What are the Bill 96 website requirements in plain terms?
The short answer: commercial content on your website must be available in French, and any other language may sit beside it but not ahead of it. Bill 96, now known as Law 14, amended Quebec's Charter of the French language, and the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) enforces it.
The article that matters most for websites is article 52. When the OQLF has published convictions for English-only websites, it quotes that article as saying commercial publications must be written in French, including publications of that kind distributed on a website. That one sentence is the root of nearly every Bill 96 website requirement people ask about.
From the consumer side, the OQLF lists the right to access a complete French version of a business's website, along with French brochures and catalogues, French invoices and French information from customer service. The Quebec government's own summary of business obligations says the same thing from the other direction: make catalogues, advertising and websites accessible in French, and prepare contracts, invoices and receipts in French.
So when a client asks us what the Bill 96 website requirements are, we translate it into build terms: every page that sells, describes, prices or contracts has a French twin; the French twin is as easy to reach as the English; and the French is real French, reviewed by a person. Everything else on this page is detail on how to get there.
Do Bill 96 website requirements apply to my business?
If you have customers in Quebec, or you publish commercial content aimed at them, treat the French requirement as applying to you and confirm the edges with a lawyer. Bill 96 website requirements are about the content you publish for the Quebec market, not about how large you are.
Article 52, as the OQLF quotes it, does not carve out small businesses. The well-known 25-employee threshold is a different obligation: the OQLF says enterprises employing 25 or more people in Quebec over a six-month period must register with it to begin a francization process, which is about the language of work inside the business. Your website sits under the commerce rules, not the francization threshold.
The grey zone is the business based elsewhere. A Toronto retailer that ships to Montreal, a Calgary software firm with Quebec subscribers, a US brand with a Canadian storefront: each has to decide how far the Charter reaches its situation. That is a legal judgment and we will not make it for you. What we can do is show you what a French version would take, in hours and templates, so the decision is informed.
- Physical store or office in Quebec with a website: plan for full French.
- Online store that ships to Quebec addresses: ask your lawyer, and price the French build now.
- B2B firm with Quebec clients: contracts and commercial pages are the usual focus.
- Recruitment pages for Quebec roles: ask your lawyer about language-of-work rules too.
What does “at least equivalent” French mean on a website?
For Bill 96 website requirements, it means the French version cannot be the poor cousin: it should be as complete, as current and as easy to find as the English. The Charter allows other languages next to French where French is required, provided the French appears in at least an equivalent way.
On a website, equivalence shows up in small, testable ways. A French visitor landing on the homepage should see French or be one obvious click from it. Menus, buttons, form labels, error messages and alt text should be French on French pages. A new product launched in English on Monday should not wait three weeks for its French page. A sale banner, a shipping notice or a pop-up offer shown in English should have a French counterpart shown just as prominently.
We turn equivalence into a checklist during the build. Every template gets a French rendering test; every string in the theme files is pulled into a translation file; every third-party widget is checked for a French mode. Widgets that cannot speak French get flagged, because a review app or chat bubble that only speaks English is a visible gap on a French page.
Layout parity
French pages should use the same templates, images and features as the English ones. A stripped-down French template reads as second-class, even if every word is translated.
Timing parity
Content workflows should publish French and English together. We set the CMS so a page can be saved in both languages before it goes live, rather than English first and French later.
Which pages and checkout steps need French under Bill 96 website requirements?
Any page or step that promotes, describes, prices or sells should have French. In practice that is almost the whole public site, plus the parts people forget because they are not really pages.
The forgotten parts are where most sites fall short. The cart drawer that slides out on mobile. The shipping calculator. The payment step, which on hosted checkouts is often controlled by the platform's language setting rather than your theme. The order confirmation screen. The emails that follow: confirmation, shipping notice, delivery, refund, abandoned cart, password reset. Size guides and spec sheets delivered as PDFs. The cookie banner. The chat widget greeting.
