PURPOSE

The purpose of the City of Medicine Hat website is to communicate with and convey information about City services, programs, events and governance to a broad audience within and beyond the community of Medicine Hat.

The City of Medicine Hat website is not a public forum. The City of Medicine Hat permits the establishment of links to external websites on the City's website in conformance with this policy. The purpose of the terms of reference is to ensure that the City of Medicine Hat website is maintained for the exclusive use of the City of Medicine Hat for communicating matters of general public interest via the Internet.

The web terms of reference are intended to protect the City of Medicine Hat's reputation and public image, as represented on the Internet, without hampering or discouraging any individual's desire to participate actively on the Internet.

TERMS OF USE AND LEGAL DISCLAIMER

PLEASE READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE CAREFULLY BEFORE USING THE CITY OF MEDICINE HAT WEBSITE.

Domain Name(s)

The official City of Medicine Hat website is www.medicinehat.ca. The City of Medicine Hat also owns the following domain names: www.city.medicine-hat.ab.ca, www.medicine-hat.ca, www.medicinehatpolice.com, www.esplanade.ca (Esplanade), www.tixx.ca (TIXX Central ticketing service), www.hatsmart.ca (City of Medicine Hat Environmental Initiatives), www.mhtransit.ca (Transit).

Conditions of Use

By using the City of Medicine Hat website, you signify your agreement to these terms of use. If you do not agree to these terms of use, please do not use the City of Medicine Hat website. We reserve the right, at our discretion, to change, modify, add or remove portions of these terms at any time without notice. Please check these terms periodically for changes. Your continued use of this website following the posting of changes to these terms will mean you accept those changes.

The City of Medicine Hat grants to you a limited licence to display on your computer, print, download and use all content that is made available to you on this website, only if you agree to the following terms:

• You will only use the website for personal, educational or non-commercial purposes;
• you will not modify the content of the website and you will display the Copyright notice and these Conditions of Use on each copy of the website;
• you agree that you will not violate (or attempt to violate) the security of this website by hacking, cracking, mail bombing, mounting a denial of service attack, breaching of etiquette, or any other similar malicious, careless or negligent conduct;
• you agree not to upload content or computer code of any type to this website.

Trade Marks/Copyright

The City of Medicine Hat owns all copyright and material on this website. The City logo is a registered Trademark of the City of Medicine Hat, which retains copyright on all text, graphic images and other content. Commercial use of all or any portion of the text, graphics, or content is prohibited without the prior written permission of the City of Medicine Hat. Specific permission for use on or affiliated with a commercial website or other commercial use must be obtained from the City of Medicine Hat by contacting the Webmaster for the City of Medicine Hat.

All product names mentioned on this website are the trademarks of their respective owners. All text, graphics and photos contained in the website are protected under copyright law. This means that the following acts or activities are prohibited without prior, written permission from the City of Medicine Hat:

• modify and/or re-use text, images or other web content from a City server;
• distribute the City's web content; or
• "mirror" the City's information on a non-City server.

Disclaimer and Limited Liability

While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy and veracity of the information on the website, the City of Medicine Hat is not responsible in any way for damages arising out of the use of this website or the accuracy or inaccuracy of the information contained thereon. Although the City of Medicine Hat relies on reputable sources and believes the information posted on this website by the City of Medicine Hat is correct, and attempts to keep the information current, the City of Medicine Hat does not warrant the accuracy or completeness of the information.

The City of Medicine Hat reserves the right to discontinue, change or modify this website at any time without notice. Links to other websites or references to other organizations, products, services or publications do not constitute endorsement or approval by the City of Medicine Hat. The City of Medicine Hat is not responsible for the content and the privacy practices of other websites and encourages you to examine each site's terms of use, privacy policy and disclaimers and make your own decisions regarding the accuracy, reliability and correctness of material and information found.

The City of Medicine Hat will not be liable for the damages arising from third party interception of confidential information over the Internet.

No Endorsement

The City of Medicine Hat does not endorse any products or services that may be referred to on, or linked to, this website.

E-mail

Communication made through this City's e-mail and messaging system is for convenience only and shall not be deemed to constitute legal notice to the City of Medicine Hat or any of its elected officials, officers, employees, agents, agencies or representatives with respect to any existing or potential claim or cause of action or actions or for any other purpose.

Links

To avoid any perception that the City endorses or provides favourable treatment to any private person or business enterprise, no corporate or commercial logos or direct links to vendor sites are allowed. Consistent with the foregoing policy, it is the City's policy to limit external links to the following kinds of entities and organizations:

• Chamber of Commerce, Tourism Medicine Hat, and Economic Development Alliance of Southeast Alberta;
• Other governmental agencies;
• Hospitals;
• Public and private, bona fide educational institutions; and

• Sites operated by nonprofit or not-for-profit agencies with which the City has established statutory, participative, or supportive relationship. The City may choose not to provide a duplicate link if the agency is listed on the Southern Alberta Regional Directory site;
• Commercial sites operated by entities that are official sponsors of City of Medicine Hat events or programs.

Web page providers are responsible for keeping their material reasonably current; and are expected to report significant changes to their material to the City's Webmaster.

The City of Medicine Hat reserves the right to:

• deny an external link to any person, business or organization when it is determined, following review, that the entity or organization for which application is made does not meet the criteria set forth in this policy;
• deny an external link to any person, business or organization which fails to provide all required information, or fails to provide truthful information;
• remove any external link if the nature of the organization or business to which the link relates no longer complies with the City's links policy;
• to discontinue an external link at any time if entities' websites provide or promote false, slanderous, illegal, immoral, or incorrect information at any time, or
• to revise this policy without prior notice when to do so is deemed to be in the best interests of the City.

Links to other sites from this site are provided solely at the discretion of the City of Medicine Hat. Links are provided solely for the convenience for users of this site and generally must be to other sites that support the vision and mission of the City of Medicine Hat. Links to commercial sites will not generally be established, except as noted in this policy. The location of any link established within this site will be entirely at the discretion of the City of Medicine Hat.

Privacy

Any personal information you provide to us is collected, used and disclosed in accordance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FOIPPA).

The City of Medicine Hat does not automatically gather any personal information such as your name, phone number, street or e-mail address. This information is only obtained if you supply it voluntarily, usually through contacting us via e-mail, an application or feedback form, or registering in a secure portion of the site. Any personal information we ask you to provide is collected under the authority of the FOIPPA. The information will only be used for the purpose for which it was collected. The City does not give, share, sell, or transfer any personal information to a third party, unless we are legally required to do so.

The City analyzes user traffic patterns on our website from information that is automatically provided to us by your browser when you visit our site. This information includes the IP address of your computer or network, the date, time, and page you visited on our site, your browser and operating system, and the referring page (the last web page you visited before clicking on a link to our site). We use the aggregated information from all of our visitors to measure server performance and improve the content of our site. We also track the keywords that are entered into our search engine service to measure interest in specific topics, but we do not track which terms a particular user enters.

"Cookies" are text files created by your browser and stored on your system to aid in customizing your browsing experience. The use of cookies is a standard practice among Internet websites and most Internet web browsers may be customized to reject cookies, to only accept or reject cookies by user intervention, or to delete cookies. The City of Medicine Hat does not currently use cookies on its website, but we reserve the right to do so in the future if necessary (primarily to provide e-government services).

The City of Medicine Hat uses linking and searching capabilities to navigate publicly available information from many websites that are not part of our website. The privacy terms of reference described here will most likely not apply to those external sites. We suggest contacting these sites directly if you want information on their data collection and distribution guidelines.