By Howard Levitt and Kathryn Marshall

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Last week, Ontario Labour Minister Monte McNaughton announced that the province would soon be tabling legislation requiring businesses to inform their employees if they are being recorded or tracked.

It is the first legislation of its kind in Canada, but likely won’t be the last. The country frequently looks to Ontario to lead the way on labour reforms and often follows suit.

This announcement has been welcomed by many but has also been an eye opener to people who didn’t realize just how little workplace privacy they actually have. Canadians often have an almost inchoate sense that they are entitled to privacy and that the law protects that. It doesn’t.

Employees often ask: how much privacy do they really have in the workplace? The answer has always been: almost none. This does not mean that your employer gets to be big brother and know your every move. But your employer does have a right to know what you are doing on company time and how you are using company resources. Typically, the questions we would frequently get about workplace privacy were from employees concerned about whether their boss could see their questionable browser search history. By the way, as a rule, don’t search anything on your work computer that you don’t want your employer knowing about! Employees can be fired for that — and for cause without severance.

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The pandemic has changed things monumentally with respect to workplace...

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