Starting a Dietitian Private Practice in Canada: What Changes by Province

What does every Canadian dietitian have to do, regardless of province?

Four things are common to every jurisdiction: register with the provincial regulatory college before using the title or practising, hold professional liability insurance where the college requires it as a condition of registration, keep client records that meet the applicable privacy law, and choose a business structure for the practice itself.

The differences are larger than most guidance suggests: record retention ranges from five years to sixteen, "nutritionist" is a protected title in some provinces and unprotected in others, and dietitians may form a professional corporation in four provinces but not in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba or Nova Scotia. This page sets out what actually differs, with the governing instrument named for each claim.

The order matters more than it looks. Registration governs the title you may advertise under, and advertising an unprotected or misused title is enforced separately from practising without registration — in Ontario, title contravention carries a fine of up to $25,000 for a first offence and $50,000 for subsequent offences under the Dietetics Act, 1991.

Is "nutritionist" a protected title in Canada?

It depends on the province, and this is the single most commonly mis-stated fact about Canadian dietetic practice. "Dietitian" is restricted everywhere. "Nutritionist" is a reserved or protected title in Alberta, Quebec and Nova Scotia. It is not protected in Ontario or British Columbia — the word appears nowhere in Ontario's Dietetics Act, 1991, and zero times in British Columbia's designation regulation.

In Quebec, "diététiste", "diététicien" and "nutritionniste" are all reserved under the Professional Code, as are the initials P.Dt., Dt.P. and R.D. Nova Scotia goes further than title protection alone: unlicensed persons there may not engage in, offer to engage in, or describe their activities as dietetics.

The College of Dietitians of Ontario has proposed protecting "nutritionist" in Ontario. That is advocacy, not law, and it should not be read as the current position.

The full picture — including Nova Scotia’s restriction on the practice itself — is in which words you may advertise under.

How long must a dietitian keep client records in Canada?

From five years to sixteen, depending on the province — and the date the clock starts from differs too, which changes the answer by years for the same client. Quebec is the shortest at five years from the last service rendered. British Columbia requires 16 years from the date of the last encounter, the longest period in Canada and binding law under the Health Professions and Occupations Act. Ontario requires 10 years from the client's last visit. Alberta states 10 years from the date of last service.

The instruments differ in force as well as in length. British Columbia's period sits in a Practice Standard made under statute. Ontario's 10 years is a College standard — PHIPA itself sets no numeric period. Alberta's 10 years appears in the College's Professional Practice Handbook phrased as "should", not in the bylaws, the Standards of Practice, the Health Information Act or its regulations.

All thirteen jurisdictions, and the clock-start event province by province, are set out separately — six of them publish no period at all.

Rules for records of minors are not simply the adult period. Ontario runs to the client's 28th birthday (10 years from the 18th). British Columbia runs 16 years from the age of majority, which at 19 puts a pediatric record close to the client's 35th birthday. Alberta uses whichever is longer of 2 years past the age of majority or 10 years.

Which privacy law applies to a private-practice dietitian?

It is not PIPEDA everywhere, and it is not the same statute in any two of Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. In Ontario, PHIPA governs and a private-practice dietitian is a health information custodian through the "health care practitioner" limb; PIPEDA is displaced for custodians by federal order. In British Columbia there is no health-information statute reaching private practice at all — BC PIPA governs, there is no "custodian" concept, and client health data is simply personal information.

Alberta changed in 2026. Alberta Regulation 106/2026 designates regulated members of the College of Dietitians of Alberta as custodians under the Health Information Act, which displaces Alberta PIPA for that health information. This is recent enough that the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner's own Health Information Act page, alberta.ca, and the College's 2023 practice handbook all still describe the previous position. Alberta PIPA continues to govern the rest of the practice — staff records, marketing lists, and other non-health personal information.

Breach obligations follow the statute, and they are not equivalent. Under Alberta's Health Information Act a custodian notifies three parties — the Commissioner, the Minister, and the individual — on a "risk of harm" trigger, which is a lower threshold than Alberta PIPA's "real risk of significant harm". British Columbia's PIPA contains no mandatory private-sector breach-notification provision at all; reporting to the OIPC is discretionary.

Whether you are captured as a custodian is a legal test the provinces draft three different ways — see whether you are a custodian at all.

Quebec is genuinely unsettled. 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 LRSSS instead — is not resolved in primary sources. A Quebec practice should take advice rather than assume either answer.

Can a dietitian incorporate a professional corporation in Canada?

In four provinces, and the answer does not follow the size of the province. An Ontario dietitian may incorporate and the College of Dietitians of Ontario issues the Certificate of Authorization. New Brunswick runs an express regime with its own Corporations Register, and Prince Edward Island issues health profession corporation permits. Since 19 December 2024 a Quebec dietitian may practise through an SPA or SENCRL under a dedicated ODNQ regulation, C-26, r. 100.01, made under paragraph p of the first paragraph of article 94 of the Professional Code.

British Columbia does not issue a health profession corporation permit to dietitians; only optometry and physical therapy hold that permit there. Dietitians in British Columbia may still operate an ordinary business — the College gates the practice name, not the corporate form. Saskatchewan's Professional Corporations Act is opt-in by designation and dietetics is not among the eleven designated professions, though The Regulated Health Professions Act (SS 2025, c 12) is expected to change that. Manitoba has no professional-corporation regime for dietetics, and Nova Scotia has no NSRD corporation permit.

The conditions differ by province, and New Brunswick’s corporate clock runs on a different year — see the four provinces where a professional corporation is available.

This is the distinction that most imported guidance gets wrong, because the American equivalents — the LLC and the S-corp — have no Canadian counterpart. A page describing either is describing a structure a Canadian dietitian cannot form.

What comes next once the practice is registered?

Two operational questions follow immediately. Whether your services attract GST/HST is not the clinical-versus-wellness distinction most sources describe — the statutory test, not the clinical-versus-wellness one expressly covers maintaining health and preventing disease. And what a carrier actually asks for on a receipt differs between carriers, which is why a single universal field list does not work.

If you intend to bill insurers directly rather than take payment at the point of service, that runs through four national billing portals, and five in Alberta.

And if you are practising in Quebec, start with Quebec, where almost none of this transfers — the retention period, the insurance arrangement and the rules on taking payment all differ.