Registered Psychotherapist (RP): What This Means for Therapy Across Canada

If you look at my credentials on this site, you will see four letters that may not mean anything to you: RP. They stand for Registered Psychotherapist. The registration is with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario, not with any body in British Columbia. This post is about why.

I am writing it because I think people choosing a therapist deserve to understand what the letters after our names actually mean, and what kind of accountability they buy you. In my field, those letters are not all equal, and the choice to register with one body over another, or with any body at all, is meaningful. I want to walk you through what mine signals, and why I chose it when I did.

Vancouver-based and online across Canada, I am a Registered Psychotherapist with the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario. I am also a Registered Counselling Therapist in Nova Scotia and a Board Certified Art Therapist across North America. This post is mostly about the first of those, because it is the one most likely to raise questions for someone in BC.

Why I'm registered in Ontario instead of BC

I applied to CRPO in 2022. My full registration came through in 2024. At the time I began the process, BC had no regulatory college for psychotherapy and no announced plan to create one. The first BC government consultation on regulating psychotherapy did not open until 2024. The legislation that will eventually bring BC psychotherapists under a regulatory college, the Health Professions and Occupations Act, came into force in April 2026. Actual regulation of psychotherapists in BC begins in November 2027.

None of that was on the horizon in 2022. I looked at the landscape, saw a profession in my home province where anyone could call themselves a counsellor or psychotherapist without oversight, and decided I wanted to practise under an actual college that could hold me accountable. Ontario's CRPO was the closest regulatory body I could join, so I did.

I want to be clear that this was not about being ahead of the curve. I had no way to know that BC would begin moving toward regulation two years later. It was about choosing to work inside a structure that could receive complaints, assess my competence, and remove my right to practise if I did harm. I wanted that oversight to exist for my clients, whether or not my province required it.

What a Registered Psychotherapist actually is

The title Registered Psychotherapist is protected in Ontario under the Psychotherapy Act, 2007. Only people registered with CRPO can use it and only people registered with CRPO can legally perform what Ontario calls the controlled act of psychotherapy, which is a specific kind of therapeutic work defined in the Act.

To become an RP, I completed a master's degree in counselling psychology and art therapy, logged thousands of clinical hours under supervision, completed over 150 hours of direct clinical supervision, and passed the national Entry-to-Practice Exam. After registration, I continue to meet CRPO's Quality Assurance Program requirements, which include ongoing professional development, self-assessment, and regular review. I can be audited. I can be investigated. I can be disciplined. The college maintains a public register you can search to verify my status at any time.

CRPO also publishes a set of Professional Practice Standards that I am bound by. They cover professional conduct, competence, the client-therapist relationship, clinical supervision, record-keeping, and business practices. You can read them on the CRPO website if you want to know the specific conduct I am held to.

BC's regulatory picture, briefly

Right now, as I write this in 2026, BC is in transition. The Health Professions and Occupations Act came into force on April 1, 2026. Psychotherapists will be brought under a new body called the College of Health and Care Professionals of BC, which currently regulates nine other health professions. Psychotherapist regulation within that college is scheduled to begin November 29, 2027.

Until then, "psychotherapist" is not a protected title in BC. Anyone can use it. There is no BC college to make a complaint to about a psychotherapist in this province, because the college for this profession does not yet exist.

Many BC practitioners are members of voluntary professional associations, the largest of which are the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors and the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association. Association membership is meaningful and I respect the practitioners who hold it. It is not, however, the same as being accountable to a college under provincial law. An association can remove a member from its directory. A college can remove a person's right to practise the profession.

I am offering that distinction as information, not as a judgment of other practitioners. Many excellent therapists in BC are association members and not college members, because until 2027 there is no BC college to join. What I am saying is that my choice, in 2022, was to seek out a college even though I lived in a province where no one would know whether I had or not.

What CRPO oversight means for you as a client

Concretely, a few things.

• You can verify my registration at any time by searching the public register on the CRPO website. My registration number is on this site's footer.
• If something I do in our work together concerns you, you have a formal avenue for filing a complaint with a regulator that can investigate and, if warranted, discipline me. My name is real, my number is real, and the college is real.
• I am bound by published standards that include specific protections around confidentiality, informed consent, record-keeping, boundaries, and sexual abuse prevention. These are not aspirations. They are enforceable.
• I am required to carry professional liability insurance and to meet continuing competence requirements annually.
• My practice is subject to audit and peer assessment through CRPO's Quality Assurance Program.

None of that guarantees I will be a good fit for you. That is a different question, and it is one we work out in consultation before we begin. What it does guarantee is that if you ever feel mistreated by me, you are not alone with that. There is an external body with teeth.

How this works if you're in BC, Ontario, or Nova Scotia

This is the practical part.

• If you live in Ontario, you can see me under my CRPO registration straightforwardly. You are in the province where my primary college has jurisdiction.
• If you live in Nova Scotia, you can see me under my Registered Counselling Therapist designation with the Nova Scotia College of Counselling Therapists.
• If you live in BC, you can see me as a CRPO-registered psychotherapist offering services online to a BC resident. Until BC's own regulation begins in November 2027, this is the cleanest accountability arrangement available. My practice voluntarily holds itself to CRPO standards for all clients, regardless of province.
• If you live in another province, reach out and let us look at your specific situation. In some provinces I can see you. In others I cannot. Quebec in particular has its own regulatory framework that I do not fall under.

When BC's regulation of psychotherapists begins in November 2027, I will be required to register with the BC college to continue practising the profession in my home province. I will hold that registration alongside my CRPO registration, not instead of it. The principle does not change: clients deserve care that can be held to account, and the more places that accountability is anchored, the better.

If you want to learn more about how we work as a practice, that page goes into more detail about me, Laura, and Laith. If you have questions about what regulation means for our work together, a free consult is the simplest way to ask them directly.