Law in Quebec

News about Quebec legal developments

Family law

  • Quebec Superior Court orders amendments to Civil Code to recognize multi-parent families

    In a landmark decision that redefines the legal framework for parenthood in Quebec, Superior Court has given the provincial government 12 months to amend the Civil Code to introduce a new system of filiation that would make it possible to legally recognize more than two parents for the same child.

    The ruling, described by lawyers who successfully pled the case as a “very important for the development” of family law in Quebec, held that the provisions of the Civil Code that limit filiation to two parents is discriminatory and violates the right to equality guaranteed by section 15(1) of the Canadian Charter. Quebec Superior Court Justice Andres Garin found that it is “appropriate” to recognize family status “in the sense of belonging to a particular family model, including a multi-parent family” as an analogous ground of prohibited discrimination enumerated in s. 15(1) of the Canadian Charter – and that such discrimination could not be justified under s. 1 of the Charter. Membership, added Justice Garin, in a particular family model is an immutable personal characteristic.

    “Ultimately, the limit of two parent-child relationships sends the message to multi-parent families and to society in general that only so-called ‘normal’ families, with a maximum of two parents, represent valid family structures worthy of legal recognition,” held Justice Garin in V.M. c. Directeur de l’État civil, 2025 QCCS 1304. “This message reinforces and perpetuates the disadvantage suffered by those who live in a non-traditional family model. Ultimately, the difference in treatment is discriminatory and violates the right to equality guaranteed by s. 15(1) of the Canadian Charter.”

    The Quebec government has announced that it will appeal the decision.

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  • Quebec legislative proposal to create Unified Family Tribunal panned by experts

    In its latest effort to revamp family law, Quebec introduced a bill that lays the groundwork to establish a unified family court to curb delays, simplify proceedings, and handle the majority of family legal proceedings, with an eye towards eventually stripping Superior Court of family matters, an undertaking family law experts have panned as ill-conceived and riddled with shortcomings as it is currently drafted.

    Bill 91, An Act establishing the Unified Family Tribunal within the Court of Québec, also contentiously introduces mandatory mediation for parents in civil or parental unions, judicial conciliation if mediation fails, and summary hearings to be held on the same day if conciliation efforts are unsuccessful.

    But family law pundits are far from impressed by the proposed legislation as it is weighed down by far too many glaring gaps that have yet to be addressed.

    “It’s a bill where not all the strings are attached — that’s the least that can be said about it,” remarked Michel Tétrault, author of several books on Quebec’s family law regime. Marie Annik Walsh, a Montreal family lawyer with Dunton Rainville and former president of the Quebec Association of Family Lawyers, also is disappointed by the legislative proposal, asserting that the Quebec government “did not think through all of the ramifications.” Law professor Valérie Costanzo, a big proponent of unified family law courts, is left wanting as the “unified family court at the moment is in name only.”

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  • Quebec Appeal Court establishes high threshold in civil liability cases dealing with exercise of parental authority

    The Quebec Court of Appeal overturned a decision that ordered a father to pay $30,000 in damages for parental alienation but held that parents can be held liable during the course of the exercise of parental authority under civil law, a recourse however that will only succeed in “exceptional and unequivocal” situations.

    The long-awaited decision, widely lauded by family law experts, held that the Quebec legislator has not ruled out the possibility of civil liability in matters dealing with parental authority, but its threshold must be high to prevent civil liability from becoming an “instrument for policing, or even regulating, the art of parenting,” said Quebec Appeal Court Justice Benoît Moore in Droit de la famille — 24915, 2024 QCCA 767.

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  • Quebec bill grants protections and establishes new obligations to de facto unions

    A new proposed Quebec legal framework for common-law couples who become parents after June 2025 will be entrusted with new rights and obligations, and provide some protections granted to married couples, a development viewed by family law experts as a step in the right direction.

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  • Quebec family law reform prompts questions from experts

    A proposed Quebec legislative reform that recognizes and regulates surrogacy in order to protect the best interests of the child, establishes new regulations on parentage, and aims to protect children born as a result of sexual assault has been commended by notaries but drawn mixed reaction from family law experts.

    Bill 12, part of an ongoing effort by the provincial government to revamp family law, allows a child born as a result of rape to challenge his filiation to the assailant, compels the aggressor to pay compensation to meet the child’s needs, amends the Civil Code of Québec to specify the various ways of establishing filiation, and puts Quebec on the same footing as several other provinces by giving legal recognition to surrogacy contracts.

