Fire Doors, Dampers and Records in Canada: What the Codes Actually Require
This page is mostly about what Canadian law does not require, because that is the honest starting point — and then about the one province where failing to keep a record became a fineable offence this January.
First, the thing we are not going to pretend
Assaya is British software, and in Britain it is sold on the Building Safety Act's "golden thread" — a duty to hold building information for the life of the building.
Canada has no equivalent, and for fire stopping specifically it has nothing at all.
We checked the National Building Code and the National Fire Code directly. Article 3.1.9.1 of the NBC requires that penetrations through fire separations be sealed with a firestop system tested to CAN/ULC-S115 at the required rating. That is a performance requirement and it is the whole of it. There is no record, no register, no tagging, no as-built duty, and no requirement to retain the test evidence against what you installed. The third-party firestop inspection standards ASTM E2174 and E2393 are not referenced anywhere in either code.
So if you install fire stopping in Canada, no code obliges you to document a single seal. Any supplier telling you otherwise is selling you someone else's law — probably ours.
What Canada does require, and where
The duty in Canada is about fire doors, dampers and the records of inspecting them, and it falls on the building owner.
National Fire Code Division B article 2.2.2.4 sets the cycles: self-closing doors checked every 24 hours, doors in fire separations operated monthly as specified in the fire safety plan, and fire dampers, smoke dampers and fire stop flaps inspected at intervals not greater than 12 months. Division C article 2.2.1.2 then requires that records be made and retained on the premises, that initial verification reports be kept for the life of the system, and that no record be destroyed within two years.
Division C 2.2.1.1 is explicit about who: "Unless otherwise specified, the owner or the owner's authorized agent shall be responsible for carrying out the provisions of this Code."
Ontario — and this is the part worth knowing
Ontario runs its own Fire Code, O. Reg. 213/07, and two provisions in it are unusual enough to matter.
Electronic records are expressly accepted. Division B sentence 1.1.2.1(4): "Electronic records that can be made readily available to the Chief Fire Official upon request, are deemed to comply." We have not found an equivalent sentence in the national code or in any other province. Ontario wrote it down.
And since 1 January 2026, missing records are directly fineable. O. Reg. 260/25 brought administrative penalties into force under the Fire Protection and Prevention Act, and the provisions it lists include the record-making and record-retention articles themselves — 1.1.2.1 and 1.1.2.2. The penalties escalate for repeat contraventions of the same provision within three years, and the enabling statute is blunt about process: "There is no right to be heard before an order imposing an administrative penalty is made."
Two honest qualifications, because we would rather you heard them from us. The penalty route operates through municipalities that have appointed screening and hearing officers, so its reach depends on where the building is, and we have not established how many have done so. And the articles that are directly fineable are the record articles — not the monthly door inspection or the annual damper inspection themselves.
Alberta keeps records longest
Alberta's edition of the National Fire Code diverges on retention: no record may be destroyed within five years, and records must be retained on site. That is more than double the national floor, and an authority having jurisdiction may order a record to be audited. Anyone working from the national code will get Alberta wrong.
Alberta is also the one province with a statutory duty aimed at you rather than your client. Section 8 of the Safety Codes Act: "A contractor who undertakes construction, operation or maintenance of or builds or installs any thing to which this Act applies shall ensure that this Act is complied with." That is a compliance duty, not a record-keeping duty — but it is the only contractor-facing statutory obligation of its kind in the country.
Quebec — we cannot sell to you yet, and we would rather say so
Under the Charter of the French Language, software sold in Quebec must be available in French, and a contract of adhesion — which a software subscription is — must be provided in French before an English version can be validly agreed.
Assaya has no French version. Until it does, we are not in a position to sell into Quebec properly, and we would rather tell you that than take your money and leave you with an agreement that may not hold. If you work in Quebec and want this, say so — it moves the translation up our list, and knowing there is demand is the difference between "someday" and "next".
Where Assaya comes in
Honestly? In Canada we are not solving a legal problem for the fire-stopping contractor, because the law does not create one for you. We are solving your client's problem, and it is your deliverable.
The owner has to hold inspection records, in Ontario can be fined on the spot for not having them, and in Alberta has to keep them on site for five years. What we do is make the handover pack something they can actually use for that — every door, damper and seal recorded where it sits on the drawing, photographed, dated and searchable, rather than a folder of photographs with no names on them.
That is a commercial argument rather than a legal one. It is the true one, so it is the one we are making.
Buying from Canada
The app is on the App Store and Google Play in Canada. You can buy on this site without speaking to anyone — no demo, no sales call.
Pricing is set and charged in pounds sterling — roughly C$60 a slot a month at the time of writing, though the rate moves and your card issuer sets it, so treat the sterling figure as the price. We are a UK company and the data sits in a London data centre, which you should factor in if your client has data-residency requirements.
This page draws on the National Building Code of Canada 2020, the National Fire Code of Canada 2020, the National Fire Code 2023 Alberta Edition, Ontario Fire Code O. Reg. 213/07, O. Reg. 260/25 and the Safety Codes Act. Where our research could not verify something from the source itself, we have left it out rather than round it up. If you find something here that is wrong, tell us and we will correct it.