Employee Monitoring in Canada: What Your Employer Can and Cannot Do

The news that TD Bank told some staff it would use software to track their work activity has put a question many employees quietly worry about into the open: how much can my employer actually watch, and is there anything I can do about it? The honest answer is that Canadian employees have fewer protections against workplace monitoring than people expect, and weaker ones than employees have in the European Union. But fewer protections is not the same as none, and there are real limits on what an employer can do with the data it collects. This is a practical guide to where those limits are and what to do if monitoring at your workplace has gone too far.

Why this is suddenly everywhere

Employee monitoring tools spread quickly once hybrid and remote work became normal, and employers reaching for them is now common across industries. The TD situation, where staff were told a tool would track time spent in browsers, chat, and meeting applications, is a high-profile example, but the same pattern is playing out at large employers in the United States and elsewhere. What has not kept pace is the law. Canada's privacy framework is weaker than the European Union's, and the privacy reform currently before Parliament is not aimed at workplace surveillance, so the rules that apply to you today come from a patchwork of privacy law, employment standards, and the common law rather than a single clear statute.

What your employer generally can and cannot do

The line between the two columns is mostly about honesty and proportionality. An employer that is clear about what it tracks and why, and that keeps the monitoring tied to that purpose, is usually on safe ground. One that hides the monitoring, gathers far more than it needs, or repurposes the data is where employees have room to push back.

Where monitoring crosses a legal line

Even with limited statutory protection, several situations give employees real options:

• Covert surveillance. Secret monitoring that intrudes on something genuinely private can support a claim for invasion of privacy, and is the riskiest category for employers.
• Excessive or repurposed monitoring. Where personal information is collected beyond what is reasonable for the stated purpose, or used for something the employee was never told about, it can breach privacy obligations, especially for federally regulated employers like banks and in British Columbia, which has private-sector privacy legislation.
• Monitoring used to manage you out. If surveillance data is used to discipline or terminate you unfairly, or a sudden monitoring regime fundamentally changes your working conditions, it can support a wrongful or constructive dismissal claim.
• Monitoring tied to a protected ground. If you are singled out for monitoring connected to a disability, a leave, pregnancy, or another protected ground, that raises a potential human rights issue, not just a privacy one.

A practical checklist if you are being monitored

How Canada compares

For context, employees in the European Union have far stronger protections, where privacy is treated as a fundamental right and employers must justify monitoring tools under privacy and labour law. Protections in the United States are closer to Canada's, which is to say comparatively weak, and large American employers have faced their own pushback over keystroke logging and productivity tracking. The practical takeaway for Canadian employees is not to expect a European level of protection, but to use the protections that do exist here, around transparency, reasonableness, and the use of the data, as effectively as possible.

Workplace monitoring FAQs

How Achkar Law helps employees

Achkar Law advises employees across Ontario and British Columbia on workplace privacy and monitoring, discipline and performance management, and wrongful and constructive dismissal. If your employer has introduced surveillance you are uncomfortable with, is using monitoring data against you, or has crossed a line, we can assess your situation and explain your options clearly before you make a decision you cannot take back.