Compliance Audits for Canadian Practices
Your website is advertising, and in dentistry that puts it under a standard set by your provincial college. There is no national code, so the rules change at the border. We audit every page against the standard that actually applies to you and hand you a written report: the offending copy, the rule it conflicts with, and a compliant rewrite.
There Is No National Dental Advertising Code
This is the part most practices and almost every marketing agency get wrong. Canada regulates dentistry province by province, and the standards are not variations on a theme. A campaign that is entirely compliant in Alberta can breach the rules in Ontario without a single word changing.
Alberta
College of Dental Surgeons of Alberta
Almost no category-specific bans. Nearly everything runs through one controlling test: advertising must not be untruthful, inaccurate, or capable of misleading.
Ontario
Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Ontario
Statutory and strict. Testimonials, superlatives, comparisons, inducements and outcome guarantees are prohibited outright, and specialist or general practice status must be disclosed whenever a treatment is named.
British Columbia
BC College of Oral Health Professionals
Strict, and currently in regulatory transition following the 2022 amalgamation. Testimonials, advertised inducements and superlatives have been prohibited, and any credible audit has to address which instrument now binds.
Quebec
Ordre des dentistes du Quebec
The strictest regime in the country. Testimonials and comparative advertising are banned, guarantees are treated as a derogatory act, and a separate regulator enforces French language obligations on public-facing material.
Practices outside these four provinces are audited against the pan-Canadian principles and federal overlays, with your own college's published standard fetched and applied. We tell you in the report which basis was used, rather than implying a province-specific ruleset we do not have.
What Gets Checked
Every Page, Against the Standard That Applies to You
Advertising rules and digital compliance in the same pass, because they live on the same pages and the same person ends up responsible for both.
Full Site Crawl
Every page, not a sample. Service pages, location pages, blog archive, landing pages still live from a campaign three years ago, and the ones nobody on the current team remembers publishing. Forgotten pages are where most faults are found.
Provincial Rule Check
Each page tested against the standard that actually applies where you practise, with the specific provision cited against each fault. Multi-location practices are audited against every province they operate in, because the answer changes at the border.
Testimonial and Review Exposure
Where patient reviews, embedded Google widgets, and social proof create a problem. This is the most common fault we find and the one practices are most surprised by, because the widget was usually installed by a previous agency as a selling point.
Before and After Imagery
Whether your case photography meets the conditions your college sets, covering consistency of lighting and angle, accompanying disclaimers, consent, and whether the result shown is presented as typical.
Accessibility (WCAG AA)
Colour contrast, keyboard navigation, alt text, form labels, focus states, and heading structure, with Ontario practices also measured against provincial accessibility obligations. Beyond the compliance exposure, this is the group most likely to be silently unable to book with you.
Privacy and Consent
What your privacy policy claims against what your site actually does: tracking pixels, analytics, form data handling, and third-party embeds, assessed against federal privacy law and the tighter provincial regimes where they apply.
The Deliverable
A Written Report, Not a Checklist
A red-amber-green checklist tells you that you have a problem. It does not tell you what to write instead, which is the only part that actually helps. Our report quotes the offending copy exactly as it appears, cites the specific provision it conflicts with, and supplies a compliant alternative you can paste straight in.
Faults are ordered by severity, so you fix the things that carry real exposure first rather than working alphabetically through a spreadsheet. An audit is a marketing compliance review, not legal advice.
Audited against your province, not a generic national checklist
Every page crawled, not a representative sample
Offending copy quoted with the exact provision cited
A compliant rewrite supplied for every fault
Ordered by severity, so you know what to fix first
Accessibility and privacy checked in the same pass
Compliance and Growth Are Not Opposites
The practices that get into trouble are usually the ones marketing hardest with the least oversight. We run the audit, fix what it finds, and keep your college's rules in view in the advertising and content we produce afterwards.
Frequently Asked Questions
Compliance Audit FAQs
Find Out Before Your College Does
Request an audit. We will crawl the site, test every page against the standard that applies in your province, and give you a written report with a compliant rewrite for each fault we find.