We map all of these Bill 96 website requirements before quoting, because they change the scope far more than page count does. A 40-page site with a simple enquiry form is quick to make bilingual. A 40-product store with custom checkout logic, three email apps and PDF manuals is a bigger job even though it has fewer pages.
- Home, category, product and service pages, including prices and descriptions
- Cart, shipping, taxes, payment and confirmation steps
- Terms of sale, returns, warranty and privacy pages
- Order, shipping and account emails and SMS text
- Downloadable brochures, catalogues and manuals
- Pop-ups, banners, cookie notices and chat greetings
Do online terms and conditions need a French version?
Yes, plan for French terms. Online terms of sale, subscription terms and account agreements are usually contracts of adhesion, where the customer accepts wording they did not negotiate, and the OQLF states that the French version must be offered and remain available.
On the build side, this affects more than the terms page. Checkboxes that say “I accept the terms” should link to the French terms on the French checkout. Subscription sign-up flows should show French terms before payment, not after. Account dashboards that let customers reread their agreement should serve the French copy to customers who chose French. For B2B portals, the downloadable service agreement needs a French file, not only an English PDF.
Your lawyer decides the wording and whether any exception applies to a particular contract. Your translator produces the French. We make sure the site presents that French version at the right moment in the flow and stores which version each customer accepted, with a timestamp, so you can show it later if asked.
How do trademark exceptions work under Bill 96 website requirements?
A recognized trademark can usually stay in its original language, but the text around it should be French. The OQLF defines a recognized trademark as one recognized under the federal Trademarks Act that has no French version, and its trademark toolbox explains the changes that took effect on 1 June 2025.
Those June 2025 changes are about signs visible from outside premises: where a recognized trademark appears only in another language, French must be markedly predominant on that outdoor signage. Websites are not storefront signs, but the same logic helps with page design. Keep the brand name as it is; make sure product descriptions, category names, slogans and calls to action are in French on the French pages.
A common mistake when reading the Bill 96 website requirements is treating everything in English as a “brand”. A product line name registered as a trademark is one thing; a descriptive tagline such as “Summer Essentials” or “Shop Now” is just English copy and should be translated. During the audit we produce a list of every English phrase that appears on French templates, so your lawyer can mark which ones are genuine recognized trademarks and which ones need French.
What are the fines for not meeting Bill 96 website requirements?
For a legal person such as a corporation, the OQLF's own FAQ gives fines of three thousand to thirty thousand dollars per offence, doubled for a first repeat offence and tripled for any further repeat. Fines are the end of a process, not the start of it.
The OQLF describes the path like this: it opens a file when it receives a complaint, checks whether the complaint is admissible and founded, then contacts the business to explain the problem and help it correct things within a reasonable time. Only when a business refuses to comply can the file go to Quebec's Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions. The OQLF also publishes news releases on convictions, and several in 2025 and 2026 concerned commercial content that was available only in English on a company website.
The practical point for a website owner is that a complaint about Bill 96 website requirements can come from any visitor, and fixing a site after a formal notice is more stressful than planning the French version in a normal project. If you have received a notice, send it to us with your site address and we will scope the technical fixes in about two working days, while your lawyer handles the correspondence.
Who writes the French: the developer or a translator?
A qualified translator should write the French, and the developer should build the site so that French is easy to add, review and publish. We are developers who work in English; we never present ourselves as French copywriters.
Splitting the roles is not a weakness when meeting Bill 96 website requirements, it is how solid bilingual sites are made. Translators are best at language, tone and Quebec usage. Developers are best at making sure every string is translatable, nothing is hard-coded, and French text fits the design. When one person tries to do both, you usually get either good French in a broken layout or a clean layout with machine French.
Here is how the handoff works with us. We extract every piece of text into a structured file, page by page and string by string, with context notes such as “button, max 20 characters”. Your translator fills in the French and returns the file. We import it, build the French pages, then send your translator a staging link to review the French in place, because words that read well in a spreadsheet can look wrong beside an image. Their corrections go back in before launch.
Certified translator or not?
