Last updated: June 12, 2026
The short version. ER Compass has no accounts, no cookies, no analytics, no advertising and no trackers. We don't sell or share your data — we don't build a profile of you at all.
Your saved hospitals and settings live only in your own browser. If you use "find the nearest ER," your location is used once to rank ERs and is not stored. A few map and address features are powered by outside services; the table below says exactly what each one receives.
This policy explains what happens to information when you use ercompass.ca ("ER Compass," "the site," "we," "us"). It is written in plain language on purpose. If anything here is unclear, please contact us.
You don't sign in to ER Compass, and there's nothing to sign up for. The site sets no cookies and uses no analytics or advertising tools (no Google Analytics, no Meta/Facebook pixel, no ad networks, no fingerprinting). We are not in the business of collecting personal information, and we don't.
To make the site useful without an account, your browser remembers a few things locally, on your own device, using standard browser storage. This information is never transmitted to our server and we cannot see it:
You can clear all of it at any time by clearing your browser's site data for ercompass.ca. None of it identifies you to us.
This feature is entirely optional and only runs if you ask for it.
We never put your location in a web address we record, never attach it to an identity, and never use it for anything but answering the one request you made.
ER Compass is a small public-interest project and doesn't run its own maps or address databases. To show a map, look up an address, or draw a route, your browser or our server contacts the free community services below. Each one only receives what it needs to do its job, and each has its own privacy practices, which we link to. We don't control these services and we don't receive a profile of you back from them.
| Service | Used for | What it can see |
|---|---|---|
| OpenStreetMap (map tiles) |
Drawing the map | Your device's IP address and the map area you're viewing, when a map loads. Privacy policy ↗ |
| OpenStreetMap Nominatim / Photon (Komoot) (address lookup) |
Turning a typed address into a map point and autocomplete suggestions | The address text you type. Sent from our server, not your browser, and not saved by us. OSM ↗ · Komoot ↗ |
| OSRM (drive times & routing) |
Estimating road drive times to rank ERs, and drawing the route to one | Start and destination coordinates. For ranking drive times the request is made by our server (so OSRM sees our server, not your device); for the drawn route it's made by your browser. About the server ↗ |
| Cloudflare cdnjs (code library host) |
Loading the map and chart code libraries | Your device's IP address when the page loads. Privacy policy ↗ |
If you'd prefer the site not contact any outside service at all, you can browse the hospital, region and city pages, which work without the interactive map.
Like every website, the computer that delivers ER Compass receives your device's IP address and the address of the page you asked for — that's simply how the internet sends you a page. We and our hosting/security layer use this only to deliver the page and protect the site from abuse (for example, blocking a flood of automated requests). We do not use it to identify you, build a profile, or track you across the web, and we don't keep a running access log of the pages you view. We never sell it and never share it for advertising.
The data ER Compass collects and stores is hospital emergency-room wait-time information published by hospitals and health authorities — numbers like "current estimated wait" at a given ER at a given time. It contains no information about visitors to this website. Our open data is about emergency rooms, not about you.
We don't sell, rent, trade or share personal information, because we don't gather it. We would only ever disclose information if we were legally compelled to (for example, a valid court order), and we would limit any such disclosure to exactly what the law requires.
ER Compass is run from Canada and intended mainly for people in Canada. Canadian privacy law — the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and Quebec's Law 25 among others — gives you rights to access, correct, and ask about personal information an organization holds about you, and to complain to a regulator. Because we keep essentially no personal information about visitors, in most cases there is simply nothing for us to retrieve, change, or delete. If you believe we hold information about you, contact us and we'll help. You can also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or, in Quebec, the Commission d'accès à l'information.
ER Compass is a general-audience information tool and is not directed at children. We don't knowingly collect information from anyone, including children. In an emergency involving a child, call 911.
The site is served over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection. Because we don't hold accounts or personal data, there is no store of personal information to be breached. No method of transmission over the internet is ever completely secure, but the absence of collected data is itself the strongest protection we can offer.
If we change how the site works in a way that affects this policy, we'll update this page and change the "last updated" date above. Material changes will be noted here. Because we keep no contact list, we can't notify you individually — please check back if this matters to you.
Questions about privacy, or want to reach the person responsible for the protection of personal information at ER Compass? Email privacy@ercompass.ca.
ER Compass is an independent public-interest project, not a hospital, government body, or medical provider. This page describes our privacy practices; it is not legal advice. See also our Terms of Use.