Are Biometric Scans for Employee Access Legal Under Quebec’s New Privacy Laws?

The allure of biometric technology for workplace access control is undeniable. In a world of lost key cards and shared passwords, a fingerprint or facial scan promises a seamless, secure, and modern solution. For many HR and legal departments in Montreal, the initial hurdle appears to be obtaining employee consent, a cornerstone of Quebec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (Law 25). The common wisdom suggests that with a signed form, the path is clear.

However, this perspective dangerously oversimplifies the legal landscape. The reality is that under Law 25, consent is not the starting point of the conversation, but rather the final step in a long and arduous justification process. The Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec (CAI), the province’s privacy watchdog, applies an exceptionally high standard for the use of biometrics, a standard that has seen many well-intentioned implementations fail under scrutiny.

The true challenge lies not in collecting signatures, but in passing the CAI’s rigorous “proportionality test.” This requires an organization to provide compelling, documented proof that the collection of such sensitive data is absolutely necessary to address a significant, real, and existing problem—and that all less privacy-intrusive alternatives are demonstrably inadequate. Hypothetical fears and operational conveniences do not meet this threshold.

This article will deconstruct the legal and practical requirements for implementing biometric access systems in Quebec. We will move beyond the platitude of “getting consent” to explore the core legal principles you must satisfy, the technical safeguards required for data storage, and the strategic alternatives that may offer a more compliant path to modernizing your physical security.

To navigate this complex topic, we will explore the critical questions that every Quebec employer must answer. The following sections provide a detailed roadmap, from the nuances of consent and data storage to the viability of alternatives and the rules governing visitor management.

Why Written Consent Is Mandatory Before Capturing a Single Fingerprint in Quebec?

In Quebec, the collection of biometric data is governed by a strict legal framework that places consent at its core, but as the final step of a much larger process. Before an employer can even present a consent form, they must first prove to themselves—and be ready to prove to the CAI—that the purpose of collecting such data is “important, legitimate and real.” This is not a simple administrative hurdle; it’s a substantive legal test. The increasing focus on this area is evident, as Quebec’s privacy regulator saw a 59% increase in declarations of biometric data collection in 2023-2024, signaling heightened scrutiny.

The consent itself must be “clear, free, informed, and given for specific purposes.” It cannot be bundled with other terms in an employment contract or presented as a mandatory condition of employment. Employees must fully understand what data is being collected, how it will be used, the consequences of providing or refusing it, and who will have access to it. Critically, there must be a viable, non-punitive alternative for those who refuse.

This precedent underscores that consent is not a blank check. It is a time-limited permission granted by an individual only after the organization has first satisfied its own fundamental legal obligations of justification and proportionality.

Ultimately, before capturing a single fingerprint, a Quebec employer’s primary duty is not to get a signature, but to build an ironclad case for why that fingerprint is the only reasonable solution to a real-world problem.

How to Store Biometric Templates so They Cannot Be Reverse-Engineered?

Once the significant legal hurdle of justifying biometric collection is cleared, the focus shifts to a critical technical and legal obligation: secure storage. Under Law 25, biometric data is among the most sensitive personal information an organization can hold, and its protection must be absolute. The primary goal is to ensure that stored biometric templates—the digital representations of a fingerprint or face—are irreversible. This means they must be stored in a format, typically using one-way hashing and encryption, that makes it technologically impossible to reconstruct the original biometric image or data.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada provides clear direction on this matter. As they state in their guidance for federal institutions, which sets a best-practice standard:

Use end-to-end encryption technology to secure biometric information throughout all stages of its lifecycle, including its storage but also its transmission.

– Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Draft Guidance for processing biometrics – for public institutions

Furthermore, for businesses in Montreal, data residency is a key consideration. Storing sensitive data outside of Canada, particularly in the United States, triggers additional obligations under Law 25, including the need for a comprehensive Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) that evaluates the legal frameworks of the foreign jurisdiction. Hosting data within Canada is the most straightforward path to compliance.

