Privacy Policy

Who we are

Oakstead Tree & Property Care is an arborist consulting business at 7040 West Saanich Rd, Brentwood Bay, BC. Our Certified Arborists provide assessments, reports and consulting, including on-site diagnostic work such as Air Spading and resistograph mapping. When you need hands-on tree, landscaping, property or construction work, we refer it to vetted local partners.

This policy covers the information we collect through this website, by phone and by email, and while we work with you as a client.

Our Privacy Officer

Our Privacy Officer is responsible for how we handle personal information and for answering your questions and requests.

• Privacy Officer, Oakstead Tree & Property Care
• 7040 West Saanich Rd, Brentwood Bay, BC
• Phone: (250) 888-9222

What we collect

When you request a consultation or referral

• Your name, email address and phone number, and how you prefer to be contacted.
• The property address, postal code and municipality.
• The services you're interested in, the number of trees, your timeline, whether it's part of a development project, and your message.
• Your choices on the form: that you read this policy, whether you agree to partner sharing, and the version of the consent wording you saw.

When you upload files

• Photos, plans or documents you choose to attach, such as site plans or pictures of your trees. Please don't upload anything you don't want us to see.

When you call or email us

• Your name, contact details and whatever you tell us about your trees or property.

Automatically, when you visit the site

• How you found our site: the page you landed on, the referring website, and any campaign tags in the link (UTM parameters). We store these with a request you submit.
• Ad click IDs (gclid, gbraid, wbraid and msclkid) when you arrive from an ad. Until you allow advertising cookies, these stay in your browser for that session only. We save them with your request only if you allowed advertising cookies.
• A Google Analytics client ID, saved with your request only if you allowed analytics cookies.
• Your browser type and a one-way scrambled version of your IP (internet protocol) address, the number that identifies your internet connection. We use it to stop spam and abuse.
• Your cookie choices, as described below.

The website form never asks for payment card details.

How we use it

• To respond to your request, arrange a consultation, and prepare assessments, arborist reports or permit support.
• To refer hands-on work to partner companies, but only if you agree (see Partner referrals below).
• To send you transactional emails about your request, such as a confirmation and a notice naming any partner we referred you to.
• To invoice clients, take payments and keep accounting records.
• To protect the site and form from spam, fraud and abuse.
• To understand which pages are useful and whether our ads lead to enquiries, only with your consent.
• To meet our legal and tax obligations.

We use your information only for these purposes, or for another purpose you agree to or that the law allows.

Cookies, analytics and advertising

Optional cookies are off by default for everyone. They stay off until you choose Accept all or turn on Analytics or Advertising in the cookie settings. Reject non-essential works just as easily, and you can change your choice at any time with the Cookie settings link.

Essential

• oak_consent: remembers your cookie choice. Kept for 12 months.
• Cloudflare Turnstile: checks that a real person is using the request form. It may use essential technical data and cookies for that check only.
• Vercel Web Analytics and Speed Insights: count page views and measure page speed without cookies. Vercel identifies a visit with a request hash (a scrambled code made from the request) that is discarded after 24 hours.

Before you make a choice

• Google tags may load with every consent signal set to denied. In that state they set no cookies and send cookieless pings (small signals that use no cookies), such as a signal that a page was viewed, which Google uses for aggregate measurement.

Analytics (only if you allow it)

• Google Analytics cookies (_ga and _ga_*): show how visitors use the site.
• Microsoft Clarity cookies (_clck and _clsk): show how pages are used through heatmaps and session recordings. Clarity loads only after analytics consent, and it masks what you type into forms.

Advertising (only if you allow it)

• Google Ads cookies (_gcl_*): measure whether an ad click led to an enquiry.
• oak_attr: our own cookie that keeps ad click IDs and campaign tags for 90 days so we can tell which ad led to a request.
• Google Ads enhanced conversions: when you submit a request, your email address and phone number are sent to Google in hashed form (converted into a scrambled code) to match the enquiry to an ad click. Google does not receive your email or phone number in readable form.
• Meta Pixel cookies (_fbp, and _fbc when you arrive from a Meta ad): measure whether Facebook and Instagram ads lead to enquiries. The pixel loads only after advertising consent, and we don't send Meta your name, email address or phone number.

Service providers we use

These companies process information on our behalf to run the site and our business. They may use it only to provide their service to us.

