Employee image rights in a Quebec corporate video: settle it before the shoot

A Quebec employer filming an employee for a video that will be published needs that person's consent, and the consent has to meet specific qualities. The Commission d'accès à l'information defines personal information as information that allows a natural person to be identified, directly or indirectly, and Quebec's private-sector privacy law applies whatever the medium. A recognisable person in your video is therefore personal information. What follows is what that consent has to cover, and why it gets settled weeks before the date rather than between two takes on the floor.

An image that identifies someone is personal information

The Commission's page on the scope of the law is explicit about the medium: the information it covers can be « Écrite; Graphique; Sonore; Visuelle; Informatisée », that is written, graphic, audio, visual or computerised. Video is not a special case. It is one of the covered media, like a personnel file.

« Un renseignement personnel est un renseignement qui permet d'identifier une personne physique, directement ou indirectement. »Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, Champ d'application de la loi, fetched 23 September 2026

The same page states that the law does not apply to material collected or held for journalistic, historical or genealogical purposes. A corporate video is none of the three. If a supplier tells you your video falls outside the law, ask which of those purposes he is relying on.

The eight qualities a valid consent must have

The Commission publishes the qualities a consent must combine. They are cumulative, so none of them is optional. The Commission publishes in French; the labels below are its own, with the substance in plain English.

• Manifeste: evident, and given in a way that shows the person's real will.
• Libre: involving a real choice, and given without constraint and without undue pressure.
• Éclairé: precise, given in full knowledge of the facts and with all the necessary information.
• Spécifique: given for a precise and clearly circumscribed purpose.
• Temporaire: valid only for the time needed to achieve those purposes.
• Granulaire: requested for each specific purpose.
• Compréhensible: requested in simple, clear terms.
• Distinct: requested separately from any other information.

Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, Consentement des personnes, fetched 23 September 2026.

Read that list with your own shop floor in mind. Two of the eight decide almost the whole employee question.

Free means a refusal that costs nothing

The Commission's wording is « Libre : impliquant un réel choix et donné sans contraintes et sans pression indue ». A real choice, no constraint, no undue pressure. This is the most fragile quality in a workplace, because the request travels down the hierarchy. An operator whose supervisor asks him to stay in front of the camera while the line runs is not in the position of a stranger on the street. He may say yes so as not to cause trouble.

A longer form does not fix this. What fixes it is changing who asks, when, and what a refusal costs the person. The request goes out before the date, it comes from someone who does not evaluate the employee, and declining carries no consequence. A refusal that costs nothing is the only demonstration that the choice was real. Exactly how that request should be made in your company is a question for your own counsel.

One use is not every use

Three of the qualities settle what most companies discover too late. Consent is specific, given for a precise and clearly circumscribed purpose. It is granular, requested for each specific purpose. And it is temporary: « valide seulement pour la durée nécessaire à la réalisation des fins », valid only for the time needed to achieve those purposes.

A sequence shot for internal training, shown in a room to new hires, serves one purpose. The same sequence dropped into a paid campaign, delivered to buyers across your sector and to their competitors, serves another. It is the difference between twenty colleagues in a room and an audience you do not control.

On the use of personal information for commercial prospecting, the Commission also writes: « Lorsque la personne concernée retire son consentement à une telle utilisation, vous devez cesser d'utiliser ses renseignements personnels pour vos démarches de prospection commerciale ou philanthropique. » When the person withdraws consent to such a use, you have to stop using their personal information for your commercial or philanthropic prospecting. A video that lives inside your campaigns is not a file closed on the evening of the shoot.

One point for plants that host apprentices. The Commission states that under 14 the consent is given by the parent, and that a minor of 14 or older may give it themselves.

What the person has to be told while you film

Consent is not the only obligation. At the point of collection, the Commission states that the person must be informed of the purposes for which the information is collected, the means by which it is collected, and their rights of access and correction.

