Hiring in Quebec under Bill 96 starts with the French version

Bill 96 is the 2022 Quebec law that strengthened the Charter of the French Language, and it matters for hiring because it sets French as the normal language of work in the province. Its official title is the Loi sur la langue officielle et commune du Québec, le français. The Charter itself, the Charte de la langue française, is administered by the OQLF.

For employers, the effect is felt in three places during recruitment and onboarding. The job offer has to be published in French. Communications with staff, including documents about working conditions, have to be in French. And an employer that wants a candidate to speak English or another language has to show that the duties need it. The OQLF summarises these obligations on its page on language rights at work, citing sections 41, 46 and 46.1 of the Charter.

This layer of rules is specific to Quebec. A company that already hires in Ontario or British Columbia will find the payroll mechanics familiar, but the paperwork for a Quebec hire has to be prepared with French as the starting point, which affects timelines and who drafts what.

It also helps to know which body deals with which question. The OQLF handles the French language and francization. The CNESST (Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail) enforces labour standards and licenses personnel placement agencies. Revenu Québec collects source deductions, including contributions to the Quebec Pension Plan (Régime de rentes du Québec) and the parental insurance plan known as QPIP (Régime québécois d’assurance parentale). A hiring plan for Quebec touches all three, so it pays to know whose page answers which question.

Yes, a job offer for a position in Quebec must be published in French. The OQLF states this directly in its guidance on the language of work. If you also want an English version of the advert, check on the OQLF site how the two versions must relate to each other before you publish.

This catches out foreign companies whose careers pages and applicant tracking systems run only in English. A role advertised for a person in Montréal needs a French version of the posting, and the job title, the description of duties and the stated requirements all need to read properly in French. Machine translation of a long English advert tends to produce a text that candidates notice and that may not describe the job accurately, so a human review is worth building into the timeline.

Where a company advertises the same remote role across several provinces, it helps to decide early whether the posting is open to people working from Quebec. If it is, the French version is part of the posting from day one. If the company later decides to hire a Quebec-based candidate who applied to an English-only advert, the gap is harder to close cleanly.

An employer may require knowledge of a language other than French only when the nature of the duties truly calls for it, and only after taking all reasonable means to avoid imposing that requirement. That is the test in sections 46 and 46.1 of the Charter as described by the OQLF. The reasons for the requirement must also be stated in the job posting.

The “reasonable means” condition is the part that needs thought, because it asks the employer to look at alternatives before the requirement goes into the advert. The OQLF describes what it expects on its language-of-work pages, and those pages are the place to check which steps count before relying on a particular approach. A company with a small Quebec team may find the analysis short, but it should still be done and kept on file with the posting.

In practice, a posting for a role that serves English-speaking customers or works mostly with a head office outside Canada should explain that link in plain terms. A generic line such as “fluent English required” with no stated reason falls short of what the OQLF describes. The precise wording of sections 46 and 46.1, and how the OQLF applies them to particular roles, should be checked on the OQLF site before the posting goes live.

The answer depends on the type of contract, and the details should be confirmed with the OQLF or on LégisQuébec before a contract is issued. The Charter draws a distinction between standard-form contracts, known as adhesion contracts (contrats d’adhésion), and contracts that are individually negotiated. The rules on which language comes first, and when the parties may choose English, are different for each.

We have not been able to confirm the current wording of those rules on an official page, so this guide does not state them as settled. What is clear from the OQLF’s language-of-work guidance is that documents about working conditions are part of the employer’s French-language obligations. A contract of employment sets out working conditions, so the safe planning assumption is that a French version will be needed, with any English version prepared as a companion.

For foreign companies, the practical consequence is timing. Offer letters and contracts drafted by a head office in English need translation and review before they can be sent to a Quebec candidate. Building that step into the offer stage avoids a delay between a verbal yes and a signed document. A useful habit is to keep an approved French template for the offer letter and contract, so each new Quebec hire needs only the role-specific terms translated and checked, and the English text is kept aligned with the French whenever either one is updated. The wider points on probation, termination clauses and hours are covered in the guide to Canadian employment contract essentials.

After the start date, the employer’s written communications with staff are expected to be in French, including documents about working conditions. For a foreign company with a single Quebec employee, that reaches further than the contract. It covers the material a new starter receives about how their job works.

A realistic checklist for a first Quebec hire looks like this:

• Offer letter and employment contract, with the French version prepared first.
• Written policies that affect pay, hours, leave or conduct, such as an expenses or remote-work policy.
• Onboarding messages that set out working conditions, for example the pay schedule and holiday entitlement.
• Any later notice that changes working conditions, including a change of role or salary.

Quebec’s working conditions themselves also differ from the rest of Canada. Labour standards are set by the Loi sur les normes du travail and enforced by the CNESST. Since 1 May 2026 the hourly minimum wage has been CAD 16.60, the statutory holiday list has 8 days, one of them the Fête nationale on 24 June, and after 2 years of service a dismissed employee has 45 days to file a complaint that the dismissal lacked just and sufficient cause. Pension contributions run through the Quebec Pension Plan rather than CPP. These are the facts the French documents will describe, so they need to be right in both languages.

From 1 June 2025, a business with 25 to 49 employees in Quebec must register with the OQLF, down from the previous threshold of 50. The OQLF announced the change in a 2024 notice to businesses with 25 to 49 employees. The OQLF calls the wider process that follows registration francization (démarche de francisation), and its pages set out what each stage involves.

The threshold turns on the employer’s headcount. Under an employer of record arrangement, the staff counted are those of the employer of record, since it is the EOR that employs the person, so the question to ask is how the EOR handles its own OQLF status in Quebec. The details of the francization steps, deadlines and any consequences for missing them should be checked with the OQLF directly.

A company that plans to build its own Quebec team over time should keep this threshold in view. Moving from a handful of employees to 25 or more brings a formal process with the OQLF, and that is easier to plan for than to discover. The comparison between staying with an employer of record and forming a local company is set out in the guide on EOR or a Canadian subsidiary.

With Employer of Record Canada, the Quebec-based person you select is employed by us as their legal employer; we issue the employment documents and run Quebec payroll. You still decide who to hire, write the role description and direct the day-to-day work, so your team shares responsibility for getting the French job posting and the language-requirement reasons right.

Quebec also regulates personnel placement agencies through the CNESST. An agency needs a CNESST licence, backed by security of CAD 15,000 and a valid Revenu Québec certificate. The CNESST’s page on placement agency workers lists protections that apply to people assigned through an agency: they may not be paid less than the client’s own employees doing the same tasks in the same place solely because of their agency status, an assignment may not prevent the client from hiring them after 6 months, and no fees may be charged to workers. Whether a given provider’s model falls under these rules is for that provider to establish, along with whatever licence is required. Clients should not assume they carry no liability: pecuniary obligations under the Quebec labour standards act can be shared, and the agency-specific rule is one to check on LégisQuébec.

When comparing providers, ask to see a sample French contract, a French onboarding pack and an example of how a language requirement has been justified in a posting. The guide to choosing a Canadian EOR provider has further questions on Quebec capability, and the services page describes what we handle.