If you sell goods or services to customers in Quebec, your website has to be available in French, whether or not your business is located there. Quebec’s Charter of the French language treats a commercial website the same way it treats a catalogue or a brochure. The rule that actually binds you is narrower and stranger than most agencies describe, and a translation widget alone does not reliably satisfy it.
By Cody Wise, Founder, Wise Media. This article is general information about Quebec language legislation, not legal advice. It does not assess any specific business’s compliance. Verify against the primary sources linked at the end, or with Quebec counsel.
Summary
- Quebec law does not have a section that says “your website must be in French.” It gets there through section 52 of the Charter, which covers catalogues, brochures, folders, commercial directories, purchase orders and any other document of the same nature available to the public, regardless of the medium used. A commercial website is that kind of document.
- You are allowed to run two separate versions, one in French and one in another language. The condition is that the French version must be available on no less favourable conditions of accessibility and quality.
- Since Bill 96, businesses must inform and serve all customers in French, not just consumers. That reaches your contact forms, chat, quotes and support.
- Enforcement runs through the Office québécois de la langue française. It typically issues an order to comply first. Fines follow non-compliance rather than arriving unannounced.
- There is a private right of action, and it carries a threshold most coverage never mentions: a customer can seek to stop a violation of the right to be served in French unless the business has fewer than five employees.
- The 2:1 “markedly predominant” sizing rule that came into force June 1, 2025 governs public signs and commercial advertising. It is not the rule that governs your website’s French version, and conflating the two produces bad builds.
Table of contents
- Does this apply to my business if I am not in Quebec?
- What the law actually says about websites
- The parity test, and why a translate widget often fails it
- Can I keep my English brand name and trademark?
- The 2:1 signage rule that does not apply to your website
- Penalties, orders and who can actually sue you
- How to build a compliant bilingual site, in order
- Common mistakes
- Frequently asked questions
Does this apply to my business if I am not in Quebec?
Short answer: if you are actively doing business with customers in Quebec, assume yes.
The Charter applies to enterprises carrying on activities in Quebec. Quebec’s stated intention through the Bill 96 reform was that the Charter reaches all companies carrying out activities in the province, including federally regulated businesses, although application to the latter has been flagged by counsel as open to constitutional challenge.
In practice, three questions decide it for a Canadian small business:
| Question | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Do you have an establishment, staff or contractors in Quebec? | Clearly in scope, including the employment-language rules this article does not cover. |
| Do you ship to, sell to, or contract with customers in Quebec? | In scope for the commerce and business provisions, including your website and commercial documents. |
| Do you merely have a website that a Quebec resident could theoretically load, with no Quebec offering, no Quebec pricing and no Quebec fulfilment? | Weaker case for enforcement, but this is the grey zone, and it is precisely where you want advice rather than an assumption. |
A Calgary contractor with no Quebec clients is in a different position from a Calgary SaaS company taking Quebec sign-ups and issuing Quebec invoices. The second one is doing business in Quebec, and geography is not a defence.
What the law actually says about websites
Every plugin vendor page on this topic asserts that Quebec requires a French website. Almost none of them tell you which provision does the work, which matters, because the provision determines what compliance looks like.
Section 52: commercial publications, whatever the medium
Section 52 of the Charter requires catalogues, brochures, folders, commercial directories and other publications of the same nature to be in French, regardless of the medium used. Bill 96 added purchase orders and any other document of the same nature available to the public to that list, and added an explicit prohibition: it is prohibited to make such a document available to the public in a language other than French when the French version is not available on terms at least as favourable.
“Regardless of the medium used” is the phrase that pulls websites in. A marketing site, an online catalogue, a services page and a pricing page are all commercial publications made available to the public. The medium is HTML instead of paper. The obligation is the same.
Section 57: invoices, receipts and documents of the same nature
Invoices, receipts and acquittances had to be in French already. Bill 96 opened that list so it now covers all other documents of the same nature, and it prohibits sending such a document in another language when the French version is not available to the recipient on terms at least as favourable.
