Terms of Use

Definitions

The following terms have defined meanings throughout this document:

“Authorized organizational users” means adults employed by or volunteering with organizations that have been granted access to Crisis Response Companion and who hold appropriate training or roles for its intended purposes.

“CISM” means Critical Incident Stress Management, a structured approach to preventing and mitigating the negative effects of critical incident stress for individuals and groups.

“Crisis Response Companion” means the AI-powered tool provided by the Operator.

“Feedback” means comments, suggestions, corrections, evaluations, ideas, reports, or other material that a user intentionally submits through a designated feedback, support, or reporting feature. Feedback includes any prompt, output, chat excerpt, attachment, or other content that the user intentionally includes with that submission.

“ICISF” means the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation, the organization that provides training, education, and guidance related to CISM.

“Operator,” “we,” “us,” or “our” means CounterStress Solutions Inc.

“Terms” means these Terms of Use, as updated from time to time.

“You” or “user” means any individual who accesses or uses Crisis Response Companion, whether on their own behalf or on behalf of an organization.

1. Important safety notice

Crisis Response Companion is not an emergency service. It is not monitored by a human in real time, cannot assess anyone’s safety including you or someone you are helping, and cannot contact emergency services, crisis lines, employers, family members, supervisors, clinicians, or peer support teams on your behalf.

Do not use Crisis Response Companion as a substitute for urgent care, crisis intervention, suicide intervention, violence-risk response, medical care, mental health care, workplace emergency procedures, organizational reporting duties, or any required escalation process.

A person seeking immediate crisis support should contact an appropriate human support, such as a trusted person, qualified professional, crisis line, or emergency service. In Canada, call or text 9-8-8 for suicide crisis support. Call 9-1-1 where there is immediate danger or an emergency.

If you are a helper, peer supporter, responder, or other professional using Crisis Response Companion to support others, be aware that exposure to critical incidents and crisis-related content can result in secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, or compassion fatigue. Crisis lines and mental health resources are available to helpers as well as to those they support. This tool does not monitor your wellbeing and cannot alert others if you are in distress.

2. Nature and purpose of Crisis Response Companion

Crisis Response Companion is intended to provide general information, planning suggestions, reflective questions, communication support, and educational assistance about Critical Incident Stress Management, psychological first aid, peer support, crisis intervention principles, crisis response planning, and post-incident support.

Crisis Response Companion is intended to support trained human judgment. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, psychotherapy, counselling, clinical assessment, crisis intervention, suicide intervention, emergency response, legal advice, or professional supervision.

Crisis Response Companion does not replace a physician, psychologist, psychotherapist, psychiatrist, counsellor, social worker, nurse, crisis responder, peer support team, chaplain, supervisor, lawyer, privacy officer, human resources professional, any other qualified professional, or a caring person.

3. CISM and ICISF-related limitations

Crisis Response Companion may provide information about Critical Incident Stress Management, peer support, and crisis response planning. It does not conduct or facilitate any CISM intervention.

Crisis Response Companion must not be used to replace formal training from a knowledgeable and trained person including ICISF-certified training, supervision, field experience, team protocols, clinical consultation, or organizational policy.

Where users are planning or supporting CISM services, they remain responsible for following applicable training, role boundaries, organizational procedures, the ICISF model, or other applicable models under which they have been trained.

A CISD under the ICISF model also requires the presence of a qualified mental health professional. Crisis Response Companion is not that mental health professional and does not satisfy that requirement. Crisis Response Companion does not replace any person involved in crisis response or peer support.

Crisis Response Companion may assist with preparation, documentation ideas, discussion prompts, or general planning considerations, but actual peer support, defusings, CISDs, Crisis Management Briefings, Rest Information Transition Services, referrals, and follow-up must be performed by appropriately trained and authorized people.

4. Eligibility and intended users

You may use Crisis Response Companion only if you are legally permitted to do so in your jurisdiction and can comply with these Terms.

Crisis Response Companion is intended for use in Canada by adults and by authorized organizational users, including trained peer supporters, CISM team members, instructors, responders, supervisors, chaplains, and other helpers using it for planning, education, documentation support, or reflection.

While Crisis Response Companion is primarily designed for the Canadian context, including Canadian legal standards, professional frameworks, and crisis resources, users outside Canada may access it. Users outside Canada do so at their own risk and must satisfy themselves that use is lawful in their jurisdiction.

Canadian law will continue to govern these Terms regardless of where you are located. References to specific resources, standards, or legal obligations in this tool may not apply or may differ in other jurisdictions.

Crisis Response Companion is not intended for use by children or youth. Users under the age of majority in their province or territory should not use it or be permitted to use it.

Persons in crisis should not use Crisis Response Companion as a source of support. While Crisis Response Companion may provide educational information or reflective questions, it is not designed to be a counselling or crisis intervention tool.

