McCarthys lawyer says there is no need to panic even if companies weren't compliant by June 1
When the calendar flipped over to June 1 earlier this week, the date change triggered the latest stage of a complex piece of Quebec legislation to come into effect. And while complying with 2022’s Act respecting French, the official and common language of Québec (better known as Bill 96), can seem daunting for businesses, a lawyer specializing in business law says there is really was – and is – no need to worry.
“A lot of our competitors take a very alarmist position in informing their clients about these obligations. We take the contrary approach to diffuse [the situation] and say to our clients, ‘There are ways to approach this. It can be managed… Stop panicking about June 1. There was nothing magical about the date,” explained Véronique Wattiez Larose, a Montreal-based partner at McCarthy Tétrault.
On the first of the month, three key changes entered into force. They involve trademarks printed on packaging with non-French descriptive phrases, the French verbal matter on signage, and a change in the “francization” rules.
The change to the trademark rules involves not the wordmark or the brand itself but the other “generic” non-French copy accompanying the trademark. As Larose explained, a trademark could appear in a language other than French due to an exception in the law. To exploit that exception, businesses also began registering the descriptive content and product information as trademarks. Now, that isn’t permitted, so phrases like “pear- and lavender-scented” on a package of hand soap have to be translated into French as it’s information that tells the consumer about the product. A two-year grace period accompanies this change for products manufactured before June 1.
Larose says the change to the signage rules is the one that “people are talking about the most,” partly because of earlier 2016 changes that came into force in 2019. Now, after complying with those changes and altering their storefront signs, businesses face another round of pricy and time-consuming modifications.
“Since June 1, the French verbal matter has to be twice the size as any non-French verbal matter. If you have a trademark in English, you need to have French in the same visual field, which takes up twice the size of the English trademark,” explains Larose. “Of course, this is the one that’s causing more of an uproar because it is obviously costly for any sort of store to change their signage.”
While Quebec businesses are not required to obtain certificates of francization to ensure that business is conducted in French, they are required to register and go through a process that would get them to a place where they get the certificate. If companies aren’t compliant, they must submit an action plan to the regulator explaining how they plan to change their practices. Prior to June 1, only businesses with 50 employees or more for a period of six continuous months were required to obtain a certificate. Larose says the threshold has been dropped to 25 employees over six months.
Additionally, she says that there is also a “higher threshold, still in the francization context, which triggers additional obligations, for example, to create a francization committee within the business to supervise the implementation of the action plan. That threshold used to be 100 employees, and now it’s been lowered to 75.”
Larose says that the encouraging situation so far is that even though these new rules are now enforceable, businesses have been penalized for not complying, but only in limited numbers. It’s just not something legal practitioners are seeing.
She says the regulator remains reassuringly consistent, emphasizing dialogue and guiding businesses toward compliance. While now stricter about delays and diligence, its core aim is still to ensure legal compliance rather than impose penalties.
The regulator can begin investigating a business at any time, but Larose says investigations are typically prompted by a complaint. Fines for failing to comply start at $3,000 and can reach $30,000, but the regulator cannot impose those by itself. They can only be applied after a court finds the business non-compliant. Theoretically, Larose also says that a business can be forced to pay punitive damages since the right to operate in French has been incorporated into the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms, “but in practice, those remedies have yet to be used or materialized.”
The regulator lists all fines imposed on a publicly viewable website. “No fine above $3,000 has ever been posted. And very few files go to the Quebec court and have a fine imposed,” says LaRose. “Last year, I think there were 10 at most, and I think this year there are four to date.”
Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify that Quebec businesses are not required to obtain certificates of francization, some businesses have been penalized for not complying, and the regulator is theoretically able to begin investigating a business at any time.
