Selling Into Quebec Without Breaking the Language Law

Quebec is about a fifth of the Canadian consumer market, and it has language rules that apply to your store whether or not you have an office there. Most merchants selling into Canada either ignore this or assume a translated homepage is enough. The gap between those two positions and what the law actually expects is where the risk sits. Here is what applies to an online store, what Shopify can and cannot translate, and what to fix first.

Shopify capabilities below are from its own documentation, checked on 20 September 2026. The legal summary draws on Quebec government guidance and law firm analysis, and it is not legal advice.

Does Quebec language law apply to a store outside Quebec?

Generally yes, if you are selling to consumers in Quebec. The Charter of the French Language reaches businesses with a Quebec establishment, and Quebec legal guidance extends commercial publication requirements to businesses selling into the province without a physical presence.

Commercial publications include catalogues, brochures, contracts, invoices and websites. The working rule is that French must be available and must not be treated less favourably than another language. A French version buried behind a language switcher while English loads by default is the pattern most likely to draw a complaint.

What changed on 1 June 2025?

Two things that still catch merchants out.

First, on a product, its packaging or accompanying documents, French must be present and other languages must not take precedence over it. Prominence is the test, not mere presence.

Second, and less well known, descriptive or generic words inside a trademark now need a French version on the product. A registered trademark itself does not have to be translated, but words within it that describe the product's nature or characteristics, terms such as fresh or premium, do. A brand name stays as it is. The descriptive wrapper around it does not.

There is a transition period for products manufactured before 1 June 2025, reported by several Canadian law firms as running to 1 June 2027. If you hold older stock, that date is your deadline rather than a reprieve.

What does this mean for your Shopify storefront?

Practically, a Quebec customer should be able to complete the whole journey in French: browsing, product detail, cart, checkout, and the emails that follow. Shopify handles some of that automatically and leaves the rest to you, which is where stores get caught.

How do you set up French on a Shopify store?

Shopify supports selling in up to 20 languages on standard plans and up to 30 on Plus and Enterprise. Translated content is served on separate URLs using a language code, so your French content sits at a path such as example.com/fr, and the storefront automatically displays the translated version when translations exist, falling back to your primary language when they do not.

The content is served dynamically rather than by duplicating your store, so translations persist through theme updates, and outdated translations get flagged for review when the source text changes.

The practical sequence: add French as a market language, translate theme and product content, review the machine output with a human who speaks Quebec French, then test the full path from product page to order confirmation email.

What cannot be translated, and what do you do instead?

Three documented limits that need a workaround rather than a setting:

• Tags. Product, article and blog tags cannot be translated. If tags drive your filtering, your French storefront will show English filter values. Plan navigation around collections and metafields instead.
• Product URLs. These "remain in the language that they were created in", and the products segment of the path cannot be renamed per language. Accept it, or design handles that read acceptably in both languages.
• Image text. Anything baked into a banner or product image needs a separate French asset, which is a design workflow question rather than a translation one.

How much of the catalogue really needs translating?

All of it eventually, but not on day one. Translation work scales with catalogue size and most of the commercial value sits in a small fraction of it. A workable sequence for a store with a thousand products:

• Everything structural first. Navigation, policies, shipping and returns information, the cart and the checkout path. This is a fixed amount of work regardless of catalogue size and it is what a regulator or a frustrated shopper meets first.
• Then your top sellers. The products that carry most of your revenue deserve properly written French, not machine output lightly edited.
• Then the long tail, where machine translation with spot checks is a reasonable compromise until volume justifies better.

A caution on machine translation into Quebec French specifically. European French phrasing reads as foreign to Quebec shoppers, and the vocabulary differs in retail contexts such as shopping, sale and shipping. A reviewer who actually lives in the market catches this in an afternoon. Software does not.

What does this cost to get right?

Two kinds of cost, and merchants usually budget for the wrong one. The translation itself is a predictable, one-time expense that scales with word count. The ongoing cost is the discipline: every new product, campaign landing page, email template and app you install becomes another thing that needs a French version.

The stores that keep this working treat French as part of the definition of done for publishing a product, rather than as a project that finishes. The ones that fall out of compliance are almost always the ones that translated everything once, then kept shipping new content in English only.

What are the penalties?

Enforcement runs through the Office québécois de la langue française, usually starting with a complaint. Canadian law firm summaries describe escalating fines that rise for repeat offences, with each day of non-compliance treated as a separate offence, and the regulator able to seek court orders in serious cases. Because published figures vary by source and by who is liable, get Quebec counsel to confirm your exposure rather than relying on a blog, including this one.

The more common commercial cost is quieter: a Quebec shopper who lands on an English-only product page and leaves. That happens long before any regulator is involved.

Worth knowing how enforcement usually starts. It is rarely a proactive audit of an out-of-province store. It is a complaint, often from a customer who could not read a product page or an invoice, and the regulator then asks the business to bring things into line within a set period. That makes the practical defence straightforward: be good enough that no Quebec customer feels the need to complain, and keep a record of what you translated and when.

Does a French storefront help you anywhere else?

Yes, in two ways that are easy to miss. Search engines index your French URLs separately, so a properly translated catalogue competes for French-language queries across Canada rather than only in Quebec. And AI assistants reading your product data get a second, cleaner set of descriptions to work from, which matters now that product data quality drives whether you are recommended at all.

So the work you do for compliance also buys you reach. That reframes the budget conversation: this is not purely a legal cost, it is a market you are currently not serving properly while paying to acquire traffic elsewhere.

What should you fix first?

1. Make French load by default for Quebec visitors, rather than sitting behind a switcher
2. Translate your top 50 products properly, with a human reviewing the machine output
3. Translate notification emails, since order confirmations and shipping updates are commercial communications
4. Audit app-injected content, which is where English leaks back into an otherwise French store
5. Check product packaging and labelling against the June 2025 rules, including descriptive terms inside trademarks
6. Diarise 1 June 2027 if you hold stock manufactured before June 2025

If you are already reviewing your Canadian setup for tariffs and duties, do this at the same time. Our guides to Managed Markets in Canada and duty accuracy at checkout cover the money side of the same expansion.

Get your Quebec readiness checked

Free review. Email hello@exactwhy.com with subject "Quebec" and your store URL. We will check what actually renders in French across your storefront, checkout and emails, and give you the list in priority order. We respond within 4 hours.

Prefer a form? Send it through the contact page instead. It reaches the same inbox.

Most stores are closer to compliant than they fear on the storefront and further away than they think on emails, apps and packaging. The fix is usually a week of focused work, not a rebuild.

Shopify capabilities verified on 20 September 2026 against its localisation and translation documentation. Legal requirements summarised from Quebec government guidance and Canadian law firm analysis of the Charter of the French Language. This is not legal advice.