Legal basis

Privacy Act (federal public sector); found in breach

Oversight

Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Special Report to Parliament

The RCMP's use of Clearview AI ended after the Office of the Privacy Commissioner found in 2021 that it violated the federal Privacy Act, since Clearview's underlying image collection was itself unlawful. Clearview ceased Canadian operations shortly afterward. In response, the RCMP established the National Technology Onboarding Program (NTOP) in 2021 to centralise assessment of new operational technologies. The RCMP's own 2026 transparency publication states it currently uses only 'face matching' (grouping and sorting lawfully obtained images and video, not searching to identify an unknown individual) rather than full facial identification, and that it does not use facial recognition on footage captured by its drone fleet. Separately, other Canadian police services have moved into live and image-search facial recognition; see the Edmonton, York/Peel and Toronto entries.

Source: Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Special Report to Parliament · last checked 2026-08-25

Legal basis

No dedicated statutory framework. A privacy impact assessment was submitted to Alberta's Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner

Oversight

Edmonton Police Commission and the chief's committee, reviewing pilot results as of the time of writing

The first Canadian police service, and among the first anywhere, to trial facial recognition built into body-worn cameras rather than fixed or handheld devices. Axon supplied the camera hardware and Israeli firm Corsight AI the facial recognition model. The pilot ran through December 2025 and was extended roughly three weeks into January 2026 following a system outage. Officers' cameras ran the software in what EPS calls silent mode, checking faces against a watchlist of people with outstanding warrants for serious offences or flagged as high risk, reported variously as roughly 6,341 and 7,000 people, without alerting the wearing officer to a match; footage was reviewed afterwards by trained staff. Status note: the pilot itself concluded in January 2026 and results were with the Edmonton Police Commission and the chief's committee for review. This entry is deliberately held at trial rather than moved to discontinued, because a concluded pilot awaiting a decision is not the same as a technology that has been abandoned, and no decision either way has been published. Two independent research passes reached opposite conclusions on how to classify it, which is itself a reason to record the underlying facts and let the status follow a documented decision rather than an inference. A researcher at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab described it as the most high-risk algorithmic surveillance program she had observed in Canada to date. Corsight AI's technology has reportedly been used for mass surveillance in Gaza, and the firm also supplies Essex Police in England. Axon's own AI ethics board recommended in 2019 that the company not pursue facial recognition on body cameras.

Source: CBC News (Freedom of Information documents), Associated Press, Biometric Update · last checked 2026-08-25

Legal basis

No dedicated Canadian federal statute governing police facial recognition. Forces state they rely on common law policing powers and, where available, court orders for camera footage

Oversight

Ontario Information and Privacy Commissioner consulted by York Police on best practice, per the force's own account

York Regional Police and Peel Regional Police use an Idemia facial recognition system to compare crime scene images against a combined database of booking photographs. Potential matches are reviewed by trained facial recognition analysts before being passed to investigators. The shared York and Peel database became operational in May 2024. This entry was previously classified on this tracker as live facial recognition, which was wrong for the same reason as the Toronto entry: this is investigative image-to-mugshot matching, not real-time scanning of people in public space. Kate Robertson of the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab has said she is not aware of any Canadian police service that in practice obtains prior judicial authorisation before using facial recognition, despite that being what she describes as the gold standard of privacy protection in criminal investigations.

Source: CBC News · last checked 2026-08-25

Legal basis

No dedicated Canadian federal statute governing police facial recognition

Oversight

Not disclosed in available reporting

Toronto Police Service uses NEC's NeoFace Reveal to compare an image obtained during a criminal investigation against lawfully obtained booking photographs. Candidate images are reviewed by a trained facial recognition analyst before being supplied to investigators for further review. This entry was previously classified on this tracker as live facial recognition. That was wrong, and the correction matters beyond this single entry: retrospective image-to-mugshot searching and live scanning of passers-by are different technologies with different legal and civil liberties profiles, and conflating them inflates the apparent scale of live facial recognition deployment. The force's own published AI inventory identifies NeoFace Reveal as a high-risk AI technology, and Toronto operates an AI governance framework through the Toronto Police Services Board.

Source: Biometric Update · last checked 2026-08-25

Legal basis

Privacy Act and RCMP internal security protocols govern the test data itself; no legislative authorisation yet exists for the capability this is evaluating.

Oversight

Internal RCMP process as described in its own departmental plan; no external oversight body specified

The RCMP's 2026-27 Departmental Plan states it will collaborate with multiple vendors to review booking photographs collected from Canadian law enforcement agencies, testing algorithms for quality, performance, accuracy and demographic bias in a Canadian context, towards a potential future national facial recognition capability. This is evaluation of algorithms against historical data, not a deployment against the public, which is why it is recorded here as proposed rather than trial. Verified directly against the RCMP's own published departmental plan.

Source: Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 2026-27 Departmental Plan · last checked 2026-08-18