AI-Powered Workplace Monitoring Expanding Across Canadian Employers Beyond Existing Privacy Frameworks

Canadian employers deploy AI-powered monitoring tools with capabilities including location tracking, activity monitoring, keystroke logging, and in some cases biometric and emotion detection. Federal and provincial privacy commissioners have issued findings on these systems and jointly stated that statutory privacy protections for employees are absent or limited in many jurisdictions.

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada investigated a transportation company's use of audio and video recording in truck cabs that activated whenever the engine was running (PIPEDA-2021-008). The monitoring was described as serving incident investigation and regulatory compliance purposes. The Commissioner found that the continuous audio collection — including when drivers were off-duty or sleeping with the engine running — was "more intrusive than necessary" for the stated purposes. In a separate investigation of Trimac Transportation Services (PIPEDA-2022-006), the Commissioner found that the company installed dash cameras with continuous audio and video recording without adequate transparency about how data could be used. The Commissioner stated that off-duty in-cab audio recording was "highly intrusive" and "disproportionate to the benefits," and that the OPC could not "see how the in-cab audio recording would be necessary for Trimac's purposes" during off-duty periods.

In October 2023, all of Canada's federal, provincial, and territorial privacy commissioners issued a joint resolution on protecting employee privacy in the modern workplace. The resolution described a "patchwork of privacy laws" that "leaves many employees without any statutory privacy protections at all" and called on governments to strengthen laws protecting employee privacy against electronic monitoring tools and AI technologies.

Quebec's Commission d'accès à l'information ruled in May 2025 against a company's use of an in-vehicle video surveillance system, finding data minimization measures insufficient. The CAI ordered the company to limit recordings to a few seconds before and after an incident, and to stop collecting images once the engine is turned off — or to discontinue in-vehicle image collection entirely.

The Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario commissioned a research report on "Surveillance and Algorithmic Management at Work" (Dr. Adam Molnar, University of Waterloo). The report documented workplace surveillance technologies enabling continuous real-time monitoring of location, activity, biometrics, and emotions. The report found that workplace surveillance negatively impacts workers' privacy, psycho-social well-being, autonomy, and dignity, and that monitoring increases stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout.

A peer-reviewed survey of 402 Canadian managers and supervisors (Thompson & Molnar, 2023, Canadian Review of Sociology) documented bossware adoption across sectors, with the most sought-after features being time tracking, website tracking, and keystroke logging.

The Law Commission of Ontario launched a workplace surveillance project in early 2026, with a consultation paper expected later that year.