A person seeking immediate crisis support should contact an appropriate human support, such as a trusted person, qualified professional, crisis line, or emergency service. In Canada, call or text 9-8-8 for suicide crisis support. Call 9-1-1 where there is immediate danger or an emergency.

If you use Crisis Response Companion on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have authority to do so and that your use complies with your organization’s policies, privacy requirements, safety procedures, and reporting obligations.

You should review the Crisis Response Companion Privacy Policy and fully understand the implications of using an account provided by your organization.

5. User responsibility

You are responsible for how you use Crisis Response Companion and for evaluating whether any output is accurate, current, safe, appropriate, or suitable for your circumstances.

You must use human judgment before relying on, sharing, recording, or acting on any output. Outputs may be incomplete, inaccurate, inappropriate, biased, outdated, or unsuitable for the specific incident, organization, culture, profession, province, territory, or participant group involved.

You must not stop, delay, replace, or change any professional care, safety action, escalation process, workplace procedure, referral, treatment, medication, reporting obligation, or emergency response because of an output from Crisis Response Companion.

6. Professional and helper use

If you use Crisis Response Companion to support another person, group, workplace, agency, or organization, you remain responsible for:

• assessing urgency through appropriate human processes;
• applying your training and role boundaries;
• following your organization’s policies and procedures;
• obtaining appropriate consent where required;
• protecting confidentiality and privacy;
• escalating safety concerns appropriately;
• consulting qualified professionals when needed;
• documenting in accordance with your organization’s standards;
• arranging follow-up after crisis intervention services, including first follow-up within 24 hours of the completion of crisis intervention services unless a different timing is justified and documented.

With respect to consent: Crisis Response Companion cannot obtain consent on your behalf. Where consent is legally or ethically required, whether from an individual you are supporting, your organization, or another party, obtaining that consent is entirely your responsibility. This applies even when you are using Crisis Response Companion to assist with preparation, documentation, or reflection related to a consent-dependent activity.

Where your use of this tool involves information about another person, you must not enter identifiable third-party information, even with consent; only properly de-identified descriptions may be used.

Crisis Response Companion must not be used as the sole basis for decisions about suicide risk, violence risk, abuse, neglect, family or gender-based violence, fitness for duty, medical leave, return to work, mandatory reporting, emergency intervention, or referral needs.

7. No medical, clinical, legal, or regulatory advice

Crisis Response Companion does not diagnose, prevent, monitor, treat, mitigate, or manage any disease, disorder, injury, condition, or health concern.

Crisis Response Companion does not determine legal rights, professional duties, privacy obligations, employment obligations, mandatory reporting duties, regulatory status, or liability exposure.

You should obtain advice from qualified professionals when medical, clinical, legal, regulatory, employment, privacy, or safety decisions are required.

Outputs from Crisis Response Companion must never be used as the sole basis for a clinical diagnosis, a safety assessment, or a mandatory reporting decision. These activities require the judgment of a qualified professional with direct knowledge of the individual and situation involved. Using AI-generated output as a substitute for that professional judgment creates serious risk of harm.

Outputs may reflect AI-generated generalizations based on training data that may not reflect the specific individual, cultural context, professional setting, jurisdiction, or incident type you are dealing with. Information that appears accurate and authoritative may nonetheless be incorrect, incomplete, or inappropriate for your situation. You must independently verify any information before relying on it.

8. Privacy and sensitive information

Crisis-related and mental-health-related information can be highly sensitive. You should not provide more personal, identifying, confidential, health-related, workplace, operational, or incident-specific information than is reasonably necessary.

Do not enter personal information about another person.

Use non-identifying descriptions, general facts, role-based labels, and minimal necessary detail. For example, use “a team member,” “a responder,” or “a participant” rather than names or identifying details. We suggest the use of pseudonyms or aliases known only to you if the use of a name is somehow necessary to follow a narrative or separate characters while using Crisis Response Companion.

The collection, use, disclosure, retention, deletion, and safeguarding of personal information are addressed in the Privacy Policy. You should review the Privacy Policy before using Crisis Response Companion.

You may delete an individual chat through the chat interface. Deletion and retention of the associated prompts and outputs are governed by the Privacy Policy.

9. Confidentiality limits

Crisis Response Companion is an AI tool, not a confidential human peer supporter, clinician, lawyer, chaplain, crisis interventionist or crisis line.

Do not assume that information entered into Crisis Response Companion is protected by professional privilege or by the confidentiality rules that apply to a formal therapeutic, legal, chaplaincy, health-care, employment, or peer-support relationship. Personal information remains subject to the Privacy Policy and applicable privacy law.