The following table, based on guidance for Bring-Your-Own-Device policies, compares the primary storage options available to a Quebec-based company, highlighting the compliance and risk factors associated with each.

Data Storage Options for Quebec-Based Companies

Storage Type	Security Features	Law 25 Compliance	Risk Level
Canadian-hosted cloud	End-to-end encryption, local jurisdiction	Fully compliant	Low
On-premise server	Physical control, custom security	Compliant with proper measures	Medium
US-based cloud	Advanced features, potential data residency issues	Requires Privacy Impact Assessment	High

Choosing an on-premise or Canadian-hosted solution significantly reduces the legal complexity and risk associated with cross-border data transfers, ensuring that the high standard of protection required for biometric information is maintained.

Facial Recognition vs Fingerprint: Which Is Less Intrusive for Office Entry?

When considering biometric options, employers often weigh the convenience of facial recognition against the established reliability of fingerprint scanners. However, from the perspective of Quebec’s privacy laws, the most important factor is not user experience but the level of intrusiveness. In this regard, the CAI has drawn a very clear line, consistently viewing facial recognition as significantly more intrusive than fingerprint authentication for standard workplace access.

The core issue is the passive versus active nature of data collection. A fingerprint scan requires a deliberate, physical action from the employee—touching a sensor. In contrast, facial recognition can be passive, continuous, and conducted without the individual’s active participation or even awareness, making it akin to surveillance. For this reason, the CAI has consistently ruled that facial recognition fails the proportionality test for standard business objectives, as less intrusive alternatives like badges have always been deemed sufficient.

As the comparison above illustrates, the methods differ fundamentally in their interaction model. The active nature of a fingerprint scan creates a clear moment of authentication, while the passive potential of a camera creates a continuous risk of identification and monitoring. This distinction is critical in the CAI’s analysis, as “authentication” (verifying a 1-to-1 match) is seen as less risky than “identification” (searching a 1-to-many database), a process that facial recognition enables more easily.

For Quebec employers, this means that unless a facility has extraordinary security requirements mandated by law (e.g., a high-security government facility), justifying facial recognition for simple office entry is an almost impossible task. Fingerprint scanning, while still subject to the strict necessity test, is considered the less intrusive and therefore more legally defensible biometric option.

The “High-Resolution Photo” Trick That Fools Cheap Facial Scanners

Beyond the legal hurdles of intrusiveness and necessity, a biometric system must also be effective and reliable to be justifiable. If a security measure can be easily defeated, it fails to solve the very problem it was implemented to address, rendering its privacy intrusion pointless. This is a significant vulnerability for many commercial facial recognition systems, which can be susceptible to “spoofing” attacks.

Spoofing is the act of deceiving a biometric sensor with a fake artifact, such as a high-resolution photograph or a 3D mask of a registered user’s face. Cheaper, less sophisticated systems that rely on simple 2D image analysis are particularly vulnerable to being fooled by a high-quality photo displayed on a smartphone screen. The system may grant access because the image is a valid match, completely undermining the security protocol. This is not a theoretical flaw; it is a well-documented weakness in certain technologies.

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada highlights this exact risk in its guidance, emphasizing that effectiveness is a prerequisite for justification.

Spoofing refers to the ability to fool a biometric system by applying fake or replicated biometrics—such as a photograph or mask of the target individual’s face. When biometrics are used as a safeguard, they must be effective and not be susceptible to spoofing.

– Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Draft Guidance for processing biometrics

For a legal or HR department in Montreal, this technical vulnerability becomes a legal liability. If an employer argues that facial recognition is “necessary” to prevent unauthorized access, but the chosen system can be bypassed with a simple photo, the entire justification for its implementation collapses. The system introduces a significant privacy intrusion without delivering the promised security benefit, failing the proportionality test on grounds of ineffectiveness. More advanced systems mitigate this with “liveness detection” technology, which uses infrared sensors or 3D mapping to ensure the subject is a real person, but these are more expensive and still subject to the same high bar of necessity.

