Check the register

If a licensed professional is saying something dangerous in public

Then post about it if you like, but understand what you are doing. A screenshot on social media changes nothing. It does not reach the regulator, it does not create a record, and it has no consequence of any kind for the person in the post. A filed complaint opens a file. That is the entire difference, and it is enormous.

Colleges do act on public communications. Ontario’s tribunal has held that misleading, incorrect or inflammatory public statements by a physician can amount to professional misconduct, and has revoked a licence over conduct of that kind. But a regulator cannot act on something it has not been told about, in writing, by someone willing to put their name to it.

File it even if you think nothing will come of it. Often nothing will. By the College’s own account, more than forty Ontario physicians were under investigation for COVID-related conduct by January 2022 and eight had been restricted or suspended — investigations vastly outnumber actions, most are resolved privately, and many complaints end with a letter you will find unsatisfying. File anyway. Files accumulate. The case that ended with an Ontario physician losing his licence began with reports from two of his own colleagues, and one of the strongest documented cases on this site started with a pharmacist who filled a prescription and picked up the phone.

What makes a complaint usable: the person’s full name and registration number; the exact words, captured as a screenshot showing the date, the account and the URL, because posts get deleted the moment a College writes to someone; where and when it was posted; and a plain statement of the risk to the public. Dates, links and quotations. Not adjectives.

And then stop. Do not publish anyone’s home address, do not organise a pile-on, do not go near their family, their staff or their patients. This is not squeamishness — it is the single most effective way to protect the person you are complaining about. Harassment hands them the story they want, converts a practitioner facing scrutiny into a victim of a mob, and gives their lawyer something to write about instead of the conduct. It can also come back on you. On this site is the case of a physician who posted material identifying two people who had reported concerns about him; his followers called them a murderer and a criminal; he refused to take it down until a court made him; and the tribunal that revoked his certificate said it was particularly troubled by exactly that. Do the serious thing. Then let the College do its job, and hold it to account in public if it does not.

Five things this table shows that nobody tells you

Two territories have no college and no public register at all. In the Northwest Territories physicians are licensed by a government department, and there is no searchable list — you have to email the Professional Licensing Office and ask. In Nunavut there is neither a register nor any published discipline, and the only public-facing route is a general patient relations office. If you want to check a doctor in Nunavut, you cannot.

A clean search result is not proof of a clean record. British Columbia publishes some disciplinary outcomes anonymously, as “Registrant” plus a number. New Brunswick has published reprimands under a file number with no name attached. In Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut there may be nothing published either way.

How far back the record goes varies by a factor of thirty. Saskatchewan publishes completed cases back to 1999 and New Brunswick back to 1991. British Columbia, Newfoundland and the Northwest Territories cap their online lists at ten years. Quebec’s own list begins in January 2019 — anything older has to be chased through SOQUIJ or CanLII.

Ontario moved its decisions off the College’s own website. Discipline is now published by a separate body, the Ontario Physicians and Surgeons Discipline Tribunal. The College’s old discipline pages are signposts pointing there. A physician’s own register entry carries their hearings and decisions, so the register remains the better single lookup.

Newfoundland publishes referrals before any finding — a practice no other college follows — with an explicit caution that a referral is not a finding of guilt. It also publishes settlement agreements as a named category, which is the route most matters actually take and the one most registers make invisible.

Four more things to know before you trust a nursing search

The name you have is probably the old name. Nova Scotia reorganised twice in seven years and its regulator changed again on 30 June 2026; Prince Edward Island merged on 1 April 2026; Newfoundland and Labrador on 15 April 2026. Alberta, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick have all renamed bodies in recent years. An old name in a document does not mean the regulator vanished — it was almost certainly renamed or absorbed, and the old websites mostly still resolve and serve the new body’s content, which is exactly why the old names persist.

Do not rely on the national lists. The two obvious national roster pages — the Canadian Nurses Association’s and the CCPNR’s — are both out of date, still naming bodies that no longer exist, and one of them links a province’s entry to the wrong regulator. Use the table above or go to the regulator directly.

Some registers only show nurses who are currently licensed. Yukon’s portal says plainly that it holds no historical data. A nurse who has been disciplined out of practice can therefore be invisible in exactly the search you would run to find out.

A “find a nurse” link that leaves the regulator’s website is normal. Most Canadian registers are now hosted by one of two outside vendors, so the address will change to something like alinityapp.com or thentiacloud.net. That is not a sign of a fake link.