If you are bound by workplace confidentiality, peer support confidentiality, health information rules, professional standards, or statutory duties, you remain responsible for complying with them.

Confidentiality of information you enter into Crisis Response Companion may be affected by a contract between Crisis Response Companion and your organization. You should review and understand the applicable contract and privacy policy.

Given the highly sensitive nature of crisis-related information, you should be aware of how your data is handled. For information about how personal information entered into Crisis Response Companion is collected, used, retained, disclosed, and deleted, please review the Privacy Policy before using this tool. Do not enter more information than is necessary for the purpose at hand.

10. Prohibited uses

By accepting these terms, you agree that you will not use Crisis Response Companion:

• in an emergency as a substitute for immediate human intervention;
• to obtain or provide instructions for self-harm, suicide, violence, abuse, harassment, stalking, exploitation, or illegal activity;
• to avoid reporting abuse, neglect, violence, unsafe conduct, or other matters that must be reported;
• to upload or disclose personal identifying information about another person;
• to generate discriminatory, misleading, exploitative, or harmful content;
• to reverse engineer, scrape, copy, sell, sublicense, or misuse Crisis Response Companion;
• to interfere with, bypass, or undermine safety controls, usage limits, or platform protections;
• to impersonate a clinician, crisis responder, lawyer, supervisor, peer supporter, or other qualified person;
• to operate in any jurisdiction where AI-assisted mental health, crisis response, or peer support tools are subject to specific licensing, registration, or regulatory requirements, without first satisfying those requirements; or
• in any manner that violates applicable law, professional regulations, or ethical standards governing your role, organization, or jurisdiction.

By accepting these terms, you agree that you will not use Crisis Response Companion as the sole source of information, opinion or decision-making:

• to assess suicide risk, violence risk, abuse risk, medical urgency, or emergency needs;
• to make employment, discipline, fitness-for-duty, return-to-work, insurance, legal, medical, or other significant decisions about a person without appropriate human review; or
• to make other significant decisions that may affect another person.

The Operator may restrict, suspend, or terminate access where misuse, safety concerns, legal concerns, privacy concerns, or policy violations are identified.

11. AI limitations

Crisis Response Companion uses artificial intelligence to generate responses. AI outputs are probabilistic and may vary even when prompts are similar.

Crisis Response Companion may misunderstand context, omit important considerations, overstate confidence, provide outdated information, fail to identify a safety concern, or generate content that is not appropriate for a particular workplace, group, culture, profession, province, territory, or incident.

Crisis Response Companion does not know all facts unless you provide them, and you should not provide sensitive facts that could be used or aggregated with other information to identify a third-party unless doing so is ethical, lawful, necessary, and that person has provided informed consent.

AI systems, including Crisis Response Companion, can generate factually incorrect information presented with apparent confidence and authority, a phenomenon sometimes called “hallucination.” This is particularly dangerous in crisis support contexts where a plausible-sounding but incorrect protocol, resource reference, or piece of guidance could lead to serious harm. You must independently verify any factual information, resource details, or procedural guidance before acting on it, and never treat AI generated output as a reliable substitute for authoritative professional or organizational sources.

12. Intellectual property

Crisis Response Companion, including its name, configuration, instructions, workflows, prompts, written materials, structure, branding, and related content, is owned by the Operator or its licensors, except where otherwise stated.

Subject to these Terms, you are granted a limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to access and use Crisis Response Companion for its intended purpose.

You must not copy, modify, sell, sublicense, republish, reverse engineer, decompile, scrape, or commercially exploit Crisis Response Companion except with written permission from the Operator or as permitted by law.

13. User content and feedback

You are responsible for any information, prompt, document, or content you submit. You represent that you have the rights, authority, and permissions required to submit that content.

If you provide feedback, suggestions, corrections, or ideas about Crisis Response Companion to the Operator, the Operator may use that feedback to improve Crisis Response Companion without compensation to you, unless otherwise agreed in writing.

If you include content in your feedback, suggestion, correction, or idea that was part of your prompt or the output you received, then that feedback content may be used and retained by the Operator for development purposes and may be disclosed to third parties at the Operator’s sole discretion.

14. Availability and changes

Crisis Response Companion may be modified, suspended, restricted, or discontinued at any time, including for safety, legal, privacy, technical, operational, platform, or business reasons.

The Operator may update these Terms from time to time. If changes are material, the Operator will provide notice in a manner appropriate to the change. Continued use after the effective date of updated Terms means you accept the updated Terms, unless applicable law requires a different process.

Should any update or modification to Crisis Response Companion require notice due to privacy policy implications, such notice will be provided pursuant to the Privacy Policy.

Where changes are material, notice will be provided by one or more of the following methods: an in-application notice displayed upon next login or use; an updated effective date prominently displayed at the top of these Terms; or email notification to registered users where email contact information is available.

