Last reviewed: 16 September 2026

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Quebec requires your warranty contract in French — here's the actual rule

Our Quebec extended-warranty disclosure page covers what a Quebec merchant must tell you before selling an extended warranty, starting October 2026. This page covers something different and older: the language that contract has to be written in — a requirement that predates that reform by decades, and one a 2022 law substantially strengthened.

The baseline: Quebec's Consumer Protection Act has required this for years

Sections 26 and 27 of Quebec's Consumer Protection Act (CQLR c P-40.1) already require that any contract the Act governs — which includes a home warranty or vehicle service contract sold to a consumer — be drawn up in French, along with any related documents. A contract may be drawn up in another language instead only if, after the consumer has actually been given the French version, using the other language is that consumer's own express wish. A merchant can't charge the consumer anything for producing the French version, and where both a French and another-language version exist and disagree with each other, the version more favourable to the consumer governs.

What changed on June 1, 2023: Bill 96

An Act respecting French, the official and common language of Québec (SQ 2022, c 14 — known as Bill 96) received assent on June 1, 2022 and amended the Charter of the French Language (CQLR c C-11). Its consumer-contract provisions, including the amended section 55, came into force a year later, on June 1, 2023. Section 55 extends a French-first rule to "contracts of adhesion" generally — a broader category than just a Consumer Protection Act-governed consumer contract, potentially reaching a warranty or service contract structured as a standard-form agreement even outside the CPA's own specific scope. Bill 96 also added real teeth: a clause not drawn up in French is now presumed unintelligible to the party who didn't draft the contract, unless that party expressly asked for the other-language version after being given the French one first, and a contract or provision that violates the Charter's language rules can be annulled at the request of the party harmed by it.

What this actually means if you're buying a warranty in Quebec

A home warranty administrator or vehicle service contract provider selling into Quebec — including one based outside the province — needs a genuine French-language version of the contract to hand a Quebec consumer, not a translated marketing brochure alongside an English contract that's actually signed. If you were only ever given an English contract and never offered a French version first, that alone is a real gap worth raising, independent of whether the contract's substantive terms were otherwise fair.

What this doesn't do

Neither the Consumer Protection Act's pre-existing rule nor Bill 96's 2023 strengthening changes what a warranty contract has to say — the content requirements (what must be disclosed, what exclusions must state, cancellation rights) are separate rules covered on our extended-warranty disclosure page and, for the statutory legal warranty of good working order, elsewhere in this Library. This page is only about the language the document is written in, not what it's required to contain.