One item on that list points straight at your producer. Where applicable, you must also name the third party to whom the information has to be communicated in order to achieve the purposes justifying the collection. Your footage does not stay inside your building: it goes to an outside studio, sometimes to a post house, then to the platforms that distribute it. The person being filmed has to learn that while the camera is there, not by recognising their own face in an ad.

It is also a question that sorts suppliers. A producer who cannot name who will handle the files outside your company does not know where your rushes end up either.

On a shoot, a person without consent is a cost

Here is the honest argument for settling all of this before the date, and it is not a legal one. It is a production argument.

A plant floor is shared space. At shift change, people move through your aisles. A welder crossing frame, an operator glancing up at the camera, two people talking behind the line: nobody asked them anything. The day one of them does not want to be published, you have two options, and both are paid for.

The first is working around the person on the day: moving the camera, waiting, redoing passes, and sometimes losing the control room shot at the exact moment the process was running. That time is not recovered, because the process does not restart for the camera.

The second is removing the person in post. A wide shot where they are small and still can sometimes be reframed, at the cost of resolution. A sharp person in the foreground, in a moving shot, cannot be removed: the shot is gone, and the sequence it carried goes with it. If the video is already online, you pay for a re-edit, a re-export and a redistribution on every platform.

That is why consent gets settled with operations before the date, not with marketing on the morning of the shoot. The other decisions that have to be made before walking into a plant are in the guide on the factory video shoot.

One last case, and I am going to be precise about what I do not know. The employee who agrees, then leaves the company six months later, is the situation everyone raises first. No official source I could reach today states what that departure changes about your right to use the footage, and I am not going to invent one. What is verified serves you better: consent is specific and temporary, so the purposes and the duration are decided and written down in advance, with your own counsel, while the person is still there.

When none of this applies to you

There is an honest way out, and for a small firm with no appetite for this it is often the right one. A video showing only equipment, material, parts and a process does not raise the question at all: nobody is identifiable, so there is no personal information in the frame. Gloved hands on a control, the part coming out of the press, the overhead crane, the line from above, the control room screen without the operator's face.

That kind of video demonstrates capacity very well to a technical buyer or a prime contractor. It fails at exactly one job: recruiting. A candidate wants to see the people he would work beside, which is what I cover in the page on the recruitment video. If your video has to convince a welder to change employers, you need faces, and therefore consents.

What to demand from your producer

You do not have to become a privacy specialist. You have to recognise a supplier who has already filmed identifiable employees.

• That he raises consent before sending you a price, not on the morning of the shoot.
• That he names every planned use of the footage, paid advertising included, before you ask your employees for anything.
• That he tells you who will handle the files outside your company.
• That he has a plan for the people in the background at busy hours, shift change included.
• That he tells you what he does if someone declines on the day, and what that changes about the schedule.

One answer should end the conversation: we will fix it in the edit. It means the person has never tried to remove someone from a shot.

I shoot the videos myself, which means the person negotiating access with your operations is the person holding the camera afterwards. Across more than 20 years producing visual content, this is the part of the job that goes worst when it is handed to someone who will not be on the floor. How we work is set out on the video production page.

This page describes public rules. It is not legal advice. Have your own counsel confirm your situation before you publish.

Sources

• Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, Champ d'application de la loi, cai.gouv.qc.ca/protection-renseignements-personnels/information-entreprises-privees/champ-application-loi_entreprises, fetched 23 September 2026.
• Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, Consentement des personnes, cai.gouv.qc.ca/protection-renseignements-personnels/information-entreprises-privees/consentement-personnes-entreprises, fetched 23 September 2026.
• Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, Collecte de renseignements personnels, cai.gouv.qc.ca/protection-renseignements-personnels/information-entreprises-privees/collecte-renseignements-personnels_entreprises, fetched 23 September 2026.
• Commission d'accès à l'information du Québec, Utilisation et communication des renseignements personnels, cai.gouv.qc.ca/protection-renseignements-personnels/information-entreprises-privees/utilisation-communication-renseignements-personnels, fetched 23 September 2026.