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Most questions are answered below. If yours is not, email us. A person reads every one, and we aim to reply within two business days.
Common questions
It is an online, self-paced food handler course for people who work with food in Ontario, written to Ontario's food handler requirements. The course and the exam are in English.
The material takes about six hours, and the exam adds 75 minutes. There is no deadline. Your progress is saved to your account, so you can stop on one device and carry on from another.
Requirements differ from province to province. If you work outside Ontario, check with your local public health unit before you enrol.
No earlier training is required. The course and the exam are in English, so you need to be able to read English. The course is written in plain language, aimed at a grade 8 reading level.
For the exam you need government-issued photo ID, a reliable internet connection, a device with a webcam and a microphone, and a quiet space.
The course costs $27.95. That covers the course, the final exam, any retakes and your certificate.
To register, open the course page, choose to enrol, create an account and pay online.
Yes, within 7 days of buying the course, as long as you have completed less than a quarter of the modules.
The full terms are on the refund policy page.
Finish every module: answer the check questions in each section correctly, and pass each module's 10-question quiz with 80% or more. You can retry a quiz as often as you need. The final exam opens once the course is complete. The exam is 50 multiple-choice questions in 75 minutes, and you need 70% to pass.
You sit the exam online, on your own device, whenever you are ready. There is no appointment to book. The exam is closed book: do not open the course or any notes while it is running. If the course is opened during your exam, it is recorded and a person reviews the sitting. There is more about the exam on the exam rules page.
Before your first exam, our verification partner checks your photo ID and your face, which takes about two minutes. You verify your ID once. After that, a quick camera check at the start of each exam confirms it is you.
We record video from your camera and sound from your microphone for the whole sitting. If you sit the exam on a computer, we record your screen as well. Software on your device listens for talking and tells us when it hears some. You are never asked to film the room you are in.
Nobody watches you live. When the sitting ends, we keep only short clips around anything the software flagged and destroy the rest, usually within a day. If nothing is flagged, we keep no recording of you at all. A member of our staff reviews any clips we keep and makes the decision; software never changes a result.
We ask for your agreement to all of this before the exam starts. What we hold, and for how long, is set out in the privacy policy.
If you fail, you can sit the exam again at no extra cost, and there is no waiting period. This course allows ten attempts in total. If you use all of them, contact us and we will look at your record with you.
Leaving the exam ends it. Closing the tab, opening another page or signing out submits your exam as it stands, and a person reviews every sitting that ends that way. Reloading the exam page is allowed, and is recorded. If you reload, the page has to open again within 90 seconds, or your exam is submitted as if you had left. If your exam ended this way because of a technical problem, tell us: the reviewer can decide that the exam does not count, and you sit a fresh one.
If the recording stops and does not come back, for example because your connection drops, the sitting stops with it. That does not count as an attempt, and you start a fresh exam at no cost. You can do this two times on your own. After that, contact us and a member of our staff sets up your next exam. There is more about the exam on the exam rules page.
You see your result as soon as you submit the exam. If you pass, your certificate is in your account straight away: a certificate to print and a wallet card for your phone, both showing the date it was issued, the date it expires five years later, and the code that lets anyone check it.
The one exception is a sitting the monitoring software flagged. A member of our staff reviews it before a certificate is issued, and makes a decision within 24 hours of the end of your exam.
Sign in and download it again from your account. It is free, and you can do it as often as you need. If you cannot sign in, reset your password first.
If the name on your certificate is wrong or has legally changed, contact us. We issue a corrected certificate and wallet card at no charge.
Every certificate carries a web address and a code, and the printed certificate also carries a QR code. Whoever holds the certificate opens the address, enters the code, and sees whether it is valid, the name it was issued in, the course, and the issue and expiry dates.
They need no account. There is no directory to search either: the code is the only way in, so nobody can look you up by name.
One team answers everything: questions about the course content, technical problems with the site or the exam, and questions about your account, payment or certificate. Email [email protected], or sign in and send us a message.
Our business hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern time, Monday to Friday. A person reads every message, and we aim to reply within two business days.