or aggregated information that cannot reasonably be associated with an identifiable individual.
If we refer you to other organizations or direct you to third party resources, this Policy does not apply to those interactions, and DCGT is not accountable for those interactions.
We collect, use, and disclose personal information for the following purposes:
When you call our inbound distress phone lines, you are not required to provide your name in order to receive our services, but some of the information we learn could result in us being able to identify you. For continuity of service, we record some details about our interactions with you, including your phone number, in a secure database.
DCGT also collects personal information from employees, volunteers, and individuals applying for employment or volunteer positions for purposes such as recruitment, administration, payroll, benefits, volunteer coordination, legal and regulatory compliance, and internal operations.
We collect the minimum personal information reasonably necessary to fulfill the purposes identified above. This may include:
Contact and Identification Information:
Interaction and Communication Records:
For Survivor Support Services:
For Outbound Support Calls:
For Medication Reminders:
Technical and Device Information:
Demographic Information
We use and disclose personal information only for the purposes identified above or where applicable law permits or requires it. We take reasonable steps to ensure that we only use or disclose the minimum personal information necessary for the specific purpose and circumstances.
We may anonymize your information and use it for evaluating, planning, and improving our services. Anonymized information is information that does not identify you or anyone else and cannot reasonably be used to do so. We use various methods and safeguards to anonymize information, such as removing or encrypting personal identifiers, aggregating data, and applying statistical techniques.
We may disclose information to third parties with your consent, or where we are permitted or required by law to do so. For example, if we are concerned about a risk of harm, we may need to take steps to ensure your safety or the safety of others, such as reaching out to emergency responders or appropriate authorities. If we need to share your information, we will involve you in the process as much as possible.
We may also use or disclose information to manage threats, abuse, or attacks on our responders or systems and may restrict access to services where it is necessary to protect safety and service integrity.
We retain personal information only as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected and to meet legal or operational requirements. The retention periods for personal information vary, depending on the services at issue, legal obligations, and our reporting requirements. At the end of the retention period, the data is de-identified, aggregated, or securely destroyed using safeguards appropriate to the sensitivity of the information.
When you contact us by telephone, our systems will automatically remove any caller ID block that you have initiated. We collect and use this information to promote safety of callers and our staff. For example, we may share the number with emergency responders if there is a risk of harm to you or others, or we may use it to manage abusive treatment towards our staff.
We record all calls for safety, quality assurance, and training purposes. Authorized supervisors have access to these recordings. These recordings are reviewed if there are complaints or issues arising from a call, or for training purposes to improve our service delivery. These recordings are stored in a secure location and retained only as long as necessary for those purposes. You can request that we do not use your recorded call(s) for training purposes.
We seek meaningful consent for the collection, use, and disclosure of personal information, except where consent is not required or permitted by law. Where capacity is in question, we take a contextual approach to assess meaningful consent and use the least intrusive means to promote safety.
Consent may be express (for example, where you request monitoring or call-backs) or implied (for example, when you elect to share information during a conversation so we can respond).
You may withdraw consent at any time by contacting our Privacy Officer, subject to legal or operational requirements and reasonable notice. A withdrawal of consent is not retroactive and applies only going forward, and it may limit our ability to provide services or conduct safety checks in urgent circumstances.
We transfer personal information to third party service providers (including telecommunications, cloud hosting, analytics, and security vendors) who support our services. We require these providers to protect personal information with appropriate safeguards and to process it only for our purposes under contractual obligations. We require our service providers to store personal information in Canada. But some providers may be located outside your province or Canada; as a result, your information may be subject to the laws of those jurisdictions and accessed by courts, law enforcement, or regulators in those places. We take steps to assess and mitigate privacy and security risks related to cross-border processing.
We take reasonable steps to keep personal information as accurate, complete, and up-to-date as is necessary for the purposes for which it is to be used.
We follow industry standards to safeguard personal information. These standards include administrative, technical, and physical measures appropriate to the sensitivity of the personal information, including access controls and role-based permissions; staff and volunteer screening, training, and confidentiality agreements; secure network architecture; encryption of data in transit and at rest where appropriate; logging and monitoring; and structured incident response procedures. We regularly review safeguards and adjust them to address evolving risks.
On written request and after we verify your identity (and authority, where applicable), we will inform you of the existence of your personal information and provide access to it, subject to limited exceptions (for example, where access would reveal another person’s personal information, compromise safety, or be subject to legal privilege). You may also request corrections to your personal information, and we will amend or annotate records as appropriate.
Our Privacy Officer will reply in writing to a request for access or correction no later than 30 days after the date the request is received. We will explain the reasons for any refusal and describe any available recourse.
Access to your personal information will be provided at no cost or for a minimal fee. If a fee applies, we will provide an estimate in advance and obtain your agreement before proceeding. The fee will depend on the format and volume of the records requested.
You may raise questions or complaints about our compliance with this Policy by contacting our Privacy Officer using the details below. We will investigate and respond in a timely manner and will take appropriate steps to address substantiated concerns, which may include updating our practices or providing additional training.
If you visit our websites or use our online services, we and our service providers may use cookies and similar technologies to operate the site, remember preferences, measure traffic and usage, and improve user experience. You can manage cookies through your browser settings; however, disabling cookies may affect site functionality. Where we use analytics tools, we do so to generate aggregated statistics and not to identify individuals, unless you are signed into an account-based feature you have chosen to use.
We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes to our practices, technologies, or legal requirements. We will post changes and update the effective date. Your continued use of the services following any update indicates acceptance of the revised Policy.
To ask questions, exercise your rights of access or correction, withdraw consent, or submit a privacy complaint, please contact our Privacy Officer at:
privacy@ dcogt.com
or by mail at:
Privacy Officer
Distress Centres of Greater Toronto
Box 243, Adelaide P.O.
Toronto, Ontario, M5C 2J4
We will investigate complaints and take appropriate steps.
