Federal responsibility for development of Canadian food labelling requirements is shared among two federal departments, Health Canada and the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA).
Health Canada is responsible, under the Food and Drugs Act (FDA), for the establishment of policies and standards relating to the health, safety, and nutritional quality of food sold in Canada.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) is responsible for the administration of food labelling policies related to misrepresentation and fraud in respect to food labelling, packaging and advertising (FDA), and the general agri-food and fish labelling provisions respecting grade, quality and composition specified in the Canada Agricultural Products Act (CAPA), the Meat Inspection Act (MIA) and the Fish Inspection Act (FIA). In addition, the CFIA has responsibility for the administration of the food-related provisions of the Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act (CPLA), including basic food label information, net quantity, metrication and bilingual labelling.
The CFIA is responsible for the enforcement of all of the above requirements.