By Julius Melnitzer | November 9, 2024
While Canadian privacy laws allow employers to track employees in a remote or hybrid working arrangement, this surveillance must be related to their job.
“Employers have a proper and reasonable right to supervise their employees and ensure they’re doing their jobs and doing them safely,” says David Young, principal at David Young Law. “The flip side is that employers can’t surveil or track employees in their personal lives without consent.”
Stephen Gillman, a workplace law partner at Levitt LLP, notes employee tracking is nothing new. “Professional truck drivers have been tracked since the technology existed, while call centre workers and bank tellers have each keystroke monitored. The only reason we’re talking about this is because we’re not yet fully used to the idea of so many people working from home.”
Still, only four provinces — British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec — have employee privacy laws. “It’s a patchwork across the country and the privacy commissioner has bemoaned this,” Young says, noting Ontario’s legislation is particularly “half-hearted”.
“Two years ago, the province amended its Employment Standards Act, but all it did was stipulate that employers had to disclose what and when they were [tracking employees] and how they were doing it. The legislation gives no rights to employees and provides no details about what information has to be disclosed.”
Just how far employers can go is dependent on context, says Gillman. MORE . . .
Julius Melnitzer is a Toronto-based legal affairs writer, ghostwriter, writing coach and media trainer. Readers can reach him at [email protected] or https://legalwriter.net/contact.
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