Today, the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia upheld a labour arbitrator’s order that required the Halifax Regional Municipality to cease and desist from recording calls to its call centre for quality monitoring, coaching and dispute resolution purposes.
In resolving the employer’s application for judicial review, Wright J. displayed a remarkably honest application of the “reasonableness” standard of review by disagreeing with the arbitrator’s weighing of management versus employee interests but nonetheless upholding his decision as reasonable.
Though it did not affect the outcome of the application, Wright J.’s more legally significant finding was on whether the employee voice recordings at issue were protected as “personal information” under the applicable privacy legislation. He stressed that the recordings captured non-sensitive employee work product and, in the context, this feature of the recordings was more significant than anything personal that the characteristics of an employee’s voice might reveal (such as age or race).
It cannot be over emphasized that the recording of calls made to the call centre agents on the Primary Line is of a non-personal nature. The call centre agents answer inquires from the public about various municipal matters. There is no component of personal information in that. It is not recorded information about an identifiable individual within the meaning of s.461(f). Rather, the content of the calls, as earlier noted, is about such routine inquires as transit service times, tax bills, by-laws, parking information and municipal services. In my view, the question of whether voice recording in the fact situation at hand constitutes “personal information” cannot be decided irrespective of the content of those calls. Here, the content of those calls is undoubtedly of a non-personal nature made in the course of the performance of the job duties of these employees.
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Very interesting case, Dan. Thanks for highlighting!