The Office québécois de la langue française processes thousands of complaints every year. Businesses investigated by the OQLF consistently repeat a recognizable set of errors — not because their operators are careless, but because they underestimated the specificity of Québec’s language requirements or assumed that partial compliance was sufficient.
These are the ten mistakes that generate the most OQLF investigations, retailer compliance rejections, and employee grievances. Each one is avoidable. Each one is significantly more expensive to fix after the fact than to prevent from the start.
Mistake 1: Treating English as the Default Language of Business Operations
The foundational compliance mistake in Québec is treating English as the primary language of operations and French as a supplement. Under the Charter of the French Language (and its strengthened 2022 version under Bill 96), French is not a supplement — it is the official language of the province and the required operating language of businesses in Québec.
This default-English mindset shows up in:
- Internal systems and software configured in English with French as an add-on
- Meeting notes and internal memos circulated in English to Québec employees
- Customer communications that go out in English unless a customer explicitly requests French
- Job postings written in English with a French translation appended
Each of these practices is a Charter compliance issue for regulated businesses. More broadly, each one signals to Québec consumers and employees that French is the secondary concern of the business — a signal that has both regulatory and commercial consequences.
The fix: Configure your Québec operations to default to French. English is the accommodation; French is the standard.
Mistake 2: Providing French as an Option Rather Than a Standard
Related to the first mistake but distinct from it: offering French as a choice rather than as the default.
A common implementation: a website with a language toggle, set to English by default, where French is available to those who look for it. An IVR phone system that offers French as a menu option after an English greeting. A customer portal that defaults to English unless the user changes their preference.
Under Bill 96, a website targeting Québec consumers must display in French by default. An IVR system must offer French service without requiring a Québec caller to navigate through an English menu first. The principle is consistent across contexts: French is not the customer’s responsibility to find. It is the business’s responsibility to provide.
The fix: Audit every customer-facing system and communication for its default language setting. Where Québec consumers are the primary or significant audience, French is the default.
Mistake 3: Signing Contracts in English With Québec Consumers
Under the Charter of the French Language, standard-form contracts — also called adhesion contracts — must be provided in French to Québec consumers. A standard-form contract is any contract presented on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, where the consumer does not negotiate individual terms. Terms of service agreements, subscription agreements, service contracts, and most consumer purchase agreements fall into this category.
The contract can also be provided in English if the consumer explicitly requests it after being given the French version. The French version must come first.
Businesses that send English-only contracts to Québec consumers are in direct violation of the Charter. This is a common compliance failure for businesses that use a single standard contract template across Canada without a Québec-specific French version.
The fix: Maintain French versions of all standard-form contracts. Deliver the French version as the default to Québec consumers. Document the consumer’s language preference.
Mistake 4: Commercial Signage That Is Not Predominantly French
The Charter of the French Language requires that exterior commercial signs be in French and that French be “markedly predominant” — meaning French must be significantly more prominent than any other language in terms of size, placement, and visual weight.
For interior commercial signage, French must be present. Another language may appear alongside it, but not more prominently.
Common violations:
- Signs where English and French text are the same size, with English appearing first
- Signs where the English brand name or slogan appears in a typeface size equal to the French text
- Signs where French text is below the English text in a way that makes English the visual anchor
- Window decals and promotional displays where English-language content is more visually dominant than French
The OQLF receives regular complaints about commercial signage and conducts proactive inspections of retail environments. Signage violations are the most publicly visible compliance failures — and the ones most likely to generate consumer complaints in the first place.
The fix: Have your signage reviewed against the OQLF’s specific guidelines for French predominance before installation. The OQLF publishes detailed technical guidance on sign language requirements at oqlf.gouv.qc.ca.
Mistake 5: Using European French Rather Than Québec French
This mistake does not generate an OQLF complaint in all cases, but it does generate OQLF intervention in specific contexts — and it reliably damages brand performance in the Québec market regardless of formal regulatory consequence.
The OQLF maintains the Grand dictionnaire terminologique, which establishes approved Québec French terminology for product categories, commercial services, and technical fields. Businesses whose French-language materials use European French equivalents rather than OQLF-approved Québec French terms are using non-standard terminology in the province’s regulatory context.
Beyond the regulatory dimension, European French in commercial content is immediately recognizable to Québec consumers. It reads as content made for a different audience and translated — or imported — for Québec. The commercial consequence is lower brand credibility, lower engagement, and lower conversion compared to natively produced Québec French content.
The fix: Ensure your translation provider works specifically in Canadian French — not European French — and is familiar with OQLF terminology standards for your product or service category.
Mistake 6: Not Translating the Full Website — Only the Homepage
A website that has a French homepage and English internal pages is not a bilingual website. It is an English website with a French front door.
Québec consumers who land on a French homepage and then navigate to an English product page, an English FAQ, an English checkout flow, or an English support section experience a broken bilingual experience. This is both a commercial failure and, under Bill 96, a compliance issue for businesses targeting Québec consumers.
Common examples of incomplete website bilingualization:
- Blog or news sections that are updated in English and not translated
- Product description pages that are in English while the category pages are in French
- Account management and user portal pages that are English-only
- Checkout and post-purchase flows (order confirmation, tracking, returns) that revert to English
The fix: A bilingual website audit should cover every URL, not just the highest-traffic pages. Use a site crawl to identify all pages that do not have a French equivalent, then prioritize by customer journey stage: product pages and checkout flows before blog content.
Mistake 7: Onboarding Québec Employees With English-Only HR Materials
Providing employment contracts, onboarding packages, employee handbooks, and training materials exclusively in English to Québec employees is a direct violation of the Charter of the French Language for businesses with 25 or more employees in the province.