The Charter does not make us choose your translator. Many Quebec clients prefer a member of their provincial translators' order for legal pages and a marketing translator for product copy. Your lawyer can tell you whether any document needs certification.
What we will not do
We will not paste machine translation into your French pages and call the job done. If you want to start with machine output to save money, your translator should still review and correct every word before it goes live.
How is a Bill 96 compliant French website built, technically?
Give the French its own URLs, its own navigation and its own templates rendered in French, and link each English page to its French twin. That structure meets the spirit of the Bill 96 website requirements, satisfies visitors, helps your team keep track of gaps and lets Google index both languages.
Google's documentation recommends different URLs for each language version rather than cookies or browser settings, and advises against automatically redirecting users from one language version to another. So we use subfolders such as /fr/ and /en/ (or a separate French domain if your brand calls for one), a switcher link on every page that lands on the equivalent page in the other language, and hreflang annotations in which each version lists itself and its twin.
The platform decides the tooling. On WordPress we use WPML or Polylang with translated slugs. On Shopify, the store's language settings add hreflang tags automatically for language URLs, and translations can be imported with Shopify's Translate & Adapt app. On a custom build we keep all strings in locale files and route French pages through the same components as English. The details sit on our bilingual development page; here the point is that French is part of the architecture, not a layer painted on top.
Bill 96 website requirements for online stores and checkout
An online store has the most French surface area of any website, because the sale continues after the product page. Everything a Quebec shopper sees from product page to delivery email should be in French when they chose French.
We work through a store in the order a customer experiences it. Product titles, variants, size charts and reviews widget. Collection filters, which often come from an app with its own translation settings. The cart, including discount messages and free-shipping thresholds. Shipping methods and delivery estimates. Tax lines, which should read naturally in French. The payment step, where hosted checkouts follow the store language only if it has been set up. Then the confirmation page and every email and SMS after it.
Invoices and receipts deserve their own check, since the Quebec government lists them among documents to prepare in French. If your store sends PDF invoices from an app, we confirm it can generate them in French and pick the language from the customer record. Store builds with French checkout start at US$750; our Shopify developer page for Canadian merchants covers the rest of a Shopify setup, and the WooCommerce developer page covers WordPress stores.
Does a Bill 96 French version help or hurt SEO?
Done with separate URLs and hreflang, a French version usually helps, because it gives you pages that can rank for French searches in Quebec that your English pages could never match. Done with a translation widget, it does little for search.
Google states that it determines a page's language with its own algorithms rather than from hreflang or the lang attribute, which is why the French text itself has to be on the page in the HTML, not injected by a script after load. Widget-based translation often fails that test. Real French pages give Google real French text to read.
We handle the search plumbing during the build: French title tags and meta descriptions written by your translator, French slugs, hreflang pairs, a sitemap that lists both versions, and Search Console checks after launch to confirm French pages are being indexed. For ongoing work on French rankings, our technical SEO service for Canadian sites starts at US$150/mo. Nobody can guarantee rankings, in French or English, but a clean bilingual structure removes the most common reasons French pages go missing from results.
Will AI search assistants see my French pages?
They can only cite what they can read, so French pages served as plain HTML at their own URLs are the safest bet. AI answer engines generally crawl the same public pages as search engines.
We keep French pages lightweight and readable: headings that describe the section, short answer paragraphs, FAQ blocks that stand alone, and structured data where it fits, such as product and organisation markup in both languages. That also helps French-speaking customers who ask an assistant a question like “quelle entreprise livre au Québec” and get pointed at a source. None of this is magic; it is the same clarity that makes pages useful to people.
Bill 96 website requirements checklist for an existing site
To check Bill 96 website requirements on a live site, start with an inventory of everything a Quebec customer can see or receive, then mark each item French, English-only or mixed. The mixed items are usually the surprise.
We run this checklist on every audit. You can run a rough version yourself with a browser in French and a test order.
- Browse the site with a French browser: which pages still appear in English?
- Switch language on five deep pages: does the switcher land on the same page in French?
