Managing health records for your family in Canada: kids, ageing parents, and carers

In most families, one person ends up holding everyone’s health history in their head. Which specialist said what. Whether the dose changed. When the last lab results came back. Whether Dad’s cardiologist knows about the medication the family doctor started. Often they are doing it for children and parents at once, from memory.

There is a thing nobody tells you until the moment you need it, and it is the reason this gets hard: caring for someone does not give you a right to see their health records. Responsibility and authority are separate, and they come apart at exactly the wrong moments. This article is about how access actually works in Canada, and what to arrange before you need it.

Disclosure: I am a doctor, and I founded exora, which is a personal health record app that can hold records for several people. It appears near the end. The rest applies regardless of what software you use.

There is no single Canadian rulebook

Health care is run by the provinces and territories, and so are the rules on who can see a health record. They use different ages and give the same role different names. Below are the four largest provinces: Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta and Quebec. Others have their own laws, and the details vary; check yours.

Across all four, though, the shape is the same. Nearly everyone reading this is in one of three positions:

• Your own children. You usually have authority while they are young, and it fades as they become able to decide for themselves, often well before 18.
• A parent or partner who can still make their own decisions. Easy to arrange, needs their participation, and almost nobody does it in advance.
• Someone who can no longer make their own decisions. Much harder, depends on legal documents, and the documents differ by province.

Your own children: authority that fades

In three of these four provinces, what matters is whether the young person understands the decision, not only their age, an idea often called the mature minor principle. Quebec uses a fixed age, 14. Each writes it down differently, and a parent’s access to records changes with it.

• Ontario. Under the Personal Health Information Protection Act (PHIPA), a parent of a child under 16 can generally make decisions about the child’s health information as the child’s substitute decision-maker. There are two important exceptions: information about treatment the child decided on themselves, and counselling the child took part in on their own. A parent who has only a right of access to the child, rather than custody, does not count. And a capable child under 16 can decide for themselves, and if they disagree with the parent, the child’s decision wins. (Source: the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Ontario’s PHIPA FAQ.) Ontario Health’s own My Health Record portal is for people aged 16 or over.
• Quebec. From the age of 14, an adolescent may consent alone to non-urgent care proposed by a health professional, in complete confidentiality. For the Québec Health Record, a parent or legal guardian can request a child’s information while the child is under 14. From 14, the young person makes the request themselves, and a parent receives a copy only if the young person consents, with that consent attached to the request. (Source: Québec Health Record: your rights.)
• British Columbia. The Infants Act lets a minor consent to their own health care, without a parent’s consent, if the provider is satisfied they understand it and that it is in their best interests. For records held by public bodies such as health authorities, a regulation under BC’s freedom of information law lets a guardian act for a minor only if the minor is incapable of acting for themselves.
• Alberta. The Health Information Act (section 104) uses an understanding test, not an age. A person under 18 who understands the nature of a right and the consequences of using it exercises it themselves. A guardian exercises it only if the young person does not.

What the portals do

In BC, Health Gateway lets you add a child aged 11 or younger to your account, using their BC Services Card. You see their immunization records only. Once they turn 12, you can no longer see their records there, and they need their own account.

In Alberta, Alberta Health Services sets out the stages in its guide to MyChart proxy access for under-18s. For a child under 16, you can request access online through MyHealth Alberta. Young people can sign up for their own account from 14, and from 16 they can limit access. A parent’s proxy access ends automatically at 18. AHS also notes that proxy access cannot be limited to specific information: it is all or nothing.

Many hospitals run their own portals with their own family access, such as MyChart at The Ottawa Hospital. The rules differ by hospital, so ask yours.

Why this is a good rule

The confidentiality is doing something. Teenagers need to be able to see a doctor about contraception, mental health, sexual health or drug and alcohol questions and know the conversation is theirs. A parent silently keeping access would deter exactly the young people who most need a clinic.

The practical advice, then, is not a workaround. It is a conversation before the change rather than a surprise after it. Something like: your health information is becoming yours, as it should, and I would still like to help if you are happy for me to. Most teenagers say yes when asked. Fewer say yes when they discover you have been looking.

A parent who can still make their own decisions

An adult who can make their own decisions controls their own health information, however much help they need. Your access comes from them.

How that is recorded varies. Alberta’s Health Information Act is unusually direct: it lets any person with written authorization from the individual exercise their rights on their behalf, including asking for records. In Alberta’s MyChart, users aged 14 or older can give another MyChart user access to their Connect Care health information. Elsewhere, ask the clinic or hospital what form of consent it needs, and get it in writing.

The thing worth internalizing is the timing. Set this up on an ordinary Tuesday, not during a hospital admission. Consent can only be given by someone able to give it. The paperwork is not the hard part; the conversation is, and it is much easier over a cup of tea than in a corridor.

Also ask your parent to tell their family doctor that you are involved and that they are happy for you to be spoken to. Note it down when they do. It will smooth a dozen phone calls.