For a modern business this reaches the automated email your site sends after checkout, your Stripe receipts, your booking confirmations and your quote PDFs. Those are usually built by whoever built the website, and they are the part that gets missed after a bilingual site launches.
Section 50.2: informing and serving customers in French
The Charter already gave consumers a right to be informed and served in French. Bill 96 added an explicit obligation on businesses offering goods and services to respect that right for all customers, not just consumers, in force since June 1, 2022.
That is a service obligation rather than a document obligation, and it is the one that catches otherwise careful builds. A perfectly translated French page that dumps the visitor into an English-only contact form, an English-only live chat, an English-only booking calendar or an English-only checkout has not served that customer in French.
Section 55: contracts of adhesion
Your terms of service, your subscription agreement and your standard-form client agreement are usually contracts of adhesion, meaning the customer accepts them as written. Under the amended section 55, a contract of adhesion drawn up in another language binds the adhering party only if they expressly consented after the French version was provided. The regulation confirms that for a contract entered into by a technological means, giving the adhering party the applicable standard clauses in French satisfies the requirement.
There is also a rule with direct cost consequences: no party may charge the other for producing the French version of a contract of adhesion or a related document. You cannot pass translation cost to the customer.
The parity test, and why a translate widget often fails it
Here is the provision that should drive your build, and it is the one nobody quotes. The Regulation respecting the language of commerce and business, section 10, permits catalogues, brochures, folders, commercial directories and similar publications to exist in two separate versions, one exclusively in French and one exclusively in another language, provided that the material presentation of the French version is available under no less favourable conditions of accessibility and quality than the version in the other language.
Read that as a build spec rather than as law and it becomes actionable immediately. Three words carry the weight.
Accessibility
The French version cannot be harder to reach than the English one. In practice that means:
- The language switch must be visible in the header on every page, not buried in a footer and not only on the homepage.
- French pages need real, indexable URLs, either a /fr/ path or a distinct subdomain, so they can be linked, bookmarked and found in search.
- Every English page that a Quebec customer would need must have a French counterpart, and the switcher should land on the equivalent page rather than dumping the visitor back on the homepage.
- The French version cannot sit behind a cookie, a script that fails, or a JavaScript-only rendering path that search engines and assistive technology cannot follow.
Quality
The French version has to be as good, not merely present. Raw machine output with mistranslated product terms, English strings leaking through in buttons and form labels, or a French page that omits half the English page’s content is not equivalent quality. Machine translation is a fine first draft. It is not a deliverable. Have a native francophone reviewer pass the commercial pages, the forms and the transactional emails.
Material presentation
French is a longer language than English, typically by 15 to 20 percent. A layout built to English string lengths breaks: buttons wrap, navigation items collide, hero headlines overflow their container. A French page that looks broken is not presented under conditions of quality equal to the English one. This is a design constraint, not a translation task, and it is why an overlay widget bolted onto a finished English site so often produces a technically bilingual and practically non-compliant result.
The widget-versus-build question comes down to this. A JavaScript translation overlay generates French on the fly in the browser. It frequently produces no separate URL, no French metadata, no French page in the index, and text that fails when the script does. A properly built multilingual site produces real French pages with their own URLs, their own titles and descriptions, and hreflang tags telling search engines the two versions are counterparts. One of those is a version of your site. The other is a filter over it.
Can I keep my English brand name and trademark?
Mostly yes, and the rules differ depending on where the mark appears. This is one of the places where copy-pasted advice goes wrong, because the packaging rule, the signage rule and the publications rule are three different rules.
| Where the mark appears | The rule |
|---|---|
| In catalogues, brochures and similar publications, which is the category your website sits in | A recognized trade mark within the meaning of the Trade Marks Act may appear exclusively in another language, unless a French version has been registered. |
| On a product, its container or wrapping | Since June 1, 2025, the mark must be registered and no corresponding French version may appear in the register. If the mark contains a generic term or a description of the product, that part must appear in French on the product or on a medium permanently attached to it. |
| On public signs and posters visible from outside premises | The mark may be in another language on the same registration conditions, but French must be markedly predominant on that signage. |
Alongside the trademark carve-out, the regulation lets a small set of items stay in another language inside publications: the name of a firm established exclusively outside Quebec, a name of origin or the denomination of an exotic product or foreign specialty, a heraldic or other non-commercial motto, a place name outside Quebec, a family name, a given name, or a distinctive name of a cultural nature.