• Google: Google Analytics and Google Ads, including enhanced conversions, after your consent.
• Microsoft: Microsoft Clarity, after analytics consent.
• Meta: Meta Pixel for Facebook and Instagram ad measurement, after advertising consent.
• Vercel: website hosting, cookieless Web Analytics and Speed Insights.
• Supabase: stores quote requests and uploaded files in its Canada (Central) region.
• Resend: delivers our transactional emails.
• Cloudflare: Turnstile spam check on the request form.
• Upstash: rate limiting that blocks repeated or abusive form submissions.
• Intuit QuickBooks: invoicing, payments and accounting for clients.

Information stored outside Canada

We store quote requests and uploaded files with Supabase in its Canada (Central) region. Some of our other providers store or process information outside Canada, including in the United States. These providers are Google, Microsoft, Meta, Vercel, Resend, Cloudflare, Upstash and Intuit QuickBooks. Information stored in another country is subject to that country's laws. Authorities there may be able to access it.

Partner referrals

Oakstead refers most hands-on tree, landscaping, property and construction work to partner companies. Our own Certified Arborists carry out on-site diagnostic work such as Air Spading, resistograph mapping and increment bore sampling. When you ask for work we refer, the request form shows a separate checkbox that is unticked by default. If you tick it, you agree that we may share your name, contact details, address and request with up to 2 partner companies so they can contact you.

• What we share: your name, phone number, email address, municipality, street address, the services you asked about, the number of trees, your timeline and your message.
• What we don't share: your uploaded files.
• If we refer you, we'll email you the names of the partner companies we sent your request to.
• Our service doesn't depend on this consent. If you leave the box unticked, we share nothing with partners. We can give you partner contact details so you can reach them yourself.
• Construction and renovation projects are referred to CSC Current Solutions Contracting Inc. CSC Current Solutions Contracting Inc. is owned by Justin Curran, a shareholder in Oakstead. Justin has no operational role at Oakstead. Architectural design, planning and drafting are referred to Dot Cross Design, which is owned by Caspar Gescher. Each partner handles the information it receives under its own privacy practices.

How long we keep it

• Spam and rejected submissions: deleted after 30 days.
• Uploaded files that never became part of a submitted request: deleted after 24 hours.
• Requests from people who don't become clients, and their files: deleted after 24 months.
• Copies of the emails we send: the stored message content is removed after 90 days.
• Clients: as long as needed for the engagement and legal/tax obligations.
• Cookies: as listed in the cookies section above.

How we protect it

• The site and form use encrypted connections (HTTPS).
• Requests and files are kept in private storage that only authorized Oakstead staff can reach. Our team gets uploaded files through links that expire.
• Access keys for our systems stay on our servers and are never sent to your browser.
• Spam checks and rate limits protect the form from abuse.
• We collect only what we need and delete it on the schedule above.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach creates a real risk of significant harm, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

Your right to access and correct

You can ask what personal information we hold about you, how we've used it and who we've shared it with. You can also ask us to correct it. Contact our Privacy Officer by phone or mail using the details above.

We'll respond within 30 business days, as British Columbia's Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) requires. We may need to confirm your identity first.

Your choices and how to withdraw consent

• Cookies: use the Cookie settings link on this page or in the site footer. Changes take effect right away.
• Google: opt out of Google Analytics at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout and manage ad personalization at myadcenter.google.com.
• Meta: manage how Facebook and Instagram use ad data in your Facebook or Instagram ad preferences.
• Partner sharing: call or write to our Privacy Officer and we will stop sharing your request with partners from that point.
• Your request: you can ask us to delete your request and files, unless we must keep them for legal or tax reasons.

Withdrawing consent doesn't affect our ability to answer your request; it may only limit how we can help, for example if we can't pass your details to a partner.

Concerns and complaints

Please contact our Privacy Officer first so we can try to fix the problem.

If you're not satisfied, you can contact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia (oipc.bc.ca). Some information crosses provincial or national borders. For that information, you can also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca).

Emails we send

We only send transactional emails about a request you made: a confirmation of what you asked for, next steps, and a notice naming any partner we referred you to. These emails contain no promotions.

We don't keep a marketing email list, send newsletters or send marketing texts.

Changes to this policy

We'll update this page when our practices change and show the new effective date at the top. If a change affects what you agreed to on the request form, we'll ask for your consent again.