There is no Canadian retention period. There is your College's, and across the regulators on this page it runs from five years to sixteen — so a figure you picked up from a colleague in another province, or in another profession, is probably not yours.

Ontario's privacy commissioner explains why the statute cannot settle it for you: "As PHIPA does not establish specific retention periods for personal health information, custodians should refer to their governing legislation to determine applicable record retention requirements" (IPC). The privacy law sets no number. The College sets it.

The two things that catch people out are both about the clock. First, the period usually runs from the last interaction, not the first — every subsequent contact restarts it. Second, for a client who was a minor, the period usually runs from the date they turn eighteen, which can put the destruction date decades out.

The published periods, before the detail:

• Ontario — ten years, for psychotherapists, social workers and psychologists alike, though each words the clock differently.

• British Columbia — sixteen years for College licensees, since April 2026. Seven is the old number and still circulating.

• Alberta — ten years, psychologists and social workers.

• Nova Scotia — ten years for psychologists; seven for counselling therapists, as a floor.

• Quebec — five years, set by regulation rather than by a College.

Now the wording, quoted as published.

Ontario — registered psychotherapists

Read this one carefully, because the way it is usually repeated is not the way it is written. The numbered clauses of CRPO's clinical records standard set no retention period at all. Standard 5.1 requires registrants to keep "an accurate, complete, and legible clinical record for each client" and to provide access "as permitted or required by law", and stops there.

The ten-year figure appears in the commentary beneath it, as an expectation, and conditionally:

"Where the RP is the custodian of the clinical record, they are expected to retain the record for at least 10 years from the date of the last interaction with the client, or for 10 years from the client's 18th birthday, whichever is later. For example, if a child is seven years old at the time of the last interaction, the record would be kept until the client's 28th birthday."

— CRPO Professional Practice Standards, Standard 5.1 commentary

Three things in that sentence do work people usually drop. It applies where the registrant is the custodian — which is not every arrangement, and is worth knowing if you practise inside a clinic that holds the record. It says expected, not required. And the minor's clock runs from the eighteenth birthday, which is why the College's own example ends at twenty-eight.

The same ten-year period is stated for appointment records and financial records, so the clock is not only about clinical notes — call logs and billing carry it too.

Ontario — social workers and social service workers

"College registrants shall ensure that each client record is stored and preserved in a secure location for at least ten years from the date of the last entry or, if the client was less than eighteen years of age at the date of the last entry, at least ten years from the day the client became or would have become eighteen" (OCSWSSW, Principle IV, 4.2.2).

The same clause continues with two conditions on keeping records longer. Registrants "shall store and preserve records for a longer period of time" where required by law or by an employer's policy, and shall do so "only if, based on a reasonable judgment, such longer retention period may be necessary because there is a reasonable possibility that future access to the record may be needed (such as, but not limited to, in cases involving minors, sexual abuse and/or current or future litigation)."

Ontario — psychologists and psychological associates

The College of Psychologists and Behaviour Analysts of Ontario — renamed in 2024, and now regulating behaviour analysts alongside psychologists and psychological associates — states the period as one combined test rather than two:

"Individual Client Service records must be retained for a minimum of 10 years after the service recipient reaches the age of 18 or after the last professional contact, whichever comes later;"

— CPBAO Standards of Professional Conduct, Standard 9.4(a)

Note the shape, because it is different from the two above. Those give an adult rule and then a separate rule for minors. This is a single "whichever comes later" sentence: for an adult client it runs ten years from the last contact, and for a client you saw as a minor it runs ten years past their eighteenth birthday.

British Columbia — psychologists

The College of Health and Care Professionals of BC, which now licenses psychologists among several other professions, sets sixteen years. Its standard requires a licensee to "Maintain a complete patient record or ensure that a system is in place to maintain a complete patient record for at least 16 years from the date of the last encounter with the patient, or 16 years from the date the patient reaches the age of majority—whichever date is later" (§6.1) (CHCPBC, Practice Standard: Records). It took effect 1 April 2026.

The seven-year figure many BC practitioners still quote comes from the former College of Psychologists of B.C.'s record-keeping checklist, retired on the same date. It remains reachable at its old web address, which is how it keeps being cited. If you are licensed by the College today, sixteen is the number.

The standard's scope is wider than "the chart" too. It reaches "written, electronic, audio, visual, and other forms of records related to patients or individuals being assessed, services, communications, and professional decisions." Communications are named.

British Columbia — clinical counsellors

Counselling is not yet regulated in BC. The College states that "Psychotherapy is not currently regulated in BC" and that licensing begins 29 November 2027 (CHCPBC). Until then there is no College standard to hold a BC counsellor to, and the standards that apply are the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors' own.

