The Genetic Non-Discrimination Act and What an Insurer May Ask

No Canadian life insurer may make you take a genetic test, or hand over the results of one, to get a policy or better terms. That rule comes from the federal Genetic Non-Discrimination Act, S.C. 2017, c. 3, and it applies in every province, Quebec included. What the Act does not do is take health off the application. You will still be asked about your diagnoses, symptoms, treatment, medications and family history, and those answers are still underwritten. The useful work sits between those two facts: knowing which questions the Act reaches, reading your own form with care, and knowing what to do if a question or an authorization seems to ask for more than the law allows.

The protection holds at any amount of coverage and for any individually underwritten contract: term, participating whole life, critical illness or disability. How an underwriter weighs what you do disclose is explained in life insurance underwriting, and what can happen after a wrong answer in misrepresentation on an application.

What does the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act forbid an insurer to do?

Three things, each in its own section. The Act does not name insurers. It speaks of any person who provides goods or services, enters into or continues a contract or agreement, or offers or continues specific terms or conditions in one. A life insurance contract is a contract, so an insurer is covered by the same words that cover an employer or a landlord.

• No required test (section 3). No one may require you to undergo a genetic test as a condition of any of those activities, and no one may refuse to engage in them because you refused a test.
• No required results (section 4). No one may require you to disclose the results of a genetic test on the same conditions, and no one may refuse you because you declined to disclose them.
• No collection or use without your written consent (section 5). Anyone engaged in those activities may not collect, use or disclose the results of your genetic test without your written consent.

Read the words about terms and conditions slowly. The rules do not stop at whether a policy is issued. A rating, an exclusion or a premium set on condition of a test, or of a result, is covered in the same way as a refusal, because paragraph 3(1)(c) names the terms of the contract alongside the contract itself. The same words reach a critical illness or disability application, since each is a contract, and the Act sets no amount of coverage above which the rules stop. Members of the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association had once made a voluntary commitment about genetic results below a stated amount of coverage; the statute has no threshold, so it is the rule that counts today at every amount.

Two groups are exempt under section 6: a physician, a pharmacist or another health care practitioner, in respect of a person to whom they are providing health services; and a person conducting medical, pharmaceutical or scientific research, in respect of a participant. The exemption is about care and research, not about contracts. Your doctor may order a genetic test as part of your care. An insurer that later asks for your doctor's file is not providing you health services, so section 6 does not cover it and section 5 still applies.

Section 7 makes a breach of section 3, 4 or 5 an offence. On conviction on indictment, the maximum is a fine of $1,000,000, imprisonment for up to five years, or both. On summary conviction, the maximum is a fine of $300,000, imprisonment for up to twelve months, or both. The offence is committed by whoever contravenes the section, whether that is an insurer, an employer or anyone else (Genetic Non-Discrimination Act, sections 2 to 7, read 28 September 2026).

What counts as a genetic test under the Act?

Section 2 defines a genetic test as "a test that analyzes DNA, RNA or chromosomes for purposes such as the prediction of disease or vertical transmission risks, or monitoring, diagnosis or prognosis." The definition turns on what the laboratory analyzes, not on who ordered the test or why.

Two consequences follow. First, the protection is not limited to predictive tests taken while you are well. A test your physician ordered to diagnose or monitor an illness you already have still analyzes DNA, RNA or chromosomes, so its results are still the results of a genetic test. Second, the definition stops where that analysis stops. A blood pressure reading, a cholesterol panel, a scan, or a biopsy read for the shape of the cells does not analyze DNA, RNA or chromosomes, and none of them is a genetic test under section 2.

Section 2 also says that to disclose "includes to authorize disclosure." An insurer that may not require your results directly may not get them by requiring you to sign a form that authorizes a laboratory or a physician to send them instead. Both routes are closed by the same definition.

Treat the open row with care. If you are unsure whether a test you took falls under section 2, ask the insurer in writing whether its question reaches that test before you answer, and keep the reply.

What may an insurer still ask, and what must you answer?

Insurers can still seek the health information they relied on before 2017, as long as a question does not require a genetic test or its results. An application can ask about diagnosed conditions, symptoms, medications, treatment, hospital stays, height and weight, tobacco and alcohol, driving record, occupation, travel and the health of your parents and siblings. None of those questions requires a genetic test. What the Act adds is a boundary inside some of them: a request for "all test results" is not permission to require the results of a genetic test.