Even for smaller businesses below the formal francisation threshold, providing English-only HR materials to employees whose preferred language is French creates operational friction and signals a workplace culture that does not respect the employee’s language rights.
The most commonly cited HR compliance failures involve:
- Employment offers drafted only in English
- Health and safety documentation provided only in English (a particularly significant compliance risk given the safety implications)
- Training programs delivered only in English, with no French-language equivalent
- Performance review processes conducted only in English
The fix: Translate your core HR documents before your first Québec hire. This includes the offer letter template, employment agreement, employee handbook, health and safety procedures, and any training materials that will be used with Québec employees.
Mistake 8: Customer Service That Is Bilingual in Name Only
Businesses that describe themselves as bilingual but route French-speaking customers to English-only agents, or that can only respond to French emails after a multi-day delay, are not bilingual in any operationally meaningful sense.
The Charter requires that businesses be capable of serving Québec consumers in French. This means:
- A customer who calls and requests French service must receive French service — not be transferred to a general queue and told to call back
- A customer who writes in French must receive a French response in the same timeframe as English responses
- A customer who uses a chat function must be able to interact in French with an agent who is actually functional in French — not a machine-translated chat interface that produces non-idiomatic responses
The fix: Audit your actual bilingual service delivery, not your stated bilingual capability. Use a French-language test contact on each channel to verify that the French service experience is genuinely equivalent to the English one.
Mistake 9: Failing to Update French Materials When English Materials Change
This is the most operationally common compliance failure for businesses that have invested in initial French translation but have not built French maintenance into their operational workflows.
The pattern: a business translates its website, its HR handbook, and its product labels into French at the time of Québec market entry. Over the subsequent months, the English website is updated with new products, policy revisions, and promotional content. The English HR handbook is revised. Product formulations change. The French versions are not updated because the update workflow does not include a French translation step.
The result: French materials that are out of date, incomplete, or inconsistent with the current English versions. For HR documents, this creates policy inconsistencies. For product labels, this creates potential safety and regulatory non-compliance. For websites, this creates a fragmented user experience and SEO inconsistencies.
The fix: Every content update workflow — website CMS, HR document revision, product packaging design — must include a French translation update as a required step before the change is published or the product is shipped.
Mistake 10: Treating Language Compliance as a One-Time Project
The cumulative effect of all nine previous mistakes is this final one: treating Québec language compliance as a project to complete rather than a standard to maintain.
Businesses that achieve an acceptable level of bilingual compliance at their Québec launch and then coast on that initial investment consistently fall out of compliance within twelve to eighteen months. New products are launched without French content. New employees are onboarded with English materials. New website sections go live without French pages. New customer service workflows are built without French-language capacity.
Language compliance in Québec is an operational standard with ongoing maintenance requirements. It requires:
- A designated owner responsible for French content currency
- A bilingual content inventory reviewed on a regular schedule
- A translation partner with institutional knowledge of your business and ongoing capacity to handle updates
- A budget line for French translation as a recurring operational cost
Businesses that build this infrastructure maintain compliance with far less effort and expense than those that treat compliance as periodic remediation.
If you need a translation partner to maintain ongoing bilingual content for your Québec operations, Lexingual works with businesses on a continuous basis — maintaining translation memory, bilingual glossaries, and Canadian French quality across all materials as your
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Relying on machine translation to maintain French content currency. Machine translation produces content that is fast and cheap and fails the Québec standard on tone, terminology, and cultural authenticity. It is not a sustainable maintenance strategy for customer-facing or regulatory content.
Assuming competitors’ practices define the compliance floor. The OQLF enforces the Charter regardless of whether other businesses in your category are also non-compliant. “Everyone does it” is not a defense in an OQLF investigation.
Waiting for a complaint before reviewing compliance. The cost of reactive compliance is consistently higher than proactive compliance. A complaint triggers an investigation, a formal notice, a correction deadline, and potentially a fine — all of which could have been avoided with a routine compliance review.
FAQ
The OQLF investigates all formal complaints and also conducts proactive inspections, particularly in commercial signage, product labelling, and digital communications. Complaints are filed by consumers, employees, and competitors. There is no minimum size threshold — small businesses are investigated the same as large ones.
Commercial signage and website language defaults are the most frequently cited issues for businesses entering Québec for the first time. Both are visible, verifiable, and easily reported by consumers.
Fines can be applied per violation. A business cited for multiple simultaneous violations — non-compliant signage, non-compliant website, and non-compliant contracts — may face separate citations for each. The escalating fine structure for repeat offences applies to subsequent violations of the same type.
If your business employs 25 or more people who work in Québec, you are required to register with the OQLF and work toward francisation. The OQLF provides guidance on the registration process and francisation requirements at oqlf.gouv.qc.ca.
Lexingual can provide professional review of your existing French-language materials — website content, HR documents, marketing materials, product copy — and identify gaps against a Canadian French quality and completeness standard. For formal regulatory compliance assessments, consulting with a Québec regulatory specialist alongside your translation review is advisable.
Conclusion
The ten mistakes in this article are the same ones that generate the most OQLF investigations, the most retailer compliance rejections, and the most employee grievances related to language rights in Québec. They are also the ten most preventable mistakes — each one is resolved by a clear process decision and a professional standard applied consistently.
Review your current operations against this list. Identify which mistakes your business is currently making. Fix the highest-risk ones first. And build the operational infrastructure — a content inventory, a bilingual workflow, a reliable translation partner — that makes ongoing compliance a standard operating condition rather than a recurring remediation project.
