Starting a Dietitian Private Practice in Quebec: Every Rule Differs

Who regulates dietitians in Quebec?

The Ordre professionnel des diététistes-nutritionnistes du Québec, named in the Professional Code and rebranded from the OPDQ — both names still appear in live sources. The Order publishes a public member directory, which is how insurers verify a practitioner's right to practise.

Record retention at five years is the shortest in Canada, and the insurance plan leaves no choice of insurer. Guidance written for Ontario or British Columbia will be wrong on most of these points rather than merely imprecise.

Dietetics in Quebec is a reserved-title profession rather than an exclusive-practice one — though two activities are reserved to Order members outright under article 37.1 of the Professional Code: determining the nutritional treatment plan, including the feeding route, where an individual prescription indicates nutrition is a determining factor in treating the illness, and monitoring the nutritional status of a person whose plan has been determined. The reserved titles are "diététiste", "diététicien" and "nutritionniste", together with the initials P.Dt., Dt.P. and R.D. — so unlike Ontario and British Columbia, "nutritionniste" carries the same protection as "diététiste".

The entry route differs too. A Quebec bachelor's degree in nutrition leads to the Order's permit; the national registration examination used elsewhere in Canada is not the route here, and equivalence standards for candidates trained elsewhere are set by regulation.

One citation trap for anyone checking this: the code of ethics is C-26, r. 97.1. The former r. 97 was replaced effective 20 February 2025, and sources still citing r. 97 are out of date.

How long do Quebec dietitians keep client records?

At least five years from the date of the last service rendered, under the Regulation respecting the keeping of records by dietitians, C-26, r. 105 — the regulation sets a floor, not a fixed period. That is the shortest published retention period in Canada — half Ontario's ten years and less than a third of British Columbia's sixteen.

Quebec also has no separate paediatric retention rule, which sets it apart from Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Nova Scotia, all of which extend the period for clients who were minors. A separate duty applies alongside the retention period: the record must be kept current until services to that client cease.

A practitioner moving to Quebec from another province should not carry their previous retention schedule with them, and one moving out of Quebec should not carry Quebec's.

What professional liability insurance does Quebec require?

A compulsory collective plan. The member must join the Order's group contract, and there is no free choice of insurer — a structural difference from Ontario and British Columbia, where a practitioner selects their own coverage and shows it meets the college's minimum.

The practical consequence is that comparing quotes is not part of setting up a Quebec practice, and guidance elsewhere that walks through choosing a provider does not apply.

Can a Quebec dietitian take payment before the appointment?

For a nutrition consultation, no. Article 89 of the Code des professions bars a professional from holding a client's money — "des sommes ou des biens, dont des avances d'honoraires" — unless their order has expressly authorised it by regulation, and the Order has adopted no such regulation. Its conclusion is that payment for a nutrition service is collected after the service is rendered.

The bar is not total, and the exceptions are the ones a practice actually runs into. The Order expressly permits collecting in advance for registration in a group activity — a course, workshop, conference or webinar — and for access to an online platform or resource library on its own, and it treats a completed stage of a project as billable rather than as an advance.

So a booking flow that charges a card at the time of booking, a standard feature of scheduling software, is unavailable for consultations and available for group programmes. Where the two are bundled, the Order requires each service to be priced separately and the payment terms and cancellation policy to be set out before the agreement is signed. A fee for a missed or cancelled appointment is separately permitted under the code of ethics, capped at the fees lost.

What has to appear on that receipt differs by carrier as well as by regulator — the field Quebec requires that nobody else does.

The Order also publishes an insurance-receipt minimum — date of consultation, nature of the service, the dietitian's printed name, signature and permit number, and the amount — describing it as what insurers generally ask for rather than as a rule of its own. The signature field is one no other regulator surveyed for this cluster publishes. It names four prohibited receipt practices, including back-dating and splitting a single transaction across receipts, and it holds the dietitian responsible for invoices and receipts even when an administrator issues them.

Can a Quebec dietitian incorporate?

Yes, since 19 December 2024. A Quebec dietitian may practise through a société par actions or a société en nom collectif à responsabilité limitée under a dedicated regulation of the Order, at C-26, r. 100.01, made under paragraph p of the first paragraph of article 94 of the Professional Code. Practice within an organisation is governed by Chapter VI.3 of the Code, whose opening provision, article 187.11, was itself replaced on 7 November 2024 — six weeks before the Order's regulation took effect.

Quebec is one of only four provinces where this route exists at all — how Quebec’s route compares nationally.

On tax, Quebec runs GST alongside QST at 9.975%, with QST imposed by its own statute rather than by reference to the federal Act. QST registration is a separate obligation with its own small-supplier rule on the same $30,000 figure. Revenu Québec names "diététiste" in its published list of practitioners whose services are not subject to GST or QST. That list is boundary-drawing rather than a blanket: the same page requires tax to be charged where a service is not rendered for one of five stated purposes, and those five are the statutory ones — maintaining health and preventing disease among them.

Which privacy law applies to a Quebec practice?

This is genuinely unresolved, and a Quebec practice should take advice rather than assume. Law 25 (P-39.1) expressly excludes health and social services information held by a health-sector body, and whether a private-practice dietitian falls inside that exclusion — and therefore under the health and social services legislation instead — is not settled in primary sources.

Elsewhere in Canada the same question has an answer, and the provinces draft it three different ways — see how the rest of Canada resolves this.

The two regimes impose different machinery, so the question is not academic. It is the one part of setting up a Quebec practice where this page cannot give an answer, and no source found gives one either.