Canada’s Supreme Court is dealing with a case that could make teachers across the country tremble: Do their bosses have the right to read their private communications and use them against them?

The country’s highest court announced Thursday that it has agreed to hear a case between two Ontario teachers and their school board. At the heart of the debate is the issue of workers’ right to privacy at work.

The facts can be summarized as follows: Private messages from these two teachers, recorded in a personal (password-protected) logbook, were read by the principal of their school, who took screenshots with a camera. Her school board then used it to discipline her.

The teachers’ union filed a complaint against the reference, arguing that the school board had violated its right to privacy by reviewing private digital information without good reason and using it as a basis for its investigations.

The course of the case at the judicial level shows that the law does not appear to be so clear: an arbitrator first dismissed the union’s complaint, his decision was upheld by a judge, then overturned by the Court of Justice.

The latter ruled that the school board had violated the teachers’ right to privacy.

The two staff members had kept a diary to record their concerns about another teacher, fearing its impact on the evaluation of their own work. Nothing was stored on the school computers: the information was stored in the “cloud” and was only accessible with a personal Gmail account – not a school account – all protected by a password.

Fearing the existence of such a diary, other teachers had complained about a “toxic” work environment, prompting the principal to investigate. He asserted his obligation to ensure the well-being of his employees.

A search of the school’s online files turned up nothing, nor did a check of the school’s computers. The principal then went to the classroom of one of the two teachers after she left at the end of the day. He touched the touchpad of the laptop lying there, which displayed the logbook on the screen: the teacher had accidentally left it open.

For the Ontario Court of Appeal, the two teachers had the right to expect respect for their privacy and personal correspondence. The director’s search was unreasonable, she wrote in her decision in 2022: It was “as if he had opened her diary”. The man had violated her constitutional right to protection from unreasonable searches provided for in Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, she had ruled.

The school board involved in the case, disagreeing with this conclusion, asked the Supreme Court of Canada to hear their arguments. The outcome of the case could therefore be fundamental to what can – and should – remain private when a Canadian worker is at work.

To see in the video