In Canada our restaurant are inspected by Public Health Inspectors. These inspectors are hired for our protection. We can not visit the kitchen of every restaurant that we choose to dine at, but we can for the most part rely on our Public Health Inspectors to ensure that our food is handled safely, is not contaminated, and is prepared in a sanitary environment. As consumers we have the right to know what these reports find. It would also be nice to know restaurant track records with inspections. Until the past several years the only findings you would hear of were those leading to a restaurant closure. Most provinces are moving to a more transparent system and the results are now publicly available online. Unfortunately there are some provinces that do not seem to be making any effort at all.
Currently I know of only 5 provinces that are making an effort to make restaurant inspection data available to the public (New Brunswick, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia). Actually, as far as Ontario and British Columbia are concerned the effort is more localized to cities and regions as opposed to province wide but they are making an effort. I can not really say for sure if Quebec is making an effort because I am unable to locate an English site. Matters of public safety should be provided in both French and English in all provinces.
The provinces of New Brunswick and Alberta provide the best model for how to report restaurant inspections. New Brunswick offers superior reporting and Alberta offers the best organization. I like the search engine for New Brunswick because I can easily grab a list of all closures or all warnings and violations not leading to a closure. Reports are broken down into 5 categories:
Green: High compliance with no more than 5 minor violations.
Light Yellow: General compliance, 6-9 minor violations.
Dark Yellow: General compliance, no more than 3 major violations.
Light Red: Corrections required, 1 or more critical violations, and/or 4 or more major violations and/or 10 or more minor violations.
Dark Red: License has been revoked for non-compliance
This is by far the easiest site to search and to get information quickly. There is a single search for the entire province. We have to look to Alberta for organization of inspection reports. Their site is easy to navigate by region, and each region is then searchable. The problem is that the search is nearly useless as you can only search one listing at a time as opposed to the New Brunswick system which allows an individual to pull up a list of all yellow, or all red listings in an area. Ontario is not as organized as Alberta. Each city, or region, seems to be working on their own reporting system. It would be nice to some uniformity between the sites, The search sites for Ontario listings are reasonably acceptable but they do not offer the same capabilities as the New Brunswick site and thus make finding recent information difficult as well as finding a list of violations not resulting in closures. Take the Toronto site for example, when you search the Toronto site, all yellow or conditional passes as green. Clearly a restaurant with 0 violations is not deserving of the same color code as one with multiple minor or major violations. However, Toronto feel that you only need to know what restaurants are closed (listed as red).
Here is a list of sites where information regarding restaurant inspections is either located or should be located. Please keep in mind that I did not search each site for hours. If I did not find the information readily available in less than 5 minutes I assumed that the information was not there. If the information is there it should not be buried in an obscure page that you will never find. If you locate the inspection reports in any area please let me know.
Yukon: No reporting
http://hss.gov.yk.ca/programs/health/environmental/
Saskatchewan: No reporting
Saskatoon: poor reporting
Regina: poor reporting
http://www.rqhealth.ca/programs/comm_hlth_services/pubhealth/enviro_safe_food.shtml
Quebec: No reporting
http://www.mapaq.gouv.qc.ca/Fr/Restauration/
Montreal: No reporting?
PEI: No reporting
http://www.gov.pe.ca/health/index.php3?lang=E
Ontario: Reporting done regionally
Toronto: City initiative
Dine Safe Toronto
http://app.toronto.ca/food2/DineSafeMain?userRequest=return_home
Ottawa: City initiative
Eatsafe Ottawa
http://ottawa.ca/cgi-bin/search/inspections/q.pl?ss=home_en&qt=fsi_en
WaterLoo: Regional
http://www.region.waterloo.on.ca/ph
OTHER: Regional Sites
http://www.health.gov.on.ca/english/public/contact/phu/phuloc_mn.html
Nunavut: No Reporting
New Brunswick: Excellent reporting and search engine
http://www1.gnb.ca/0601/fseinspectresults.asp
Northwest Territories: No reporting
http://www.hlthss.gov.nt.ca/english/services/environmental_health/default.htm
Newfoundland: No Reporting
Manitoba: No Reporting
Winnipeg: PDF list of closures only
http://www.winnipeg.ca/cms/ehs/default.stm
BC: No Reporting
http://www.health.gov.bc.ca/socsec/contacts.html
Vancouver: Reporting but difficult to use
http://www.foodinspectionweb.vcha.ca/Nav-Main.htm
Alberta: Full reporting, best organized site