Employee Privacy: The Need for Comprehensive Protection

Abstract

Society has begun to pay more attention to privacy. This is especially true in the context of the employment relationship, where a power imbalance creates a greater need for privacy protection. Although some steps have been taken, Canadian lawmakers have fallen short in their efforts to safeguard the privacy of all employees. Employees are presently protected by a piecemeal scheme of legislative, common law and market-based mechanisms, which leaves a substantial gap in the Canadian privacy framework. The only tenable solution is for each province to enact laws that address privacy in the employment context, using recently enacted federal privacy legislation as a template.