Therefore, any due diligence process must include a rigorous assessment of a system’s anti-spoofing capabilities. Failure to do so not only exposes the organization to security breaches but also fatally weakens the legal argument for the system’s existence in the first place.

When to Delete Biometric Data for Terminated Employees: A Legal Timeline?

The principle of data minimization under Law 25 dictates that personal information should only be retained for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which it was collected. For biometric data, this principle is applied with exceptional stringency. An employee’s biometric template cannot be kept indefinitely “just in case.” Once the purpose of authentication is no longer relevant, the data must be securely and permanently destroyed.

This is most critical when an employee leaves the company. Their access rights are terminated, and thus the original purpose for holding their biometric data—entry into the workplace—ceases to exist. The legal timeline for deletion is not ambiguous; it must be prompt. Best practices derived from investigations by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) provide a clear benchmark. In one case, the OPC found that retaining employee voiceprints for one month after departure was appropriate, giving the employer a short window for administrative finalization before mandatory destruction.

A compliant data lifecycle policy for employee biometric data should follow a clear sequence:

1. Immediate Deletion of Raw Data: The raw biometric image (e.g., the high-resolution photo of a fingerprint) must be deleted immediately after the secure, encrypted template is created. Only the template should ever be stored.
2. Retention During Employment: For active employees, the template is retained only for as long as is necessary for the specific, consented-upon purpose of authentication.
3. Post-Employment Deletion: For terminated employees, all biometric templates and associated data must be securely destroyed within a short, defined period, such as 30 days after their final day of employment.
4. Deletion Upon Consent Withdrawal: If an employee withdraws their consent at any time, all of their biometric information must be deleted immediately upon request, and they must be transitioned to the alternative authentication method.

Maintaining detailed logs of data destruction is also a crucial part of demonstrating compliance. An organization must be able to prove not only that it collects and stores data lawfully, but also that it destroys it in a timely and secure manner.

Failing to implement and follow a robust deletion policy creates significant legal risk, as retaining sensitive data beyond its period of usefulness is a clear violation of Quebec’s privacy principles.

Why Installing Cameras in Break Rooms Is a Legal Minefield?

The legal principles that govern biometrics—necessity, proportionality, and expectation of privacy—extend to all forms of employee monitoring, especially video surveillance. While cameras may be justifiable in public-facing areas or high-security zones to prevent theft or ensure safety, their use in private employee spaces like break rooms, lunchrooms, or locker rooms enters a legal minefield. These areas carry the highest expectation of privacy in the workplace.

Employees are on personal time, decompressing, and engaging in private conversations. Placing them under surveillance in such a context is an extreme intrusion that is almost impossible to justify under Quebec law. The CAI would apply the same stringent test: Is there a real, serious, and documented problem (e.g., repeated violence, drug use) occurring specifically in the break room that cannot be solved by any other means? A vague desire to “improve security” or monitor productivity is entirely insufficient and would be rejected.

The financial consequences of misjudging this legal standard are severe. Under Law 25, administrative monetary penalties for privacy violations can reach up to $10 million or 2% of worldwide turnover, whichever is greater. The logic used by the CAI to reject facial recognition for office access would be applied even more forcefully against surveillance in a break room. The privacy intrusion is profound, and the justification is almost always weak.

Even if a specific incident prompted consideration of cameras, an employer would first have to demonstrate they had exhausted all less intrusive measures. This could include improved management supervision, new policies, access control to the room itself, or providing a locker for valuables. Only after proving all these alternatives have failed could an employer even begin to build a case for surveillance, and it would still likely fail the proportionality test.

In short, the break room should be considered a sanctuary from monitoring. Respecting this boundary is not just good employee relations; it is a fundamental requirement of Quebec’s privacy law.

Why Mobile Credentials Are Safer Than Key Cards for High-Turnover Offices?