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  • Report recommends rights-based approach to tackle intimate partner violence and homelessness

    The Quebec government should establish a comprehensive “made in Quebec” legal framework to tackle intimate partner violence by creating a specific right to adequate housing under the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and introduce comprehensive legislation that institutes a right to be free from domestic violence that includes legal recourses in civil matters, according to a report by legal experts.

    Successive governments in Quebec have made important strides to provide better support to victims of intimate partner violence but “the time has come” to establish necessary policy foundations for a rights-based approach that should be anchored by Quebec’s international human rights obligations, affirms the report. The expert panel calls on the provincial government to follow in the footsteps of the federal government’s 2019 National Housing Strategy Act and explicitly incorporate the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), a multilateral treaty signed by the United Nations General Assembly that came in force in 1976, in Quebec law.

    “When you build your legal framework around a positive right, that’s going to change the entire approach,” remarked Pearl Eliadis, a McGill law professor and co-chair of the Gender Research Stream, one of several branches of the Québec Homelessness Prevention Policy Collaborative, that penned the report. The collaborative, founded in 2021, was established to advance policy reforms in Quebec to prevent homelessness. It is a joint effort between the McGill Department of Equity, Ethics, and Policy and the Old Brewery Mission, Quebec’s largest service provider for homeless men and the largest in Canada for homeless women.

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  • Sperm donor granted visitation rights

    A sperm donor was granted access rights by the Quebec Court of Appeal after he was deemed as a “significant” third party whose presence “could probably benefit” the child in a decision that has perplexed some family law experts.

    The Appeal Court decision has ostensibly watered down the notion of significant third parties, leaves open the question whether a similar finding would have been reached if the third party did not have a biological connection with the child, and serves as a timely reminder that parents involved in a “parental project,” or assisted procreation, should carefully consider whether they want to hand third parties access rights, according to family law experts.

    “It’s an assisted reproduction project that deviated into something else, and this is a phenomenon that we are now seeing and will be seeing more often,” remarked Michel Tétrault, a leading family law expert and author of a series of tomes on Quebec family law. “From the time that these ladies allowed access to take place, a form of status quo was created. That’s a message that needs to be sent out: the moment you allow a third party who is supposed to be in no way involved in the parental project to become involved, it opens a door.”

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  • Taking a harder line against domestic violence

    “During these incidents the offender punched the victim in the knees, hit her on the head and on her ears, pushed her, dragged her on the ground, slapped her, bit her, spat in her face, head-butted her, shook her, pulled her hair and grabbed her by the shoulders while threatening to throw her off a balcony. During one incident, he threw various objects at her. During another, he took a knife and threatened to remove the baby she was carrying in her womb.”

    So described Court of Quebec Judge Alexandre Dalmau the horrors that former sports journalist Jonah Keri inflicted on his wife. Repeatedly. He was sentenced to 21 months of imprisonment.

    The courts are beginning to take a harder line against domestic abuse. Over the past year Quebec Superior Court has awarded damages to victims of spousal abuse. Ontario Superior Court followed suit in late February 2022 after it recognized a new tort in family violence.

    So too is the justice system and Quebec government, a movement that gained much traction over the past year, particularly since the beginning of the year.

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  • New tort in family violence recognized in Ontario

    Following in the footsteps of Quebec, a new tort in family violence has been recognized in Ontario.

    In Quebec, there are some 20 cases that awarded damages to victims of spousal abuse, a figure that is less than the number of decisions that have granted damages to ex-spouses for online harassment, point out legal experts. But there are signs that is about to change.

    “It is a trend that will accelerate, and that’s because of the new amendments in the Divorce Act,” family law expert Michel Tétrault told me last year.

    He may be right.

    In Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia, 2022 ONSC 1303, Ontario Superior Court Justice Renu Mandhane held that

    [4]… I am prepared to award $150,000 in compensatory, aggregated, and punitive damages for the tort of family violence. I recognize that making such a significant damage award is well-outside the normal boundaries of family law. In the typical marriage, characterized by economic interdependence and mutual support, the family law statutory framework will be a complete code that allows for the fair, predictable, and efficient resolution of the parties’ financial issues post-separation.

    [5] However, the marriage before me was not typical: it was characterized by the Father’s abuse, and a sixteen-year pattern of coercion and control. It was not just “unhappy” or “dysfunctional”; it was violent. The family violence the Mother endured at the hands of the Father is not compensated through an award of spousal support. Indeed, the Divorce Act_, R.S.C., 1985, c. 3 (2nd Supp) specifically prohibits me from considering “misconduct” when making a spousal support award: s.15.2(5). On the rare and unusual facts before me, the Mother is entitled to a remedy in tort that properly accounts for the extreme breach of trust occasioned by the Father’s violence, and that brings some degree of personal accountability to his conduct.