A parent who can no longer make their own decisions

This is where it gets genuinely complicated. The real question is whether you have legal authority to make decisions for that person at all, and the trap worth knowing about is that the documents, and what they allow, differ substantially between provinces. One line each, on what they mean for records:

• Ontario: power of attorney for personal care. An attorney for personal care can make decisions about health care, housing and other personal matters, and you must be at least 16 to make one, according to the Government of Ontario. Under PHIPA, the attorney for personal care is near the top of the ranked list of people who can make decisions about an incapable person’s health information, ahead of spouses, children and other relatives, with the Public Guardian and Trustee last (IPC Ontario). Ontario’s own advice is blunt: without an attorney for personal care, “your family can make some decisions, but not all.”
• British Columbia: representation agreement. A representative under a representation agreement can help with or make health and personal care decisions, within the agreement’s limits. Section 18 of the Representation Agreement Act gives the representative the same right as the adult to information and records that relate to the adult’s incapability or to an area of authority the agreement grants.
• Alberta: personal directive. A personal directive names an agent for personal decisions, and it only comes into effect after a capacity assessment and a Declaration of Incapacity. Under the Health Information Act, an agent can exercise the person’s information rights “if the directive so authorizes”, so if you are writing one, say so in it. A court-appointed guardian or an attorney under a power of attorney can also act, within their powers.
• Quebec: protection mandate. A protection mandate has no power until a court homologates it, which requires medical and psychosocial assessments. For the Québec Health Record, a request for an incapable person aged 14 or over must come from their guardian, trustee or representative (Québec Health Record). Quebec’s assistance measure is lighter: an assistant can act as an intermediary with third parties, but cannot decide or sign for the person.

So “I have power of attorney for Mum” may or may not mean what you think it means, depending on which province you are in, which document she signed, and what it says. In Ontario, for example, a power of attorney for property covers financial affairs, not health care.

This is general information and not legal advice. For a specific situation, your province’s public guardian or trustee, or a lawyer or notary, is the right call.

The single most useful thing in this whole article: arrange this while it is hypothetical. These documents are not only for the very old or very ill, some can be made without a lawyer (Ontario’s power of attorney kit is free), and the difference they make shows within an hour of an unexpected admission.

Being a carer without being next of kin

The hardest position is responsibility without authority: a friend, a neighbour, a partner whose role is not on paper, one of several siblings who disagree.

What actually helps:

• Get authorized while you can. The person you care for can tell their providers you are involved, sign a written authorization, or add you to a portal that allows it. All of that is easy while they are well.
• Keep your own record. Nothing stops you keeping notes, copies of documents you are given, and a current medication list. It is often what clinicians actually want when they ask “what is she taking?”
• Ask for things in writing, at the time. A discharge summary, a copy of the referral, the specialist’s letter. Asking at the appointment is far easier than requesting it later.
• Know that the person themselves has full rights. They can request their records from any provider that holds them, and you can help them do it. Here is how that works in Canada.

What actually helps day to day

Legal access is necessary, but what makes a Tuesday easier is smaller:

• A current medication list per person: names, doses, who prescribed it, when it changed. This is the single highest-value document in family care, and it is almost always out of date.
• A one-page summary per person: conditions, allergies, key history, current providers. What you would want to hand someone in an emergency department.
• The answer to “what changed since last time”, which is the question that connects the family doctor, the specialist and the hospital, and the one nobody has written down.

Note where the provincial layer stops here. Each portal is per person and per province, so a child in BC and a parent in Ontario means different portals, rules and logins, and none shows what you have gathered yourself. They are worth having (I compared them with personal health record apps here), but they will not assemble a family picture for you.

Where exora fits

exora is a personal health record app built for this shape of problem: one account can hold several profiles, such as yourself, a child and a parent you care for, each with its own record. You upload documents for each person, such as PDFs, photos and scans, and exora reads them for you, with a reading system built for medical records. It pulls out the clinical details and builds one searchable record with a timeline for each person. Every fact links back to the document it came from, so you can check it. You can share a chosen part of one person’s record by link with a co-parent, a sibling or a clinician, with an expiry, and revoke it. exora is free to start, with an optional membership.

Your health data is never used to train AI models. It is stored in Sydney, Australia, which is outside Canada. Details are on our security page.

Where it does not help:

• It is not legal authority. Creating a profile for your mother in an app does not make you her substitute decision-maker, and exora does not check who holds that role. Authority comes from the processes above, and nothing in software substitutes for them.
• You still need their agreement. Managing a capable adult’s health information without their knowledge is a problem no product should solve, and this one does not.
• No connection to any provincial portal or hospital system. You download or request records, then upload them.
• It cannot get documents you do not have. You, or the person themselves, still have to request them.
• It can misread. The reading is automated, so check anything that matters against the original. That is why every fact links back to it.
• It is not medical advice. It organizes and presents information. It does not diagnose or tell you what to do.

A short checklist

1. Young children: find out how your province’s portal handles dependents, and keep a current copy of each child’s immunization record.
2. Teenagers: have the conversation before access changes, not after. In each of these four provinces, their own say grows as they do.
3. Capable adults you help: ask them to authorize you now, in writing, while it is routine. Ask them to tell their family doctor you are involved.
4. Anyone ageing: get the right document for your province done while it is hypothetical, and check that it covers health information as well as decisions.
5. Everyone: keep a medication list and a one-page summary per person. If you do nothing else on this list, do this one.

Claims about provincial privacy law, substitute decision-makers and patient portals are sourced to provincial legislation, privacy commissioners, governments and health authorities, linked inline, and were checked on November 9, 2026. Other provinces and territories have their own rules, and portal arrangements change often. This article is general information, not legal or medical advice. Substitute decision-making law differs by province and turns on the specific documents in place; for a real situation, seek advice from your province’s public guardian or trustee, a lawyer or a notary.