Does your website need to be in French for Quebec? The OQLF rules for sites, online shops and social media

The OQLF's business checklist, Votre aide mémoire pour faire des affaires en français au Québec, lists invoices, catalogues, brochures, websites and social media pages together as commercial documentation. It says the law now confirms that commercial documentation must be written at least in French whatever the medium, and that this includes websites and social networks.

Another language is allowed, but only if French appears at least equivalently and the French version is accessible under conditions at least as favourable. The guide also makes third party material the publisher's problem: a business must ensure the documentation it distributes is in French even if someone else produced it, because the responsibility for distributing content in French belongs to whoever makes it available to the public.

Owners in Ontario, Alberta and abroad ask whether an English site that happens to ship to Quebec is caught. The OQLF's 2026 guide Charte de la langue française : mythes et réalité, written for international businesses, answers question 4 this way: websites and social media must be available in French but may be in another language in addition, and from the moment a business makes its products or services available in Quebec, they must be accessible in French. The guide ties that to the information a Quebec customer needs to buy, such as conditions of sale and payment terms.

The same guide confirms that contracts used in relations outside Quebec may be solely in another language. The practical reading for a brand is to decide deliberately: either serve Quebec with a French presence or make clear that the offer is elsewhere.

The OQLF's 2025 social media guide applies the Charter to every commercial publication about products or services aimed at the Quebec market. Posts on a social medium, including videos, text inserted in an image and any other content whether permanent or ephemeral, must be in French. Content from a third party shared on the business's accounts is the business's responsibility.

Conditions at least as favourable means the consumer makes no additional effort and performs no extra manipulation to reach the French version: no changing the settings of the social account or the device. If settings must be changed, the French version fails the test. A business with an English and a French version of the same account must ensure everything published on the English one is published simultaneously in French on the French one.

Interaction rules are narrower than owners fear. Consumers may comment in any language, the business may reply in the language the comment was written in, and it must reply in French to anyone who wrote to it in French. A recognised trademark in another language may be used in publications unless a French version of the mark exists, in which case the French version must appear too.

Since 1 June 2023 a French version of any contract of adhesion, the standard terms a customer has no power to negotiate, must be provided at all times and before any agreement, and only after receiving the French copy may the parties choose to be bound in another language. The OQLF's contracts page states that for a contract concluded online, the obligation is met when the technological means is available in French and the French version of the contract is accessible there.

For an online shop that means the checkout flow, the terms page and the confirmation emails exist in French as a working path, and the French copy of the terms is reachable before the buy button is pressed.

Brands that treat French as a translation pass at the end produce exactly the problems the OQLF describes: a French page two clicks deep, image text left in English, stories posted in one language. Brands that design the French presence from the start get a second market with the same identity.

The design work is a language switch on the first screen, a message hierarchy that survives translation, image templates with editable text layers, a posting routine that publishes both languages together, and a name and tagline checked for how they read in French. That is a brand system decision, and it is cheaper to make before the site is built than after a complaint.