- Place a test order in French: is every checkout step, error and confirmation in French?
- Check your inbox: are order, shipping and account emails in French?
- Open every PDF you link to: is there a French file?
- Trigger every pop-up, banner and chat greeting on a French page
- View the page source of a French page: is the French text in the HTML?
- List English phrases on French pages and ask your lawyer which are recognized trademarks
- Check that new content published in the last three months has a French twin
If your list comes back long, a phased fix works: checkout and emails first because they touch every sale, then product and service pages, then support content. We quote each phase separately so you can schedule the translation budget.
How much does it cost to meet Bill 96 website requirements?
There are two bills: the technical build, which we quote from US$150 for sites and US$750 for stores, and the translation, which your translator quotes based on word count. The technical bill depends on how French-ready your platform already is.
The cheapest case is a site already on a platform with good multilingual support, a sensible theme and few apps. Then the work is mostly configuration, string extraction, importing French and testing. Costs rise with custom-coded templates that hard-code English text, many third-party apps that each need their own French settings, custom checkout steps, and content stored in images (a banner with English words baked into the picture needs a French image too).
A full rebuild makes sense when the current site cannot hold a second language cleanly: an old page builder, a theme that breaks with longer text, or a platform with no per-language URLs. For a wider look at Canadian budgets, see what a website costs in Canada. Every quote from us is itemised and marked as a starting point, and nothing is billed until you approve it in writing.
How long does a Bill 96 French build take?
A business site usually takes one to two weeks of our build time plus however long translation takes; a store usually takes four to eight weeks. Translation often sets the pace, so we start extraction on day one.
A realistic sequence looks like this. Days one to three: crawl, inventory and string extraction, so your translator can quote and start. While translation runs, we build the French URL structure, switcher, templates and email variants on a staging copy. When French comes back, we import it and your translator reviews in place. Then a test week: full test orders in both languages, form submissions, email checks and a search crawl. Launch happens when you and your lawyer are happy, not on a date we choose for you.
If an OQLF notice gives you a deadline, tell us on the first message. We can prioritise the pages and steps customers see most, launch those first, and follow with support content, so the most visible gaps close quickly.
Working with a team in India on a Quebec French build
A Bill 96 website requirements project works like any remote project with Canadian hours in mind: calls in your morning, messages in between, and everything written down. Eastern Time mornings fall in our Indian evening, so a 9 am Montreal call is easy to schedule, and Pacific clients can book early morning slots too.
Week one is discovery: a video call to walk through your site and your Quebec customers, then our inventory spreadsheet and an itemised quote within about two working days. Week two, once you approve, we set up staging on your hosting and send your translator the extraction file. From then on you get short written updates on WhatsApp or email, and a staging link you can open any time.
Billing is in USD or CAD by Wise, bank wire or PayPal, with invoices issued from India; your accountant handles how you record them. You own the domain, hosting, code and platform accounts from the start, and we work through access you grant and can remove. We do not visit offices, so any in-person training happens by screen share instead. Read more about outsourcing web development to India if this is your first remote project.
Example: a Laval furniture shop fixing its French checkout
This scenario is hypothetical, to show how the work flows. Say a family furniture shop in Laval runs a Shopify store with English product pages, a French homepage and English checkout emails, and a customer has complained that they could not complete an order in French.
We would start with the Bill 96 website requirements inventory: roughly 180 products, 12 collections, 9 policy and info pages, 6 email templates, a delivery-date app and a reviews app. The checkout language, the emails and both apps are the urgent gaps. We extract product and page text for the shop's translator, set French as a published store language with its own URLs, configure French notifications, and check whether each app can display French. The reviews app cannot, so the shop replaces it with one that can.
Once the translator's French is imported, the shop's owner places test orders in both languages from a phone. The French homepage now links to French collections, the cart and payment steps are French, and emails follow the customer's language. The owner's lawyer reviews the French terms of sale before launch. The same pattern suits a Gatineau clinic or a Sherbrooke software firm; only the list of templates changes.