Is your website compliant with Bill 96? The practical guide for Québec businesses

A Montréal business gets an email from the Office québécois de la langue française: a complaint has been filed against its website. It has a deadline to fix the situation. Nobody at the company knew there was a problem. The site worked perfectly. In English.

This scene is more common in Québec than most owners think, and it almost always starts the same way: with a website everyone assumed was "fine."

The short answer

If your business offers goods or services in Québec, your website must respect five rules:

1. French must be present, not optional, not on request.
2. The French version must be at least as complete and of the same quality as any other language offered.
3. It must be just as easy to reach: no extra steps, no changing settings, no hunting.
4. All commercial content is covered: pages, store, forms, documents, newsletters, and your social media.
5. English is not forbidden. Publish in ten languages if you like. As long as French is never the afterthought.

If you can check all five, breathe. If not, what follows concerns you directly.

What the law actually requires, and since when

Contrary to popular belief, the obligation to have a French website was not born with Bill 96. Québec's Charter of the French language has long required catalogues, brochures and other commercial publications to be in French, and the OQLF and the courts applied that rule (section 52 of the Charter) to websites for years.

What Bill 96 (adopted in 2022) changed:

• it rewrote section 52 to say it applies "regardless of the medium", added order forms, and wrote into the law that French must be accessible under conditions at least as favourable as any other language;
• fines were sharply increased;
• the OQLF received stronger powers, including the power to issue orders.

And one thing that didn't change: filing a complaint has always been simple, and anyone can do it. An unhappy customer, a competitor, a digital passerby. In 2024-2025 the OQLF received a record 10,371 complaints, and websites are one of the three most common subjects.

In practice, the requirement comes down to one principle: Québec consumers have the right to be informed and served in French. Your site can exist in English, Spanish or Mandarin. Provided a comparable French version exists and is at least as accessible. "Comparable" means same content, same quality, same terms. A skeletal French page next to a complete English site does not pass the test.

Who is covered? (More businesses than you think)

The rule covers any business offering goods or services to consumers in Québec. Regardless of size. A self-employed consultant with a one-page site is covered just like a national chain.

Three points that regularly surprise people:

Being located outside Québec doesn't automatically exempt you. A business that does business in Québec, with a real link to the Québec market, can be covered by the rules for its website. What counts is the market you serve, not only your address.

Size doesn't change the website obligation. You will hear about employee thresholds: since June 1, 2025, businesses with 25 or more employees must register with the OQLF for "francization" (a separate administrative process), and 100+ is the threshold for a francization committee. None of that concerns the language of your site. For the website, there is no threshold at all, even a business with no employees is covered.

Your social media counts too. The company Facebook page, Instagram account, LinkedIn profile: these are commercial publications. Posting only in English raises the same problem as on the site.

The fines, concretely

Fines apply when a business ignores an OQLF order: $3,000 to $30,000 for a company, and $700 to $7,000 for an individual or a self-employed person. For a repeat offence within two years, the amounts double, then triple. And each day the offence continues counts as a separate offence. For a company's directors or officers who commit the offence themselves, the individual amounts are doubled. Which is what turns a neglected website into a serious bill.

The typical process looks like this:

1. A complaint is filed (or the OQLF notices the problem itself during its checks).
2. The OQLF contacts you, explains the problem, and gives you a reasonable delay to correct it.
3. You fix it: in 2024-2025, 93.8% of the violations found after a complaint were corrected this way, with no court case (OQLF annual report).
4. You don't fix it: written notice (at least 15 days, so you can respond), then an order with a deadline (which can be contested at the Tribunal administratif du Québec within 30 days). If the order is ignored, the file goes to the public prosecutor (DPCP), and a court imposes the fine. The OQLF itself never fines.

Two ways to read that. The reassuring one: nobody gets a surprise fine overnight; there are several steps and deadlines first. The less reassuring one: the correction window is short for rebuilding a full site in French, and that is exactly the window where businesses end up paying rush rates for assembly-line translations.

The practical conclusion: the right time to comply is before the complaint.

The half-translated-site trap

Most businesses that get complaints aren't English-only. They are half compliant, which in the law's eyes is not compliant at all. The classic traps:

• The homepage is bilingual, the checkout isn't. The customer shops in French, then pays on an English order page. Non-compliant.
• Downloadable documents stay in English. The PDF menu, the catalogue, the user guide: commercial documents are covered just like pages.
• Text inside images. A "SUMMER SALE −30%" banner is commercial content, even as a JPEG.
• The newsletter and automated emails. Order confirmations, appointment reminders, abandoned-cart emails: in French too.
• The hidden French version. A tiny "FR" link in the footer, or browser-language detection that sends everyone to English: the French version must be reachable without effort and without settings.
• Content drifting out of sync. The site was compliant at launch; two years of "English first, French later" updates produced a complete English site and a fossilized French one. This is the most common trap, and the sneakiest, because no single moment created it.

The complete checklist

Run your site through this, page by page:

• [ ] Every public page exists in French, with the same content as in English
• [ ] No extra step and no settings change is needed to reach the French version
• [ ] Best practice: a visible language button, not buried in a menu
• [ ] The entire store is in French: product pages, cart, checkout, confirmations
• [ ] Forms (contact, booking, quotes) are in French
• [ ] Downloadable documents (PDFs, catalogues, menus) exist in French
• [ ] Images carrying commercial text have a French version
• [ ] Automated emails go out in French
• [ ] The company's social media posts include French
• [ ] Best practice: your update process keeps French in sync, not "translated later"

The last point is the one that decides everything: compliance isn't a state, it's a habit.

"My site is English-only. What do I do?"

Three paths, honestly described.

Have the existing site translated. Professional translation is billed by the word; for a complete business site, the total quickly runs into thousands of dollars, and then every new page, menu change and promotion goes through the same billing again. Translation fixes today's content; it does not fix the habit.

Have an agency rebuild the site bilingual. Québec agencies charge more for bilingual builds than unilingual ones. Logically, since they deliver the content twice. Expect thousands of dollars and several weeks of lead time (the real ranges are here), and the update-synchronization question remains open after delivery.

Have an AI build it, French first. This is where technology changed the equation: describe your business in one sentence to Xevoni, and the AI designs, writes and ships a complete website (written in French first, with the English version alongside) in minutes, from $9 USD/month. Above all, the habit is solved by design: every change you ask for in the chat is applied in both languages. The site cannot drift out of sync, because nobody has to think about it.

The right choice when: you run a business serving Québec (a restaurant, a store, a clinic, a service, or absolutely anything else) and you want a site where French is never the overdue chore.

One important nuance, because it is true: your website is only part of your language obligations (signage, contracts and labelling have their own rules, and the OQLF remains the official reference). But the website is the most visible part, the easiest to report, and now the easiest to fix.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Act respecting French, the official and common language of Québec (2022, chapter 14), official text: section 52, orders (s. 177 to 181), fines (s. 205 to 208.0.1)
• OQLF: complaints FAQ
• OQLF: 2024-2025 annual report
• OQLF: businesses with 25 to 49 employees must register

This article is general information, not legal advice. For your own situation, check with the OQLF or a lawyer.

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