The line that matters runs between a condition and a test result. A condition you have been diagnosed with is a fact about your health, however the diagnosis was reached, and you answer the health questions about it accurately. What the Act protects is the result of the genetic test as a test result. It does not turn a diagnosed illness into protected information because a laboratory confirmed it with a DNA analysis.

Family history stays on the form. A question about whether a parent, brother or sister was diagnosed with heart disease, cancer or another named condition, and at what age, asks about an illness in someone else's life. It does not require anyone to be tested, so it remains an ordinary underwriting question. Which relatives count, what to do when you do not know, and how an insurer weighs the answers are set out in family history on an application.

What follows from your answers depends on the insurer, the condition and the evidence. A person with a diagnosed condition can receive a standard offer, an offer on changed terms such as a rating or an exclusion, a postponement, or a decline. The Act does not decide which. What each outcome means, and what you can do after one, is in rated, postponed or declined.

What about screening, surgery or specialist visits that followed a result?

This is the part the Act does not reach, and it is easy to miss. The Act protects the result. It does not protect what happened next. If a result led you to more frequent screening, a preventive surgery, a medication, or visits to a specialist or a genetic counsellor, those are events in your medical history, and an application can ask about them.

A peer-reviewed 2024 study of 16 Canadian application forms, described with its other findings below, found that 6 of them asked about visits to specialists, which could include a geneticist or a genetic counsellor. So answer what each question asks, accurately and completely: the procedure, the date, the physician, the medication. Those are medical facts, and the duty of disclosure applies to them as it does to the rest of your health.

A harder case is a question that asks why. If a form asks the reason for a surgery or a specialist visit, and the honest reason is a genetic test result, you are being asked, in effect, for the result. Our reading is that the Act's protection of the result still stands there, but we know of no court ruling on that exact situation. Before you answer, ask the insurer in writing how it wants the question answered without the result, and keep its reply.

Illustrative example. Suppose you took a hereditary cancer gene test three years ago, it found a variant, and since then you have had yearly screening with a specialist and one preventive surgery. You now apply for life insurance. The questions sort out like this:

• A question asking whether you have had a genetic test, or what it showed: the result may not be required, and you may not be refused for declining. Ask the insurer in writing how it wants that question handled.
• A question about specialists consulted in the past five years: you list the visits and the dates as the form asks. If it also asks the reason, you are in the harder case above.
• A question about surgery: you give the procedure and the date.
• The family history question: your relatives' diagnoses, if the form asks, as for anyone else.
• The medical-records authorization: before you sign, you ask whether it reaches the test report in your specialist's file.

One thing should not bend to insurance: your care. Do not delay or skip a test, a screening or a treatment your physician recommends because of a future application. The Act protects a genetic result whenever the test was taken, and an untreated condition is a risk to you before it is a question on a form.

The same care applies to ordinary medical records. With your authorization, an insurer can ask your physician for a statement or for records, and those records can mention a genetic result as well as the care that followed. So read the authorization with the same care as the health questions, because it decides what reaches the insurer.

What should you do if a form or an authorization seems to reach a genetic result?

Do not assume the wording on your form has been cleaned up. A peer-reviewed study published in 2024 in the Canadian journal FACETS ("Still using genetic data? A comparative review of Canadian life insurance application forms before and after the GNDA", by Fernando, Kondrup, Cheung, Uberoi and Joly) reviewed 16 Canadian life insurance application forms that the researchers gathered up to May 2022. It found that:

• 12 of the 16 used broad testing questions, with the word "test" and no qualifier, that an applicant could read as including a genetic test;
• only 4 told applicants not to provide genetic test results;
• all 16 contained a data-sharing clause, and none of those clauses mentioned genetic results.

Forms change, and the study looked at a sample, not at every insurer. What it shows is that some forms may still carry wording that reaches further than the Act allows an insurer to require. The authors concluded that broadly phrased questions, which applicants may read as a requirement to provide genetic results, remain a problem. Read your own form with that in mind.