You are responsible for reviewing and accepting these Terms and related updates periodically when accessing Crisis Response Companion.

The most current version of these Terms will always be accessible via the Privacy Policy link or the contact information at the end of this document.

15. No warranties

Crisis Response Companion is provided on an “as is” and “as available” basis.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Operator makes no warranties, representations, or conditions that Crisis Response Companion will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, accurate, current, complete, appropriate, or suitable for any particular personal, professional, organizational, medical, clinical, legal, crisis response, or CISM purpose.

16. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Operator and its directors, officers, employees, contractors, licensors, service providers, and affiliates will not be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for loss of data, goodwill, revenue, business, opportunity, or other losses arising from or related to your use of, inability to use, or reliance on Crisis Response Companion.

To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, the Operator’s total aggregate liability for any claim arising from or related to Crisis Response Companion or these Terms will be limited to the total fees you paid to the Operator for Crisis Response Companion in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot legally be limited.

17. Indemnity

To the fullest extent permitted by law, you agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Operator and its directors, officers, employees, contractors, licensors, service providers, and affiliates from claims, losses, liabilities, damages, costs, and expenses, including reasonable legal fees, arising from or related to:

• your misuse of Crisis Response Companion;
• your breach of these Terms;
• your unlawful or unauthorized disclosure of another person’s information;
• your violation of privacy, confidentiality, employment, professional, organizational, or safety obligations;
• your reliance on output without appropriate human review;
• your infringement of another person’s rights.

18. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of Ontario and the applicable laws of Canada, without regard to conflict of law principles.

The courts of Ontario will have jurisdiction over disputes relating to these Terms or Crisis Response Companion, unless applicable consumer protection or other laws require a different forum.

19. Dispute resolution

Before starting legal proceedings, you agree to contact the Operator at privacy@crcompanion.ca and attempt to resolve the concern informally, unless urgent legal relief is required.

If informal resolution is unsuccessful, either party may pursue their rights through the courts of Ontario, which shall have exclusive jurisdiction subject to any mandatory consumer protection provisions that require a different forum. Nothing in these Terms prevents you from seeking urgent interim or injunctive relief from a court of competent jurisdiction where necessary to prevent irreparable harm.

20. Quebec and French-language considerations

Where required by applicable law, including laws applicable in Quebec, the Operator will provide French-language terms, notices, policies, or consumer disclosures.

The English version of these Terms should not be treated as the only legally operative version for Quebec users unless counsel confirms that approach is lawful and appropriate.

Users in Quebec should be aware that Quebec’s Act Respecting the Protection of Personal Information in the Private Sector (Law 25) may impose additional obligations regarding personal information beyond those under the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). These may include enhanced consent requirements, data minimization obligations, mandatory privacy impact assessments for new technologies, and stricter rules around the disclosure of personal information outside Quebec. The Operator’s obligations under Law 25 are addressed in the Privacy Policy. If you have questions about how your personal information is handled under Quebec law, please contact the Operator using the information in section 21.

21. Operator contact

Questions about these Terms may be sent to:

CounterStress Solutions Inc. 72 Nicholson Cr, Minesing, ON, L9X0G9 Email: privacy@crcompanion.ca https://www.crcompanion.com/privacy

The Operator will endeavour to respond to all inquiries within 10 business days. For privacy-related requests, including requests to access, correct, or delete personal information, response times may differ if governed by applicable law.

22. Severability

If any provision of these Terms is found to be invalid, unenforceable, or contrary to applicable law by a court of competent jurisdiction, that provision will be modified to the minimum extent necessary to make it enforceable, or severed from these Terms if modification is not possible. The remaining provisions of these Terms will continue in full force and effect. The invalidity or unenforceability of any provision in one jurisdiction shall not affect the validity or enforceability of that provision in any other jurisdiction.

23. Termination

The Operator may suspend or terminate your access to Crisis Response Companion at any time, with or without notice, for any reason, including where the Operator believes you have violated these Terms or where continued access creates a safety, legal, or operational risk.

You may delete individual chats without terminating your account. Deleting a chat does not necessarily delete other account, billing, usage, support, or security records.

You may stop using Crisis Response Companion at any time by deactivating your account within the account settings. Account closure or termination does not necessarily result in immediate deletion. Information will be retained, deleted, or de-identified as described in the Privacy Policy.

Upon termination or expiry of your access, the following sections will survive and continue to bind you: section 5 (User responsibility), section 6 (Professional and helper use), section 7 (No medical, clinical, legal, or regulatory advice), section 12 (Intellectual property), section 15 (No warranties), section 16 (Limitation of liability), section 17 (Indemnity), section 18 (Governing law), section 19 (Dispute resolution), and section 22 (Severability).