Its documentation standard names no number — records are retained "in accordance with applicable laws, Bylaws, Standards, and the BCACC Code of Ethical Conduct" (BCACC Standard 12.11). The number is in a separate BCACC guide to the province's private-sector privacy act, and it is phrased as advice rather than as a rule: "While the PIPA sets one year as the minimum retention period, a counsellor should retain an adult client's personal information for at least seven years from the date of the last recorded entry or seven years from the date a minor client turns 19 years of age" (BCACC, A Counsellor's Guide for Developing Client Personal Information Protection Policies and Procedures).

So seven years is an association's advice rather than a College's requirement, and licensing arrives in 2027 — which makes it a number to re-check rather than file away.

Alberta

For psychologists the period is ten years for an adult client: a psychologist "shall retain the client's record for a period of not less than ten (10) years after the last date on which a professional service was provided" (§7.4). For a client who was a minor it is whichever is longer of two measures — "two (2) years after the date on which the client reaches the age of majority, or ten (10) years after the last date on which a professional service was provided, whichever is longer" (§7.3) (College of Alberta Psychologists, Standards of Practice).

Alberta social workers reach the same headline number through a different regulator. Records are kept "for 10 years following the last entry for a professional service", and records "related to children and youth for 10 years following the 18th birthday of the youngest person identified in the record" (ACSW Standards of Practice, D.4).

Nova Scotia — psychologists

Ten years, with the minor's clock running from the eighteenth birthday: "Unless otherwise required by law a registrant shall retain both individual and corporate client records for at least ten years following the last client contact. If an individual client was less than eighteen years of age at the time of last contact, the individual client record shall be retained for ten years following the date of the client's eighteenth birthday" (§7.4). Billing records "are retained on the same basis" (§7.5) (Nova Scotia Regulator of Psychology, Standards of Professional Conduct).

Counselling therapists — the seven-year figure, and the trap in it

Registered counselling therapists in Nova Scotia are held to the CCPA standards, which the College publishes as its own. That is the lowest number here, and the sentence carrying it is explicitly a floor rather than a period:

"Counsellors/therapists shall ensure the security and preservation of client records for which they have maintenance responsibility, and the records of those they supervise, for a period stipulated by law in their jurisdiction and by protocol of their employer, whichever is longest. CCPA's standard of practice is to retain records for a period of seven years after the last date of service provided, and for seven years after the age of majority for children when the stipulation in law and by employment protocol is shorter than this length of time."

— CCPA Standards of Practice

"Whichever is longest" is doing the work. Seven years is what the standard supplies when nothing else supplies more — not a ceiling you can rely on if your provincial law or your employer says longer.

Quebec

Five years — the shortest period here, and the only one set by regulation rather than by a College standard.

The regulation governing psychologists' records provides that a psychologist must keep each record for at least five years from the date of the last professional service given. The official text is French: "Le psychologue doit conserver chaque dossier pendant au moins 5 ans à compter de la date du dernier service professionnel dispensé" (C-26, r. 221, s. 8).

The Ordre's own guidance repeats the five years and is explicit that it is a floor rather than a schedule — "ce délai de cinq (5) ans constitue un minimum et que les dossiers peuvent être conservés plus longtemps" (Ordre des psychologues du Québec, Guide explicatif concernant la tenue de dossier).

If you hold a psychotherapist's permit rather than a psychologist's licence, the record rules that reach you come from your own order, not from this regulation.

What the number does not tell you

Three things sit outside the retention figure and cause more trouble than it does.

Retention is a floor, not a ceiling, and not a permission. Keeping records longer than the minimum is often allowed and sometimes advisable. Keeping them indefinitely because deleting is hard is not a policy; it is an accumulating liability, since everything you hold is something you may have to produce, protect and account for.

The clock restarts. A client who returns after six years resets the ten-year period on the whole file, not just on the new entries.

Destruction has to be secure, and it has to be for real. The Ontario social work standards put it as: registrants "shall dispose of the contents of records in a way that ensures that the confidentiality of the information is not compromised" (OCSWSSW 4.2.5). For electronic records that means confirming the deletion actually removed the data, including from backups, which is a question for whoever holds it rather than a setting you can toggle.

What to do with this

Find your own College's clause and read it directly rather than trusting any table, including this one. Then write your retention period into a one-page policy with the start-date rule spelled out, because the number is easy to remember and the clock is what people get wrong.

If you practise in more than one province, or your client did, the safe working assumption is that the longer period applies until you have advice saying otherwise. That is a question for your College or your liability insurer.

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