Restaurant Inspection Reports in Canada: Where to Find Them

Restaurant inspections in Canada are done by provinces, territories and their local health authorities, not by the federal government. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency doesn't inspect restaurants. So there's no single national lookup. Each province decides whether to publish reports and where.

Most of the country publishes them online, free. That covers Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island and two of the territories. Manitoba and Quebec don't post routine inspection reports. They publish lists of closures and convictions instead.

Here's where to look.

Where to find inspection reports, province by province

Two notes on Ontario. The province sets the rule that every health unit publishes, but each unit runs its own site, so search for "[your region] public health inspection". And Waterloo's "Check it!" lookup was unavailable at the end of October 2026; the Region asks people to call 519-575-4400 instead.

In Quebec, you can still get a full inspection report by making an access-to-information request to MAPAQ. MAPAQ has released redacted reports in answer to such requests.

How often restaurants get inspected

It depends on risk, and every province uses roughly the same factors. New Brunswick's list is the clearest: the types of food served, how they're handled, staff training, the history of compliance, and how the place is maintained and managed. A kitchen cooking raw chicken from scratch gets more visits than a café reheating sealed pastries, and a place with a bad last inspection gets more than one with a clean record.

In practice, that works out to one to three routine inspections a year, plus follow-ups and complaint visits:

• Ontario: the provincial food safety protocol sets at least 3 inspections a year for high-risk premises, 2 for moderate risk and 1 for low risk. Toronto, York and Hamilton all run on this.
• Alberta: AHS targets many food premises for an inspection every 12 months, and more often after problems. The lowest-risk premises may only be inspected after a complaint.
• Saskatchewan: at least once a year, more often depending on the food, how it's handled and the premises' history.
• New Brunswick and Nova Scotia: one to three routine inspections a year.
• Newfoundland and Labrador: once every two years, twice a year or four times a year, depending on the risk rating.
• Prince Edward Island: every licensed food premises at least once a year, with more visits set by risk.

Routine inspections are unannounced everywhere. If you've had a follow-up, expect it within days, not months.

What the reports actually show

The format changes a lot from one province to the next, so don't compare a Calgary report with a Toronto one line by line.

• Alberta lists only what was wrong. A clean inspection has an empty violations table. Each violation is marked critical or not, with a note citing the section of the Food Regulation. There are no grades; AHS explains why in its inspection FAQ. Our Calgary inspection guide covers this in more depth.
• Vancouver Coastal Health shows the number of critical infractions and a plain-language checklist where each item is marked in compliance, not in compliance or corrected during inspection. VCH doesn't give hazard ratings. See our Vancouver inspection guide.
• Island Health and Fraser Health still give each inspection a low, moderate or high hazard rating.
• Toronto grades every infraction as minor, significant or crucial. The result is a Pass, Conditional Pass or Closed notice that must be posted at or near the main entrance. The DineSafe guide walks through it.
• New Brunswick uses colours. Green means no more than five minor violations. Light yellow means six to nine minor. Dark yellow means no more than three major. Striped red means corrections are required: one or more critical violations, four or more major or ten or more minor. Solid red means the licence was revoked.
• Prince Edward Island posts reports in one search and premises given a warning, health order or closure in another. Our PEI guide explains how the inspections work.

One thing is the same almost everywhere: a problem fixed on the spot still appears on the report. "Corrected during inspection" is better than an open violation, but it's still public for as long as the report stays online, which is two or three years in most provinces.

If it's your restaurant

Your reports are public, and people do read them. That includes customers deciding where to eat, but also landlords, franchisors, investors and anyone buying the business. For a group with several sites, one weak location turns up when someone searches the brand.

A few habits help:

1. Look up every one of your sites once a month. It takes ten minutes. You shouldn't learn about a critical violation from a customer review.
2. Treat each violation as a job with an owner and a deadline. Then keep the proof it was fixed: a photo, a receipt, a log entry. Inspectors ask what happened about last time. Our guide to responding to inspection violations covers this.
3. Run your own inspection in between. Use the same headings the inspector uses and walk the kitchen the way they would. Our inspection preparation guide has a starting checklist, and improving your inspection score covers the most common repeat problems.

This guide was checked against provincial and health authority sites at the end of October 2026. Lookup tools change, so if a link has moved, search the health authority's site for "inspection reports".