1. Keep a copy of the question or the authorization exactly as printed, with the form's name and date.
2. Ask in writing before you answer. Send the question to the insurer, through your advisor if you have one, and keep the reply.
3. Answer every other part. A question about tests can also ask about diagnoses or treatment. Answer those parts accurately, and do not leave a whole health question blank.
4. Read the authorization before you sign. Ask whether it extends to genetic test results in your records, whether the insurer will ask for a separate written consent for them, and whether you may write an exclusion on the form. Keep the reply.
5. If the insurer insists, or says it will refuse the application or change its terms because you declined, ask for that position in writing and use the route set out further down.

A short written question does the job. For example, with the question number and period only as an illustration: "Question 12 asks about any tests in the past five years. Does it include genetic tests as defined in section 2 of the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act? If not, please confirm that I should answer it without including any genetic test or its results." Keep the insurer's answer with your copy of the application.

Can an insurer use a genetic result that is already in your medical file?

Section 5 says that anyone engaged in the activities the Act covers may not collect, use or disclose the results of your genetic test "without the individual's written consent." That is the whole of the rule. The Act does not say what the written consent must look like, or that it must name genetic results.

Our reading, not a legal ruling: a broad medical-records authorization you sign at application could be argued to be written consent for the purpose of section 5. We know of no Canadian court decision settling the point. So do not assume that a general authorization cannot release a genetic result held by your physician. If you do not want a result collected, say so in writing before you sign, ask the insurer to confirm how it handles a result it receives inside a file it requested, and keep both documents.

Section 6 explains why the result can be there in the first place. Your physician was free to order the test as part of your care. That freedom belongs to the physician, in respect of health services, and it does not pass to an insurer that later receives the file.

Does the duty of disclosure mean you must volunteer a genetic result?

Start with the protection. No one may require you to disclose a genetic test result as a condition of a contract or its terms, and no one may refuse you, or refuse to continue your contract, because you declined (section 4 of the Act). A provincial duty of disclosure does not give an insurer a way around that: the demand itself is what section 7 makes an offence.

Then the duty. In Quebec, article 2408 of the Civil Code of Québec says the client, and the insured if the insurer requires it, "is bound to represent all the facts known to him which are likely to materially influence an insurer in the setting of the premium, the appraisal of the risk or the decision to cover it." That duty reaches the facts you know, not only the printed questions. The common law provinces impose a comparable duty to disclose material facts through their own Insurance Acts.

Where the two meet is not fully settled. A diagnosis, a symptom and the care you received are facts you disclose. Whether an insurer could later contest a policy because a genetic result itself was not volunteered, when the Act forbids requiring it, has not been decided by a Canadian court to our knowledge. Our reading is that section 4, which also forbids refusing to continue a contract because you declined to disclose a result, weighs against such a challenge. It is a reading, not a ruling. If this matters to your application, speak to a lawyer (in Quebec, a lawyer or a notary) before you sign.

What can follow from a wrong answer about your health, including Quebec's two-year rule in article 2424, is set out in misrepresentation on an application.

Can you volunteer a favourable result, and does the medical change?

Yes, you may offer a result, because section 5 allows its collection and use with your written consent, and the consent is yours to give. Nothing in the Act obliges the insurer to act on it. It does not have to issue coverage, offer a better class, or treat a negative result for a condition in your family as a reason to improve its offer. That is the insurer's decision under its own underwriting rules, and those differ from one company to another.

Before you hand a result over, ask the insurer in writing three things: whether it will consider the result at all, what it could change, and how it will keep the result in its file. A result you give becomes part of that insurer's file, and a later application to the same insurer may meet it again. Keep the reply with your copy of the consent. If the answer is vague, nothing obliges you to provide the result: the choice stays yours.

The medical side is unchanged in kind. Where a paramedical exam is required, blood and urine are analyzed for markers such as glucose, cholesterol, liver and kidney function and nicotine, and those are not analyses of DNA, RNA or chromosomes. What an examiner may not do is add a genetic test to the panel as a condition of the application, because that is what section 3 forbids. Forms and examinations vary by insurer and product; the medical and what it measures explains the components.

Does the Act apply in Quebec?

Yes. The Act is federal criminal law and applies in every province in the same words. The doubt came from a reference: the Government of Quebec asked the Quebec Court of Appeal whether sections 1 to 7 were within Parliament's power, and on 21 December 2018 that court gave its opinion that they were not (2018 QCCA 2193). A reference opinion answers a government's question; it is advisory, and this one was appealed.