For organizations wary of the high legal bar for dedicated biometric scanners, a powerful and compliant alternative is emerging: mobile credentials. This approach leverages the biometric security already built into an employee’s own smartphone (e.g., Face ID, Touch ID) to authenticate them for building access. From a Law 25 perspective, this method is significantly less intrusive because the employer never collects, manages, or stores the employee’s biometric data. The biometric check happens entirely on the user’s personal device, which then sends a secure, encrypted token to the door reader.

This model aligns perfectly with the “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) trend, a practice already widespread in Canada. With about two-thirds of Canadian private sector employers having employees using personal devices for work, leveraging these devices for access is a natural extension. The employee maintains control over their own biometric data, and the employer outsources the authentication to the secure hardware of Apple or Google, dramatically reducing its own privacy liability.

Compared to traditional key cards, mobile credentials offer superior security, especially in high-turnover environments. Lost or stolen cards are a major security gap, whereas a lost phone is typically password- and biometrically-locked. Furthermore, revoking access is instantaneous and can be done remotely, eliminating the security risk of unreturned cards from former employees.

The following table provides a clear comparison of the primary access control methods, evaluated through the lens of Law 25 compliance costs and overall security.

Mobile Credentials vs. Biometric Scanners vs. Key Cards

Method	Law 25 Compliance Cost	Security Level	Employee Acceptance	Speed of Revocation
Mobile Credentials (Phone Face/Touch ID)	Low – No biometric collection by employer	High – Device-level biometrics	High – Uses personal device	Instant remote
Biometric Scanners	High – PIA required, consent management	Very High	Medium – Privacy concerns	Database update required
Key Cards	Low – No biometric data	Low – Easy to share/lose	High – Traditional method	Physical retrieval needed

For a Montreal-based company, adopting mobile credentials can be a strategic move to enhance security while neatly sidestepping the most complex and high-risk obligations of collecting and managing employee biometric data directly.

Implementing Visitor ID Verification Without Violating Privacy Laws in Quebec

The principles of data minimization and purpose limitation that govern employee data also apply to visitors. When a visitor arrives at a Montreal office, collecting their personal information for security purposes is legitimate, but the method and scope of that collection are strictly regulated by Law 25. The goal is to verify identity and maintain a security log, not to build a permanent database of every person who enters the building.

A primary rule is to collect only the minimum information necessary. For most standard commercial buildings, this means recording the visitor’s name, the company they represent, and their time of entry and exit. A common compliance mistake is photocopying or scanning a visitor’s government-issued ID, like a driver’s license. This practice captures a vast amount of unnecessary personal information (address, date of birth, organ donor status) and creates a significant liability. The compliant approach is to simply view the ID to verify the name, but not to copy or retain it.

Data retention periods for visitor logs must also be extremely short. Unless there is a specific legal or regulatory requirement for longer retention (e.g., in a high-security facility), visitor data should be automatically and securely deleted after a brief period, typically 24 to 48 hours, once its purpose of short-term security logging is complete. Furthermore, clear privacy notices must be displayed at reception, informing visitors what data is being collected and why.

The risks of over-collection and misidentification are not merely theoretical. Biased algorithms in facial recognition technology can have devastating real-world consequences, as highlighted in a recent case concerning a refugee’s status.

A 26-year-old Toronto man faced revocation of refugee status when authorities claimed he was a different person based on photo matching. His lawyer sought disclosure of whether facial recognition technology was used, citing concerns about racial bias and privacy. The lawyer stated: ‘Many of my clients have darker skin tones and we know there’s higher false positive matches, especially for women, because this technology has been tested mainly on Caucasian men’.

– Lawyer in a case of potential misidentification by facial recognition

For any organization in Quebec, designing a visitor management system is an exercise in restraint. By focusing on viewing rather than copying IDs, implementing aggressive data deletion schedules, and providing clear transparency, you can maintain a secure lobby without violating the fundamental privacy rights of your guests.