Wait, not so fast :)
A few excerpts from the first link Andew provided:
"Accordingly, even though she relies on a certain right to her image, the plaintiff respondent must prove that a fault committed by the appellants caused her prejudice."
And then:
"We should be reluctant to view fault as amounting to a violation of rights alone."
"The Quebec law of civil liability requires proof of prejudice resulting from the fault."
I'm no lawyer, but if things go bad in a Quebec's court, you can always take it higher I believe, we're, after all, still part of Canada...:
"...the plaintiff must first show that a right or freedom has been infringed before the defendant attempts to demonstrate that the limit on the protected rights and freedoms is reasonable. For example, freedom of expression enjoys very broad protection in Canada. Any peaceful activity that conveys or attempts to convey meaning is protected by freedom of expression. According to this definition, even defamatory remarks are protected by freedom of expression. Therefore, the person who maintains the validity of a limit on such expression has the burden of proving that the limit is reasonable."
It appears to me that this trial is about some girl who got photographed, and her photo appeared in a magazine, and she felt humiliated when she saw her picture up there, and was teased by her friends. I guess it comes down to something very similar to US law (of which I'm no expert either!), which appears to me as though if the photo is defamatory or such, then don't publish it.
You'll note also that the chief justice wrote that having classmates laugh at you is probably not supporting evidence of prejudice...
Which brings us to the point that:
"...there is prejudice where the image is exploited commercially without authorization (...), or for purposes other than those for which consent was originally given"
"the fault lay not in the taking of the photograph but in its publication (...) since the respondent was in a public place when the photograph was taken, that act alone could not be considered an invasion of her privacy. However, the unauthorized publication of the photograph constituted an infringement of her anonymity, which is an essential element of the right to privacy."
Some more boring stuff for those who may still be reading this:
"It is also recognized that a photographer is exempt from liability, as are those who publish the photograph, when an individual's own action, albeit unwitting, accidentally places him or her in the photograph in an incidental manner. The person is then in the limelight in a sense. One need only think of a photograph of a crowd at a sporting event or a demonstration."
Another situation where the public interest prevails is one where a person appears in an incidental manner in a photograph of a public place. An image taken in a public place can then be regarded as an anonymous element of the scenery, even if it is technically possible to identify individuals in the photograph. In such a case, since the unforeseen observer's attention will normally be directed elsewhere, the person "snapped without warning" cannot complain. The same is true of a person in a group photographed in a public place. Such a person cannot object to the publication of the photograph if he or she is not its principal subject. On the other hand, the public nature of the place where a photograph was taken is irrelevant if the place was simply used as background for one or more persons who constitute the true subject of the photograph."
So what's different?
"In the United States, freedom of expression and public information prevail over the right to privacy except where the information's sole purpose is commercial..." In Quebec: A photograph of a single person can be "socially useful" because it serves to illustrate a theme. That does not make its publication acceptable, however, if it infringes the right to privacy."
"An artist's right to publish his or her work cannot include the right to infringe, without any justification, a fundamental right of the subject whose image appears in the work. While the artist's right must be taken into consideration, so must the rights of the photograph's subject. If it is accepted that publishing the artist's work is an exercise of freedom of expression, the respondent's right not to consent must also be taken into consideration."
Well, that link was enlightening. I always wanted to learn a few things about how things legally work on this side of the border. I'd say, don't worry about street photography in Quebec, snap to your heart's content!
