Doing Business in Québec

LITIGATION The Charter provides that pleadings filed by a legal person (i.e., not an individual) in any proceedings in Québec will not be accepted by a court, tribunal or other adjudicator for which the province of Québec is responsible unless accompanied by a French translation prepared by a certified translator; however, this requirement is temporarily suspended as a result of a constitutional challenge. Environment In Québec, environmental matters are regulated at the federal, provincial and local levels through a wide variety of laws, regulations and bylaws. Environmental requirements can be triggered with respect to both the operations conducted and the locations where such operations occur, varying according to such operations and locations. Privacy Protection PROTECTION OF PERSONAL INFORMATION The Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (Private Sector Act) imposes on enterprises in Québec a wide array of obligations regarding the personal information they collect or use, including personal information relating to their employees and customers. Québec’s privacy regulator, the Commission d’accès à l’information (CAI), oversees the application of the Private Sector Act. Under this Act, any person carrying on an enterprise who collects, uses or communicates personal information relating to another person may do so only with that person’s consent. To be effective, consent must be clear, freely provided, informed and given for specific purposes.

Such consent remains valid only for the time necessary to achieve the purposes for which it was requested. However, this consent requirement is subject to several exceptions. The Private Sector Act also requires that enterprises adopt appropriate security measures to protect personal information. The Act provides individuals with the right to access their personal information held by an enterprise and to request that such information be corrected if necessary. ANTI-SPAM LEGISLATION Canada's federal anti-spam legislation (known as CASL) regulates, among other things, the sending of commercial electronic messages (CEMs). In general, and subject to the exceptions set out in the legislation, CASL prohibits companies from sending, causing or permitting CEMs to be sent to an electronic address without the express or implied consent of the recipient. CEMs mean any electronic message, including a traditional marketing communication that encourages participation in a commercial activity. CASL also prohibits a number of other activities, including (i) altering the transmission data of an electronic message, enabling it to be rerouted to a different destination without the express consent of the sender or the recipient; and (ii) installing certain software onto a computer system or causing such software to send an electronic message without the express consent of the owner or an authorized user and without having first provided certain disclosures. THE MODERNIZATION ACT An Act to modernize legislative provisions as regards the Protection of Personal information (Modernization Act), which became law on September 22, 2021, contains a broad range of important amendments to Québec’s Private Sector Act, which have come and will come into effect over a three-year period (between September 2022 and September 2024). With the passage of the