On 10 July 2020 the Supreme Court of Canada allowed the appeal, five judges to four, in Reference re Genetic Non-Discrimination Act, 2020 SCC 17 (file 38478). The majority held that the operative sections are a valid exercise of Parliament's criminal law power. Since that date the prohibitions bind an insurer doing business in Quebec as they bind one anywhere else in Canada. The Court ruled on Parliament's power, not on any insurer's form. The Supreme Court of Canada publishes the judgment and a case summary on its own site.

The Act governs what may be demanded. The Quebec contract itself, including the duty of disclosure above, is governed by the Civil Code, explained in the Civil Code and the life insurance contract.

What can you do if you think the Act was breached?

Start by getting everything in writing. A demand made over the phone, or a refusal given without reasons, is hard to act on later. Note the date, the person's name and the words used as soon as you can. Then work through the steps in order; each one builds the record the next one needs.

1. Decline in writing and keep a copy. Say that you decline to take the test or to provide the result, and name the Genetic Non-Discrimination Act. Keep the demand and your answer.
2. Ask for written reasons. If the insurer refuses the application, changes its terms or postpones it, ask for its decision and reasons in writing, and for a copy of your application and the records it relied on.
3. Ask for your personal information. Privacy law gives you a right of access to the personal information the insurer holds about you, and a right to have errors corrected. Write to its privacy officer; rated, postponed or declined explains which privacy law applies.
4. Use the insurer's complaint process. Write to its complaints officer and ask for a final written position.
5. The OmbudService for Life and Health Insurance (OLHI), in every province including Quebec. OLHI describes its service as free, independent and impartial, and it takes a complaint once you have the insurer's final position in writing (OLHI, read 28 September 2026).
6. Quebec residents, also the Autorité des marchés financiers. If the insurer's final response does not settle the matter, you can ask for your complaint file to be transferred to the AMF, which offers conciliation and mediation (AMF, making a complaint, read 28 September 2026).
7. The privacy regulator, if a result was collected or used without your consent. That is the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada under the federal private sector privacy Act or, in Quebec, the Commission d'accès à l'information; British Columbia and Alberta have their own commissioners.
8. Advisor conduct goes to the licensing body: the AMF in Quebec, the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Ontario in Ontario, and the Insurance Council of British Columbia in British Columbia.
9. A lawyer, promptly (in Quebec, a lawyer or a notary). Deadlines to go to court apply, and the AMF states that its complaint process does not interrupt the prescription period for bringing a court action. Because a breach of sections 3 to 5 is an offence, a lawyer can also tell you whether and how to report it.

No ombudservice or regulator re-underwrites a file. A complaint is about how you were treated and whether a rule was broken, not about the price an underwriter set on the evidence.

How does the Act apply to a participating whole life application?

Exactly as it applies to a term application. Every individually underwritten contract goes through the same kind of questions, and the Act governs each of them in the same words. That includes a participating whole life contract used under the strategy described on this site, the Canadian application of the approach known as The Infinite Banking Concept®, originated by R. Nelson Nash; the mark belongs to Infinite Banking Concepts, LLC, with which this practice has no affiliation. The contract is underwritten like any other, its dividends are not guaranteed, and it is insurance, not an investment.

What the strategy aims at, in this practice's own vocabulary, is Infinite Financial Sovereignty®: holding the highest practical level of control over how capital flows through your own affairs. Underwriting comes first, and the Act settles one thing about it: a genetic test is not a condition of getting through. How the contract is taxed once issued is covered in is life insurance taxable in Canada.

Who is this for, and when should you get help?

It is for you if you have had a genetic test, or are thinking about one, and expect an application to demand the result; if a family history has you wondering which questions remain; or if you live in Quebec and heard, after the 2018 Court of Appeal opinion, that the Act did not apply there. It will disappoint anyone hoping the Act lets them leave a diagnosis or a symptom off an application, because it does not, and anyone expecting a favourable result to earn a better class, because the statute gives no such entitlement.

Everything here is general information from a licensed insurance professional, not legal advice; Canadian Wealth Creation Centre Inc. is not authorized to give legal, tax or notarial advice. Reading is free. The firm is paid by commission from the insurer if a policy is bought, and you can ask any advisor how they are paid before you apply.