Practical read for a Canadian small business: your company name can generally stay as it is on the website. Your taglines, headlines, button labels, service descriptions and body copy cannot. A slogan is not a trademark unless you registered it as one, and even then the registration condition applies. If your brand identity leans heavily on English wordmarks and copy-led design, that is a brand system question to resolve before it becomes a compliance question.
The 2:1 signage rule that does not apply to your website
Since June 1, 2025, where public signs and posters or commercial advertising appear in French and another language, French must be markedly predominant, defined as the French text having a much greater visual impact. The regulation makes that measurable: within the same visual field, the space allotted to the French text must be at least twice as large as the space allotted to the other language, and the French text must be equally legible and permanently visible. For dynamic signage alternating between languages, French must be visible at least twice as long.
Business hours, telephone numbers, addresses, numbers, percentages and articles are excluded from the assessment.
This rule is written for physical signs, storefronts, billboards, vehicle wraps and outdoor advertising. It is not the rule governing a bilingual website, which runs through section 52 and the two-separate-versions permission in section 10 of the regulation. If you separate your site into a French version and an English version rather than mixing both on one page, the 2:1 sizing test is not the operative test.
Where it does reach digital work is paid advertising creative and any single asset that mixes both languages in one visual field. If you run Meta or Google display creative into Quebec with French and English on the same graphic, the sizing rule is live. Splitting the campaign into separate French and English creative sets is usually simpler than engineering a compliant mixed asset, and it performs better anyway.
Penalties, orders and who can actually sue you
The widely repeated framing is that an English-only website earns you a fine of up to $30,000 CAD. That is a compressed version of a longer process, and the compression removes the part you can act on.
How enforcement actually proceeds
- A complaint reaches the Office québécois de la langue française, or the OQLF identifies an issue itself.
- The OQLF may, under section 177 of the Charter, order the author of the failure either to comply or to cease contravening, within a time it specifies. A written notice may precede the order.
- Penal liability under section 205 attaches to contravention, including non-compliance with an OQLF order. Law firms summarising the current section report the range for a legal person as $3,000 to $30,000 CAD, with minimums and maximums doubled for a second offence and tripled for a subsequent one.
- Separately, corporations face fines reported at $10,000 to $250,000 CAD where reprisals are taken, or threatened, against someone who contacted the OQLF or cooperated with an investigation.
Two honest caveats. Those figures come from law firm summaries of the amended Charter rather than from a primary text we read in full, so treat them as indicative and verify with counsel before relying on them. And you will see it widely claimed that every day of non-compliance is a separate offence. We could not confirm that in the primary provisions we read. We are not repeating it as fact.
The practical point stands either way: the OQLF ordinarily gives you a window to fix it. The businesses that get hurt are the ones that ignore the notice.
The five-employee threshold nobody mentions
Bill 96 added section 204.16, which lets a consumer seek to put an end to a violation of their right to be informed and served in French. The exception is specific and worth knowing: that remedy is not available where the violation is committed by a business with fewer than five employees.
So a four-person shop is not exposed to that particular private action. It is still subject to the Charter, still subject to an OQLF order, and still subject to section 205. Growing past five employees, on the other hand, adds a category of exposure that did not exist before, and it is not a threshold most founders are tracking.
How to build a compliant bilingual site, in order
The sequence matters. Doing these out of order is what produces the expensive rebuild.
1. Scope what is actually a commercial publication
List every public URL and sort it. Homepage, services, pricing, product pages, contact and checkout are commercial publications available to the public. Internal-only pages and technical documentation for a specialised audience may sit differently. Do not translate everything by reflex, and do not skip the pages that sell.
