Public health inspectors conduct thousands of inspections each year.
Ontario’s Health Protection and Promotion Act is the law that allows public health staff to inspect or cause the inspection of, but not limited to:
- any place where food or drinking water is served to the public
- any place where the general public can use water for the purpose of recreation
- any special event that offers a petting zoo or food
- any place where sleeping quarters are offered for staff or for the general public
- personal services settings such as hair salons, tattoo parlours, piercing and aesthetic shops
- premises used or intended for use as a boarding or lodging house
Inspection results are available online. Check Before You Go!
What is our role?
The purpose of these inspections is to prevent, eliminate, and decrease the effects of health hazards. Where a health hazard exists, public health officials may issue an order or direction. Enforcement can also include the issuance of set-fines.
The Health Protection and Promotion Act allows the Medical Officer of Health to have prescribed duties with regard to communicable diseases. Some of these duties include:
- issuing orders as they pertain to a communicable disease or outbreak
- sets out the duty for physicians, practitioners, hospital administrators, school principals, etc., to report reportable diseases
- sets out requirements with regard to immunization
The Health Protection and Promotion Act (the Act) allows the right of entry, powers of inspection, and appeals from orders. Rights of entry and powers of inspection are granted to Medical Officers of Health and public health inspectors.
In accordance with the Act, a Medical Officer of Health or a public health inspector may:
- enter and have access to, through, and over any premises
- make examinations, investigations, tests, and inquiries
- make, take, and remove or require the making, taking, and removal of copies, samples or extracts related to an examination, investigation, test, or inquiry
- not enter a room actually used as a dwelling without the consent of the occupier
- require an operator of a food premises or a small drinking water system to cease the operation of, to dismantle or to excavate, or to do any combination of them on, any equipment on, in or forming part of the food premises or small drinking water system for the purpose of an examination, investigation, test, or inquiry
The duties listed above can only be exercised at reasonable times.
Obstruction of a public health official who is lawfully carrying out a duty under the Health Protection and Promotion Act (the Act) is not permitted and can be subject to fines under the Provincial Offences Act.
- Any person who contravenes an order made pursuant to the Act is guilty of an offence.
- The penalty for an offence, if convicted, can be a fine to a maximum of:
- $5,000 for every day or part of a day on which the offence occurs or continues
- $25,000 for every day or part of a day on which the offence occurs or continues where a corporation is convicted on an offence
Contact us
Contact us if you would like more information, to speak to a public health inspector, or to make a complaint.
For emergencies after-hours and on statutory holidays