---
title: "Safety data sheet — the WHMIS document, and its three-year rule"
description: "What an SDS is under WHMIS and the Hazardous Products Regulations, its sixteen sections, who has to supply and update it, and where employers get it wrong."
term: "Safety data sheet"
definition: "The sixteen-section document a supplier must provide with a hazardous product sold or imported into Canada, describing its hazards, its safe handling and the emergency measures, under WHMIS and the Hazardous Products Regulations."
alsoKnownAs:
  - "SDS"
  - "WHMIS safety data sheet"
  - "MSDS"
jurisdiction: "Canada"
locale: "en-CA"
publishedOn: 2026-09-06
reviewedOn: 2026-09-06
canonical: "https://safeally.net/en-ca/glossary/safety-data-sheet/"
sources:
  - label: "WHMIS — safety data sheets"
    url: "https://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/chemicals/whmis_ghs/sds.html"
    publisher: "CCOHS"
  - label: "Hazardous Products Regulations, SOR/2015-17"
    url: "https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/regulations/SOR-2015-17/"
    publisher: "Justice Laws Website"
  - label: "WHMIS — the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System"
    url: "https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/environmental-workplace-health/occupational-health-safety/workplace-hazardous-materials-information-system.html"
    publisher: "Health Canada"
---

# Safety data sheet — the WHMIS document, and its three-year rule

The sixteen-section document a supplier must provide with a hazardous product sold or imported into Canada, describing its hazards, its safe handling and the emergency measures, under WHMIS and the Hazardous Products Regulations.

WHMIS is a shared system with two halves that people mix up. The **supplier**
half is federal: Health Canada, the Hazardous Products Act and its regulations
decide what a hazardous product is, what the label says and what the sixteen
sections of the safety data sheet must contain. The **workplace** half is
provincial or federal-labour: the employer's duty to hold current sheets, make
them available and train workers to use them.

## What it means in practice

- **The three-year rule is the supplier's**, not yours. A supplier must update the
  sheet within 90 days of significant new hazard information, and the sheet's
  currency is judged against that duty. An employer working from a sheet that has
  not been reviewed in years should be asking the supplier, not filing it.
- **Sections 8 and 7 are the ones that reach the floor** — exposure controls and
  personal protection, then handling and storage. They feed the hazard assessment
  and the workplace label.
- **Availability means available.** Readily accessible to workers in the work area
  and to the joint committee, on paper or electronically with a fallback when the
  network is down.
- **A workplace label is required** whenever a product is decanted or the supplier
  label is illegible, and it is a different document with different minimum
  content.
- **Training is on the product and the process**, not on the format of the sheet.
  A worker who can find section 8 but does not know which respirator cartridge the
  job needs has not been trained.

## What it is not

**It is not a hazard assessment.** The sheet describes a product; the risk depends
on quantity, process, ventilation and duration. Two plants using the same product
with the same sheet do not have the same exposure.

**It is not an MSDS.** The pre-2015 material safety data sheet had no fixed
format. Anything still labelled MSDS in a binder is, by definition, out of date.

**And it is not the European FDS**, despite the same sixteen sections. That
document is Article 31 and Annex II of REACH, with its own update duties and, for
some substances, an exposure scenario annexed that has no Canadian equivalent. A
sheet imported from a European supplier does not by itself satisfy the Hazardous
Products Regulations.