Guide
Bill 96 and business software: what your CRM, your website and your automations have to satisfy
Bill 96 rarely comes up in conversation until the day it becomes a buying objection. A CRM that only exists in English, a unilingual intake form, a chatbot that answers in English to a customer who wrote in French: these are compliance problems before they are service problems. This guide covers what the Charter of the French Language, as amended by Bill 96, requires of a Québec business's software, website and automated systems.
Last updated 2026-08-03. Free to read, nothing gated.
What Bill 96 changed
Bill 96 is not a standalone statute. It is an amending act that strengthened the Charter of the French Language, adopted in June 2022 and phased in since. Its practical effect is to widen the language obligations and, more importantly, to give them enforcement teeth the Charter previously lacked.
Three changes matter to an ordinary business. The francization threshold dropped from fifty employees to twenty-five, pulling thousands of small and mid-sized businesses into the formal Office québécois de la langue française process. Contracts of adhesion, meaning non-negotiable standard-form contracts such as terms of service, must be provided in French first, with a version in another language only available once the French version has been provided. And the rules on trademarks and public signage were tightened, with requirements in force since 1 June 2025 covering the translation of generic and descriptive terms and the markedly predominant use of French in outdoor signage.
The common thread is straightforward: French is not a configuration option to enable if a customer asks. It is the default state your customers and employees are entitled to.
Software: what the Charter says
The base rule is old and widely ignored: software, including game software and operating systems, must be available in French. A version in another language may be used only where no French version exists.
For a small business that turns into a tool-selection question. When you choose a CRM, a point of sale system, accounting software, a ticketing platform or a booking system, the existence of a French version is not an ergonomics preference. It determines whether you are entitled to run the English one. Plenty of popular US tools offer a partial French interface, a poor machine translation, or nothing at all.
That is one reason custom development sometimes turns out to be the simpler answer rather than the expensive one. A CRM built around how you actually work is bilingual because you decided it would be, not because a vendor prioritized the Québec market. The same logic applies to internal dashboards and customer portals.
Do not overlook the software your staff use. The language obligations are not only customer-facing: the right to work in French covers work tools, employer communications, job postings and employment-related documents.
Websites, commercial communications and automated systems
A commercial website aimed at the Québec public has to be available in French. Where a version in another language exists, the French version must be accessible on terms at least as favourable: same content, same ease of access, same quality. A French version reduced to a translated home page, with every useful page in English only, does not meet that standard.
That rule bears directly on automated systems, and this is where most businesses get caught.
Forms and intake. A quote request form is part of the website. If it exists only in English, the French version of the site is not on equivalent terms.
Automated email and SMS. Confirmations, reminders, follow-ups and nurture sequences are commercial communications. They have to exist in French, and the right practice is to send in whichever language the customer used.
Chatbots and voice agents. An agent that greets in English and offers French only on explicit request reproduces exactly the problem the law targets. Our voice agents detect the language from the first sentence and follow the caller if they switch, and both script versions are written natively rather than machine translated.
Automatically generated content. If you produce pages, product listings or articles through a system, French cannot be a later addition. It is an architecture decision: two native page sets with reciprocal hreflang, not a translation layer bolted on top.
Trademarks, signage and packaging
Since 1 June 2025 the trademark rules are stricter. A trademark in a language other than French may appear on a product, in public signage and in commercial advertising, but the generic or descriptive terms within the mark must be translated into French.
For outdoor signage visible from outside a premises, where a trademark or business name in another language is displayed, French must be markedly predominant in the visual field, which the regulations express as substantially more space given to the French text.
These rules touch software projects less than retail and restaurant projects, but they come up constantly in website and brand refresh engagements, and they are worth checking with an adviser at the moment the brand and signage are being reworked.
The OQLF, francization and the real consequences
The Office québécois de la langue française administers the Charter. Businesses with twenty-five or more employees in Québec must register with the Office and go through the francization process, which leads to a francization certificate attesting that French is generalized at every level of the business.
The process is not designed as a punishment, but it consumes management time, and it explicitly covers information technology: the language of the software in use, the documentation and the working interfaces. A business that has assembled an entirely English-language stack discovers the size of the problem during the analysis rather than at purchase, which is the wrong order.
Consequences of non-compliance run from formal notice and orders to correct through to the sanctions set out in the legislation, and Bill 96 added remedies that make inaction riskier than it used to be. For most small businesses, though, the expensive consequence arrives before any of that: it is the institutional client, the public contract or the partner who asks how your systems handle French, and does not like the answer.
Building bilingual from the start, in practice
Making a live system bilingual costs several times what it costs at scoping, because language touches nearly everything: labels, email templates, scripts, reference data, URLs, content structure and markup.
Here is what we settle at the start of a project. Language is data, not a copy. Every customer-facing piece of content exists in both languages as two entries, not as a file and its translation. Detection is automatic. The system replies in the language the person used, without asking them to choose. French is written, not translated. French that reads as a translation does more damage than no French at all, particularly in customer service. Markup follows. Correct language attributes and reciprocal hreflang between the two versions, which serves compliance and search equally. Message templates are doubled on day one. Adding the second language later means revising every sequence already in production.
That is how we build customer-facing systems, whether it is an AI support agent, an AI lead response system or a full site. If you want to know what it means for your operation, we are based in Montréal.
Disclaimer: this guide is a plain-language summary for managers. It is not legal advice. For a specific situation, consult legal counsel and refer to the official text of the legislation and the publications of the Office québécois de la langue française.