Terms of Use for Third-Party Social Media

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) provides leadership in the growth and development of a competitive, innovative and sustainable Canadian agriculture and agri-food sector.

To connect with us and stay-up-to-date on AAFC’s programs and services, you, the social media user, can visit AAFC's official social media accounts on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. There are a few things that we need to tell you about our sites and that you need to understand before visiting us.

When you go on a third party social media site, you are bound by their own terms and conditions, policies, and rules. You are strongly encouraged to read them. Here are links to get you started:

When you participate in, subscribe to, join, follow and/or visit us on AAFC's official social media sites, you also agree to AAFC's Terms of Use for Third-Party Social Media. Review these terms regularly. They can change without notice and will automatically replace any previous version that you agreed to. These terms do not modify your agreement with the third party social media provider.

Privacy

Here is what you need to know about AAFC's privacy practices:

AAFC is subject to the Access to Information Act and Privacy Act. Information you post to AAFC's social media pages may be copied, stored, accessed or disclosed by us in response to a request under either of these Acts. It may also be used to respond to inquiries, or for statistical, evaluation and reporting purposes.

Any personal information collected and used through this process is authorized by the Financial Administration Act, in accordance with the Policy on Communications and Federal Identity and described in Personal Information Bank PSU 914 (Public Communications) and Personal Information Bank PSU 938 (Outreach Activities).

AAFC social media accounts are open to the public. This means your comments or posts are not private. AAFC is not responsible for personal information posted by others.

To protect your own privacy and the privacy of others, we recommend that you avoid posting anything personal about yourself or anyone else.

For more information about AAFC's privacy practices, you may refer to AAFC's Access to Information and Privacy Services.

Frequency

We understand that the Web is a 24/7 medium, and your comments are welcome at any time. You can generally expect to see AAFC's new content posted on Monday to Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. EST/EDT.

No Endorsement

AAFC's decision to "follow", "favourite", "friend", "subscribe" to or interact with another social media user or account does not imply an endorsement of that account, channel, page or site, and neither does sharing (retweeting, liking, reposting or linking to) content from another user.

AAFC's social media accounts may post or display links or ads for websites that are not under our control. We are not responsible for the information found through these links or ads, nor do we endorse these sites or their content.

Feedback

Feedback and interaction is highly encouraged. All comments, as well as email sent to our social media accounts, will be read. Emerging themes or helpful suggestions will be passed to the relevant people at AAFC. Although we are not able to reply individually to all feedback, they will be handled on a case-by-case basis and responded to when deemed appropriate.

User-Generated Comments

AAFC welcomes your comments and expects them to be respectful.

Comments posted that violate Canadian law may be removed and disclosed to law enforcement authorities. Comments that violate our Terms of Use may also be deleted and may also result in us blocking the user in question to prevent further inappropriate comments.

We will take steps to remove or block users if they do not abide by these Terms of Use. We may also report or flag a user to the social media platform's administrators for behaviour that violates these Terms of Use.

The comments posted by others on AAFC`s social media accounts do not represent our views, nor do we verify or confirm the accuracy of posted comments.

AAFC will not engage in issues of partisan politics or answer questions that go against these terms.

AAFC moderates all comments and reserves the right to remove content that is not appropriate, including any of the following:

  • racist, hateful, sexist, homophobic, defamatory, or messages that threaten injury or death
  • abusive, aggressive, coarse, vulgar, violent, obscene, or pornographic comments
  • comments that encourage or suggest illegal activity
  • messages that violate copyright or other intellectual property rights
  • comments not sent by the author and/or posted by anonymous or robot accounts
  • repetitive posts copied and pasted by multiple users
  • messages that violate an individual's privacy

Although the above list is not exhaustive, when contributing content to an AAFC social media account, you grant AAFC permission to use, copy, reproduce, disclose, summarize or translate any comments or content you provide.

If a comment or a question posed to us requires more detail, then we may develop a formal response and distribute it through other channels such as other social media platforms (in addition to the one you used) or through our website.

If you have additional questions or concerns, please address them through official correspondence as detailed in the Contact Us section of our website.

Accessibility

AAFC is committed to achieving a high standard of accessibility as defined in the Standard on Web Accessibility and the Standard on Optimizing Websites and Applications for Mobile Devices. In the event of difficulty accessing content on our social media accounts, equivalent information can be found in an accessible format on our website. You may also Contact Us for assistance in obtaining alternate formats.

Here is additional information about accessibility on each social media account:

  • YouTube: We enable all available accessibility features such as subtitles and closed captioning. Full text transcripts of each video are provided on our website. Text descriptions accompany each video.
  • Twitter: Most tweets refer to existing content on AAFC Online. However, if you have any problems accessing our tweets, another version of Twitter is available via Easy chirp (previously known as Accessible Twitter).
  • Facebook and LinkedIn: Descriptions of images and text alternatives where an image contains text or conveys information through a diagram is provided.

Copyright

Information posted by AAFC is subject to the Copyright Act of Canada. It is also subject to the policies of each individual social media provider. For more information, see the Terms and Conditions page.

Official Languages

AAFC respects the Official Languages Act and is committed to ensuring that our information is available in both English and French and that both versions are of equal quality. We maintain two accounts on most social media platforms, one in English and one in French. Each social media platform we use has language options and provides instructions on how to set your language preferences on that site.

We reply to comments in the official language in which they are posted. If we think the response is a question of general public interest, we may translate a summary of the question and provide the information in both official languages.

We may share links that direct users to sites of organizations or other entities that are not subject to the Official Languages Act and available only in the language(s) in which they are written. When content is available in only one language, we make an effort to provide similar content in the other official language.

Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada Employee Use of Social Media

Some AAFC employees communicate via social media in their personal and professional capacity under their own names or pseudonyms. Despite their professional affiliation with AAFC, the conduct of employees on social media in their personal capacity does not represent the official or unofficial position or views of AAFC. Content posted by employees in their personal and professional capacity should be considered the product of each individual as a private citizen.

No Liability

Third party social media websites are subject to downtime that may be out of AAFC's control. As such, we accept no responsibility for content on the third party site becoming unresponsive or unavailable.

Contact Information

Our social media accounts are managed by the Public Affairs Branch of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, located at:

1341 Baseline Road
Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0C5
Email: aafc.socialmedia-mediassociaux.aac@agr.gc.ca

For further contact details, please see the Contact Us page.

Media Enquiries

Reporters are asked to send questions to Media Enquiries and to refrain from submitting questions to us on our social media platforms.

Media representatives can contact AAFC's Media Relations Team during regular working hours and on an emergency basis after regular working hours by phone at 1-866-345-7972 or 613-773-7972, or by email at aafc.mediarelations-relationsmedias.aac@agr.gc.ca.

Date modified: