All student and faculty research activities at UTM that involve the use of human subjects must comply with the Tri-Council Policy Statement for Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans (TCPS), and must be reviewed by either the Office of Research Ethics (ORE) if conducted by faculty and/or graduate students, or the local Ethics Review Commitee (ERC) if conducted by undergraduate students as a part of course-based activities.
Research involving human subjects includes:
- Obtaining data about a living individual through intervention or interaction with the individual, or the obtaining of private personal information about the individual;
- Secondary use of data that contains identifying information about a living individual, or data linkage through which living individuals may become identifiable; and/or
- Naturalistic observation, except the observation of individuals in contexts in which it can be expected that the participants are seeking public visibility.
The following research-related activities would generally not require ethics review:
- Assessment activities, such as quality assurance studies, performance reviews or testing within normal educational requirements; and/or
- Research involving only the use of published or publicly available information or materials, performances or archival materials.
As required by the Canadian Council on Animal Care and the Ontario Animals for Research Act, all researchers conducting research or teaching projects involving the use of animals must obtain the approval of the University Animal Care Committee (UACC) before commencing the project. At UTM we have a Local Animal Care Committee (LACC) that reviews all animal use protocols and, if approved, recommends them for the approval of the UACC.