2. Choose a URL structure before you translate a word
A /fr/ subdirectory is the right default for most Canadian businesses. It concentrates domain authority on one host, it is simple to deploy on WordPress with a proper multilingual plugin, and it produces indexable French URLs. Subdomains work but split authority. Separate domains are for genuinely separate market operations and are rarely justified here.
3. Design to the longer language
Set navigation, button and headline components using French string lengths, then let English sit comfortably inside them. Doing it the other way round guarantees a French site that looks like an afterthought, which is the exact failure the quality limb of the regulation is aimed at.
4. Translate the copy, then have a francophone review it
Machine draft, human edit. Quebec French is not France French and the difference reads immediately to a Quebec customer. Budget for review on the pages that carry commercial weight rather than on every blog archive page.
5. Do not stop at the pages
This is the checklist item that separates a compliant build from a half-finished one:
- Contact and quote form labels, placeholders, validation errors and success messages
- Checkout flow, shipping options, payment error states
- Automated transactional emails, order confirmations and receipts
- Terms of service, privacy policy and any contract of adhesion, with the French version supplied before acceptance
- Cookie and consent banners, which also intersect with Quebec’s Law 25
- Live chat, chatbot flows and canned support replies
- 404 pages, search results and empty states
- PDF downloads, brochures and lead magnets
- Alt text and image captions
6. Wire up the technical layer
Set hreflang tags in both directions, including x-default. Give each French page its own translated title tag and meta description rather than inheriting the English ones. Add French pages to the sitemap. Set the correct html lang attribute per page. Translate your schema markup where it carries public-facing text. None of that is a legal requirement, and all of it is the difference between a French version that ranks in Quebec and one that merely exists.
7. Treat it as ongoing, not a project
Every new landing page, campaign page, product and blog post inherits the obligation. A bilingual site that stops being bilingual six months after launch is worse than one that never launched, because the drift is visible and dated. Build translation into the publishing workflow, not into a one-off scope of work. That is what our website growth packages exist to hold.
Common mistakes
- Auto-redirecting Quebec visitors to French with no way back. The obligation is that French be available on no less favourable terms, not that English be removed. Offer the choice and remember it.
- Translating the marketing pages and leaving the checkout in English. The transaction is where the service obligation bites hardest.
- Relying on a browser translation overlay. No French URLs, no French metadata, nothing in the Quebec search index, and it breaks when the script fails.
- Treating the 2:1 signage rule as the website rule. Different provision, different test. Build two versions instead.
- Assuming your slogan is protected because your logo is. A trademark is registered. A tagline usually is not.
- Charging the customer for the French contract. Explicitly prohibited.
- Launching bilingual and letting it rot. Every page published after launch carries the same obligation.
What a bilingual build costs, and how to think about it
We are not going to invent a market average. What we can say is where the cost actually sits, because it is not where most owners expect.
| Cost driver | Why it moves the number |
|---|---|
| Page count in scope | Linear. Twelve commercial pages is a different job from a 200-page catalogue. |
| Retrofit versus build | Retrofitting a finished English site is materially more expensive than designing bilingual from the start, because layout and component work gets redone. |
| Human review depth | Machine draft is cheap. Native Quebec French review on commercial pages is the line item worth paying for. |
| Transactional surface | Emails, receipts, contracts and checkout states are often more strings than the marketing site. |
| Ongoing publishing | A recurring cost, not a project cost. Scope it as a retainer or it will be skipped. |
The honest framing: for a business already selling into Quebec, a compliant French version is not a compliance cost, it is a market you were half-serving. Roughly a fifth of Canada’s population lives in Quebec. A site that treats French as an afterthought is losing that market for commercial reasons long before a regulator gets involved.
Frequently asked questions
Does my website need to be in French in Quebec?
If you are carrying on business with customers in Quebec, yes. Section 52 of the Charter of the French language covers catalogues, brochures, folders, commercial directories, purchase orders and other publications of the same nature available to the public, regardless of the medium used. A commercial website falls into that category.
