English advertising in Quebec: what Law 96 requires, and what it changes before the shoot

The direct answer: in Quebec, public signage and commercial advertising must be in French. That is the Office québécois de la langue française writing it in its own words. Your buyers may sit in Toronto and in Texas, and that changes nothing about what is required of what you run here. The Government of Quebec lists catalogues, advertising and websites among the things a business must make available in French. So English is not the problem. The absence of French beside it is. The wider frame is on the B2B marketing page.

The rule, as the Office writes it

L'affichage public et la publicité commerciale doivent se faire en français.Office québécois de la langue française

Public signage and commercial advertising must be in French. The second piece is the more useful one, because it is measured rather than judged. Net predominance of French, « nette prédominance du français », is not an impression. The Office writes that the French text must have « un impact visuel beaucoup plus important » and must « occuper un espace au moins deux fois plus grand que le texte dans une autre langue », with equivalent permanence, visibility and legibility. For dynamic signage, a screen that cycles, the criterion becomes time: French carries that much greater visual impact when it is displayed at least twice as long.

Twice. That is the one sentence in this whole subject a business owner can apply by looking at their own material. Open your last ad, your landing page, the video loop on your booth screen. If French occupies less room than English, or less time on screen, you do not have a matter of taste to argue with someone. You have a gap against a written criterion.

These rules on public signage and commercial advertising have been in force since June 1, 2025. Since that date, a business name or a trademark wholly or partly in another language, visible from outside, must be accompanied by French terms that ensure net predominance of French.

The product, the packaging and the catalogue

For a manufacturer, advertising is only part of the exposure. The Office writes that any information on a product, on its packaging or on a document accompanying it must be in French, and that it may also appear in another language provided it is neither more visible nor more accessible than the French version. Generic or descriptive elements of a trademark, such as ingredients, colour or other characteristics of the product, must also appear in French. The name the product is marketed under, and the business name itself, may remain solely in another language. There is a transition for non-compliant products manufactured before June 1, 2025: they may continue to be marketed until June 1, 2027, on the conditions the Office sets out.

One number circulates widely and is widely misread. A business employing 25 people or more over a six-month period must register with the Office within the following six months and begin a francisation process. That is a registration threshold. No official page consulted today says that below 25 employees an ad may be in English only. Do not treat that number as an exit.

Twice the space is decided before the shoot

Here is the part I know from the trade rather than from the law, and it is the part that costs money.

French is not a translation step bolted on at the end. A video shot with English title cards, an English voice-over and English lower thirds is not fixed with a subtitle track. The subtitle sits under a card that stays English. It does not change what occupies the frame. To meet a criterion that compares space and time, the elements have to be rebuilt, not accompanied. Rebuilding means reopening the edit, reordering the graphics, re-recording the narration, and sometimes going back on site because an English banner was hanging in the wide shot.

Planned before the shoot, the same result costs a fraction. Both languages exist in the script, the person on camera knows the key line will be said twice, the titles are ordered in two versions from the start, and nothing gets burned into the image before anyone knows what will have to exist in French.

What that gives you to demand from a supplier, before you sign:

• The French version appears as a deliverable on the quote, not as an option to discuss after delivery.
• The price of the second language is written down before the shoot. A second language quoted afterwards is negotiated when you no longer have a choice.
• One named person is responsible for the quality of the technical French: your process terms, your units, your product names. A clean translation into European French will not help a buyer in Saint-Georges.
• The supplier knows where each piece will run. The same video on a booth screen, in a paid campaign and on your website is not one single exposure.

And one answer that should end the conversation: "we will add subtitles." That answers an accessibility problem, not the Office's criterion.

The booth, the campaign and the two versions of the site

Three situations come back again and again with the manufacturers I see.

The trade show. A booth built for Montreal or Quebec City with English banners and an English video loop, because the same booth goes to Chicago the following month. It is the Quebec build that has to stand up here, and it is decided when the printing is ordered, not the night before setup. What a show should send you home with is covered in industrial trade show preparation.

The campaign. A LinkedIn campaign aimed at plant managers across three provinces, built once, in English, because two of the three provinces are. The part that appears in Quebec is the part to settle. Whether geo-targeting outside Quebec changes anything is exactly the question to put to your own counsel before launch, not to your ads manager. The campaign frame sits on the Facebook and Meta advertising page.

The website. Two versions exist, French and English, and the advertising sends everyone to the English page because it is the one that was rebuilt last. Quebec states that a business must make catalogues, advertising and websites available in French. A French page that exists but that none of your ads reaches is a gap only you can see. What a technical buyer looks for on a site is detailed in what a manufacturer website must contain.

What this page cannot tell you

Be blunt about it, because it is probably your real question. Many owners assume there is an exception for advertising placed in English-language media or aimed at a non-French-speaking audience. I found no such exception on any official page consulted on September 23, 2026. So I do not assert that one exists, and I do not assert the opposite either. I say I cannot verify it, and that nobody should build a campaign on an exception their supplier has never seen in writing.

The honest case where this page does not apply to you: a business whose advertising is placed entirely outside Quebec, in front of buyers located outside Quebec, is not in the same situation as a business advertising here. That is a legal question, not a marketing one. It goes to your own counsel, with the real list of your placements in hand, not to a studio.

I verified no penalty amount and this page publishes none. I cite no section number either: Quebec's official statute site refused every request on the day of verification, so I refer to the law by its common name and stay with the Office and quebec.ca pages. Citing a section from memory would be exactly the shortcut I hold against everyone else.

What I can do is the production side. There are two of us, I shoot myself and I run the ad accounts myself, after more than 20 years producing visual content, with industrial and technical SMEs in Quebec. The practical consequence of all of the above fits in one sentence: decide both languages before the camera, not after the edit.

This page describes public rules. It is not legal advice. Have your own counsel confirm your situation before you publish.

Sources

• Office québécois de la langue française, Affichage des marques de commerce et des noms d'entreprises, oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/francisation/entreprises/affichage-marques-noms.html, consulted September 23, 2026.
• Office québécois de la langue française, Marques de commerce sur les produits, oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/francisation/entreprises/marque-commerce-produits.html, consulted September 23, 2026.
• Office québécois de la langue française, Francisation des entreprises, oqlf.gouv.qc.ca/francisation/entreprises/, consulted September 23, 2026.
• Gouvernement du Québec, Obligations des entreprises en matière de langue française, quebec.ca/culture/langue-francaise/exercer-droits-langue-francaise/obligations, consulted September 23, 2026.