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  • Quebec announces pilot projects for domestic and sexual violence specialized tribunal

    The Quebec government is forging ahead with the deployment of a series of specialized sexual and domestic violence court pilot projects in spite of forceful opposition by the Chief Justice of the Court of Quebec, the tribunal that will manage and operate the new endeavour.

    The Quebec government is launching five pilot projects in Quebec City, and the regions of Montérégie, Centre-du-Québec and Mauricie. The government selected districts based on a number of criteria, including “territorial and population realities”, the size of courthouses, the presence of community agencies working on sexual and domestic violence, and the presence of Aboriginal communities.

    “The pilot projects will help to develop best practice and also to assess the impact of our specialised court model in different contexts,” said Quebec Minister of Justice Simon Jolin-Barrette in a press release.

    Bill 92, An Act to create a court specialized in sexual violence and domestic violence and respecting training of judges in these matters, was unanimously adopted by the Quebec National Assembly in November 2022.

    Bill 92, widely lauded by by family law experts and advocates against family and sexual violence, follows recommendations made by a report penned by former Court of Quebec Chief Justice Élizabeth Corte and Université Laval law professor Julie Desrosiers. The report, entitled “Rebuilding Trust,” called for a specialized tribunal that would take a different approach to deal with such cases.

    Judicial institutions, such as specialized police units and specially trained teams of jurists, would work in tandem with social and community services to foster a victim-centered approach, without compromising the tenets of fundamental justice, told me Corte.

    But current Chief Justice Louise Rondeau wants no part of the initiative. Instead, Justice Rondeau announced last fall the creation of a new divisional court dealing with conjugal and sexual complaints that is expected to be deployed early 2022.

    “All these organizations do not fall under the jurisdiction of the Court,” said Justice Rondeau. “One must veer away from this perception that is emerging in society of a specialized tribunal that may have links with the way that police intervene, with the way that the Crown organizes the work of its prosecutors, with the way that community organizations provide psycho-social assistance. These measures have nothing to do with the courts. The Court is a different organization, independent.”

    The government did not however announce when the pilot projects will be launched.

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  • Anti-vaxxer mom loses bid to prevent her kids from being vaccinated

    An anti-vaxxer mother who believes that the COVID-19 vaccine may contain electronic chips, heavy metals and aborted fetal cells lost her bid to prevent her two children from being vaccinated.

    In the latest of a growing number of COVID-related cases dealt by the courts, Quebec Superior Court Justice Steve Reimnitz withdrew the woman’s parental authority in health matters of her nine and fourteen-year old kids. (more…)

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  • Mixed reaction over Quebec’s proposed youth protection reform

    The Quebec government, following up on a report that cast a critical eye on the province’s youth protection system, has tabled a proposed legislative reform that underlines and clarifies the notion of the best interests of the child as well as introduces new provisions to take into account the historical, social and cultural factors of Indigenous people.

    The reform will also relax strict confidentiality provisions that have hampered communication between frontline workers and other healthcare professionals, reaffirms that children must be represented by an advocate, and entrusts the newly created position of National Director of Youth Protection with the responsibility of determining policy directions and practice standards, buttressed with the power to implement “corrective” measures.

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  • Questions remain over Quebec’s GPS electronic tracking project for domestic violence offenders

    Barely a month after a Quebec coroner recommended that people convicted of murdering their partners be compelled to wear electronic tracking devices when released from prison, the provincial government announced that some conjugal violence offenders could be ordered to wear tracking bracelets beginning next spring.

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  • New Quebec family bill raises troubling issues

    A controversial Quebec bill that would amend the Civil Code and family law has been lauded for creating a legal framework for the use of surrogate mothers but has been slammed for scaling back trans rights and possibly opening the door to a divisive debate over the rights of a foetus.

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  • Quebec ramping up services for victims of conjugal and sexual violence

    Victims of conjugal and sexual violence will have access to emergency financial assistance, the latest initiative the Quebec government introduced to help victims of gender-based violence.

    Over the past few months, the Quebec government has tabled a controversial bill to create a specialized tribunal for sexual and domestic violence, handed funding to a Montreal legal aid clinic to provide training for legal professionals, and boosted social and legal services to help victims of intimate partner and sexual violence.

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Law in Quebec
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