Does Bill 96 apply to businesses outside Quebec?
The Charter applies to enterprises carrying on activities in Quebec, and Quebec’s stated intention through the reform was that it reaches all companies operating in the province. Selling to, shipping to or contracting with Quebec customers is doing business in Quebec. Being headquartered in Calgary or Toronto is not a defence.
Can I use Google Translate or a translation widget to comply?
It is risky. The regulation requires the French version to be available under no less favourable conditions of accessibility and quality. A browser overlay typically produces no separate French URL, no French metadata, nothing in the search index, and unreviewed output that fails on product and legal terminology. Use machine translation as a first draft inside a properly built multilingual site, then have a francophone review the commercial pages.
Does my English company name have to be translated?
Generally no. A recognized trade mark within the meaning of the Trade Marks Act may appear in another language in commercial publications unless a French version has been registered, and the regulation also permits family names, place names outside Quebec and certain other terms. Your taglines, headlines and body copy do not get that protection.
Does the French text on my website have to be twice as big as the English?
No. The 2:1 marked-predominance sizing rule, in force since June 1, 2025, applies to public signs and posters and to commercial advertising where both languages appear in the same visual field. A website built as two separate versions is governed by the publications rule instead, which requires accessibility and quality parity rather than a size ratio.
What are the penalties for a non-compliant website in Quebec?
The OQLF may order a business to comply or to cease contravening within a stated time. Law firms summarising section 205 of the amended Charter report a range for a legal person of $3,000 to $30,000 CAD, with minimums and maximums doubled for a second offence and tripled for a subsequent one. Treat those figures as indicative and confirm with counsel. Enforcement ordinarily begins with an order rather than a fine.
Do my invoices and confirmation emails need to be in French too?
Yes, where they go to Quebec customers. Section 57 covers invoices, receipts, acquittances and other documents of the same nature, and prohibits sending them in another language when the French version is not available to the recipient on at least as favourable terms. That reaches automated order confirmations and receipts generated by your website.
Can a customer sue my business over this?
Section 204.16 lets a consumer seek to put an end to a violation of their right to be informed and served in French, but not where the violation is committed by a business with fewer than five employees. Businesses under that threshold remain subject to the Charter and to OQLF orders regardless.
Where to start
Run a page inventory this week. Mark every URL a Quebec customer could reach in a buying journey, then mark every one of those that has no French counterpart. That list is your scope, and it is almost always shorter than owners fear and longer than their translation plugin covers.
Wise Media builds bilingual sites for Canadian businesses with real French URLs, translated metadata, correct hreflang, layouts sized for the longer language, and the transactional layer included rather than forgotten. If you are selling into Quebec on an English-only site, or you have a widget doing work it was never designed to do, start with our intake form and we will scope the build. Our website packages and growth packages both cover bilingual delivery.
Primary sources
- Charter of the French language, CQLR c. C-11, official consolidated text on Légis Québec.
- Regulation respecting the language of commerce and business, C-11, r. 9, updated to April 2026, for the two-versions permission in section 10, the trademark carve-outs in sections 13 and 25.1, and the marked-predominance tests in sections 27.4 to 27.7.
- Langlois Lawyers, Language of commerce and business: your obligations following the adoption of Bill 96, for the section-by-section mapping of the Bill 96 amendments including sections 50.2, 52, 55, 57, 177, 204.16 and 205.
- Norton Rose Fulbright, Doing business in Quebec: language legislation.
- Smart & Biggar, Quebec’s French language requirements for commerce and business, for the reported penalty ranges.
Written by Cody Wise, Founder of Wise Media, Calgary. This article summarises publicly available Quebec legislation, regulation and law firm commentary as at September 6, 2026. It is general information, not legal advice, and it does not assess whether any specific business is compliant. Quebec language law changes and enforcement practice evolves. Verify against the primary sources above and take advice from Quebec counsel before acting.