2nd woman found dead in English Bay: Vancouver police
For the second time in as many days, a woman's body was found near Vancouver's shoreline Monday.
Technology that tracks your location at work and the time you're spending in the bathroom. A program that takes random screenshots of your laptop screen. A monitoring system that detects your mood during your shift.
These are just some ways employee surveillance technology — now turbocharged, thanks to the explosive growth of artificial intelligence — is being deployed.
Canada's laws aren't keeping up, experts warn.
"Any working device that your employer puts in your hand, you can assume it has some way of monitoring your work and productivity," said Valerio De Stefano, Canada research chair in innovation law and society at York University.
"Electronic monitoring is a reality for most workers."
Artificial intelligence could also be determining whether someone gets, or keeps, a job in the first place.
Automated hiring is already "extremely widespread," with nearly all Fortune 500 companies in the United States using AI to hire new workers, De Stefano said.
Unlike traditional monitoring, he added, AI is making "autonomous decisions about hiring, retention and discipline" or providing recommendations to the employer about such decisions.
Employee surveillance can look like a warehouse worker with a mini-computer on their arm that's tracking every movement they make, said Bea Bruske, president of the Canadian Labour Congress.
"They're building a pallet, but that particular mini-computer is tracking every single step, every flick of the wrist, so to speak," Bruske said.
"They know exactly how many boxes are being placed on that pallet, how much time it's taking, how many extra steps that worker might have taken."
There is little data documenting how widespread AI-powered worker surveillance might be in Canada. Unless employers are up front about their practices, "we don't necessarily know," Bruske said.
In a 2022 study by the Future Skills Centre, the pollster Abacus Data surveyed 1,500 employees and 500 supervisors who work remotely.
Seventy per cent reported that some or all aspects of their work were being digitally monitored.
About one-third of employees said they experienced at least one instance of location tracking, webcam or video recording, keystroke monitoring, screen grabs or employer use of biometric information.
"There is a patchwork of laws governing workplace privacy which currently provides considerable leeway for employers to monitor employees," the report noted.
Electronic monitoring in the workplace has been around for years. But the technology has become more intimate, taking on tasks like listening to casual conversations between workers.
It's also become easier for companies to use and more customized to their specific needs — and more normalized, said McGill University associate professor Renee Sieber.
De Stefano said artificial intelligence has made electronic monitoring more invasive, since "it is able to process much more data and is more affordable."
"Employer monitoring has skyrocketed" since AI has been around, he added.
Those in the industry, however, insist there's also a positive side.
Toronto-based FutureFit AI makes an AI-powered career assistant, which CEO Hamoon Ekhtiari said can help individuals navigate workplaces that are being rapidly changed by the technology.
AI can look for jobs, give career guidance, look for training programs or generate a plan for next steps. In the hiring process, it can give applicants rapid feedback about gaps in their applications, Ekhtiari said.
As artificial intelligence permeates Canadian workplaces, legislators are making efforts to bring in new rules.
The federal government has proposed Bill C-27, which would set out obligations for "high-impact" AI systems.
That includes those dealing in "determinations in respect of employment, including recruitment, referral, hiring, remuneration, promotion, training, apprenticeship, transfer or termination," said Innovation Minister François-Philippe Champagne.
Champagne has flagged concerns AI systems could perpetuate bias and discrimination in hiring, including in who sees job ads and how applicants are ranked.
But critics have taken issue with the bill not explicitly including worker protections. It also won’t come into effect immediately, only after regulations implementing the bill are developed.
In 2022, Ontario began requiring employers with 25 or more employees to have a written policy describing electronic monitoring and stating for what purposes it can use that information.
Neither the proposed legislation nor Ontario law "afford enough protection to workers," De Stefano said.
Activities like reading employee emails and time tracking are allowed, as long as the employer has a policy and informs workers about what's happening, he added.
"It's good to know, but if I don't have recourse against the use of these systems, some of which can be extremely problematic, well, the protection is actually not particularly meaningful."
Ontario has also proposed requiring employers to disclose AI use in hiring. If passed, it would make the province the first Canadian jurisdiction to implement such a law.
Provincial and federal privacy laws should offer some protections, in theory. But Canada’s privacy commissioners have warned that existing privacy legislation is woefully inadequate.
They said in October "the recent proliferation of employee monitoring software" has "revealed that laws protecting workplace privacy are either out of date or absent altogether."
Watchdogs in other countries have been cracking down. In January, France hit Amazon with a $35-million fine for monitoring workers with an "excessively intrusive system."
The issue has also been on the radar for unions. The Canadian Labour Congress isn’t satisfied with Bill C-27, and employees and their unions have not been adequately consulted, Bruske said.
De Stefano said the government should "stop making the adoption of these systems the unilateral choice of employers" and instead give workers a chance to be fully informed and express their concerns.
Governments should be aiming for something that distinguishes between monitoring performance and surveillance, putting bathroom-break timing in the latter category, Sieber added.
A case could be made to ban some technologies outright, such as "emotional AI" tools that detect whether a worker in front of a computer screen or on an assembly line is happy, she said.
Emily Niles, a senior researcher with the Canadian Union of Public Employees, said AI systems run on information like time logs, the number of tasks completed during a shift, email content, meeting notes and cellphone use.
"AI doesn't exist without data, and it's actually our data that it is running on," Niles said.
"That's a significant point of intervention for the union, to assert workers’ voices and control over these technologies."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 9, 2024.
For the second time in as many days, a woman's body was found near Vancouver's shoreline Monday.
Men from Edmonton and Calgary are accused of threatening to kill some of Canada's top government leaders.
Canadian athletes attempting to reach the podium at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games will also be looking fashionable for the entire world to see.
Vice-President Kamala Harris has secured the support of enough Democratic delegates to become her party's nominee against Republican Donald Trump, according to an Associated Press survey taken in the aftermath of President Joe Biden's decision to drop his bid for re-election.
New Zealand's coroner has ruled that four of its citizens died after ordering products from an Ontario man who is facing murder charges for selling poisonous substances.
A Toronto woman who allegedly took 'intimate' photos of an individual who was getting a massage has been charged with voyeurism, police say.
The name of Calgary’s new event centre was unveiled on Monday. The arena will be called Scotia Place.
If you're trying to get up to speed on Vice President Kamala Harris' swift emergence as Democrats' possible nominee this fall, you really need to know your memes.
No one knows the importance of selecting the right running mate better than Vice President Kamala Harris.
A swarm of bees living in a lamppost in Winnipeg’s Sage Creek neighbourhood has found a new home for its hive.
Around 100 acres of Manitoba Crown Land near the Saskatchewan border is being returned to the Métis community.
Nova Scotia is suspending the licensed Cape Breton moose hunt for three years due to what the province is calling a “significant drop” in the population.
A well-known childhood prank known as 'nicky nicky nine doors,' or 'ding dong ditch,' has escalated into a more serious game that could lead to charges for some Surrey, B.C. teens.
It's been more than a month since their good friend was seriously hurt in an accident and two teens from Riverview, N.B., are still having a hard time dealing with it.
Halifax bridges have collected thousands of coins from around the world.
A donated clawfoot bathtub has become the preferred lounging spot for a pair of B.C. grizzly bears, who have been taking turns relaxing and reclining in it – with minimal sibling squabbling – for the past year.
A pair of cemetery investigators are cleaning and preserving as many gravestones they have permission to work on, as they conduct their research and document gravestones.
After more than three years, a B.C. woman has been reunited with a lost family heirloom.