Law in Quebec

News about Quebec legal developments

Employment & labour law

  • Labour under the gun, again

    The Quebec government is considering adopting legislation that would allow union members to opt out of contributing financially to union activities that “are not directly related to labour relations,” marking the second time in months the provincial government is trying clamp down on the labour movement.

    Last May the Quebec government assented Bill 89, An Act to give greater consideration to the needs of the population in the event of a strike or a lock-out. The new law gives the Quebec Minister of Labour sweeping new powers to curb and limit strikes or lockouts by broadening the notion of essential services and granting the labour minister the power to refer labour disputes to an arbitrator. Critics have described the new law as a direct frontal attack on the constitutionally protected right to collective bargaining.

    Now the Quebec government is seeking to curb trade unions from mounting legal challenges. Quebec Premier François Legault has denounced the involvement of some unions in legal cases, notably the challenge to Quebec’s secularism law before the Supreme Court of Canada. The Fédération autonome de l’enseignement is a key appellant. “There is a problem, and we want to tackle it,” said Legault recently on the popular French-language television show “Tout le monde en parle.”

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  • High bar for use of biometric systems maintained by Quebec privacy regulator

    Canada’s largest printer was ordered to cease using facial recognition technology to monitor access to its facilities and to destroy all biometric information it previously collected by Quebec’s privacy watchdog in a decision that serves as a stark reminder that there is a high legal threshold for using biometric systems in the province, according to data and privacy experts.

    The use of biometrics in both the private and public sectors is on the upswing in Quebec, with the latest figures from Quebec’s privacy commissioner, the Commission d’accès à l’information (CAI), revealing that 124 entities declared they used biometrics in fiscal 2023-2024, nearly a 60 per cent jump over the previous year. Biometrics, the automated recognition of an individual’s unique body and behavioural characteristics such as fingerprints, facial and voice recognition, and retina scans, is a billion-dollar business, with the global biometrics market estimated at US$50.08 billion in 2024 and expected to surge to more than US $60 billion in 2025, according to Precedence Research. Employers are using it for access control, security, time-keeping, monitoring employee performance or safety, note pundits.

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  • Labour concerned about new bill that curbs and limit strikes

    The Quebec government tabled a bill that gives it sweeping new powers to curb and limit strikes or lockouts by broadening the notion of essential services and granting the labour minister the power to refer labour disputes to an arbitrator, proposals that critics have derided as nothing less than a direct frontal attack on the constitutional protected right to collective bargaining.

    The proposed legislation, lauded by business and decried by the labour movement, will amend Quebec’s Labour Code and introduce a wholly new and untested legal concept in labour relations. It also gives the government the power to adopt a decree to refer a labour conflict to the Administrative Labour Tribunal, and grants the provincial labour minister similar discretionary powers to those used by Ottawa to end work stoppages involving rail, port and postal workers last year.

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  • Quebec law limits employers to request medical notes

    About one-third of working Canadians were asked by their employers to produce a sick note for a short-term absence at least once in the last year.

    That will largely be a thing of the past.

    Quebec, in an effort to curb doctors’ workloads by streamlining paperwork and unnecessary clinical visits, has joined the ranks of a growing number of provinces who are doing away with sick notes under some circumstances.

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  • Method used to conduct pay equity audit is invalid, rules Labour Tribunal

    A method used to estimate wage differentials during pay equity evaluations cannot be validly used as it contravenes the Quebec Pay Equity Act, ruled the Administrative Labour Tribunal in a decision widely expected by labour lawyers to have a significant impact on estimating and assessing public sector pay equity.

    The decision, one of a handful dealing with pay equity audits in Quebec, underlines that employers cannot depart from the objectives behind the Pay Equity Act when estimating wage gaps, and provides practical guidance to employers and labour alike over the pay equity maintenance exercise, according to labour lawyers.

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  • McGill law professors on strike

    Barely a month ago, McGill’s Faculty of Law boasted that it ranked among the world’s top universities, placing 28th worldwide, up one spot from 2023, according to the 2024 QS World University Rankings.

    That seems long ago.

    McGill law professors, asserting that the university is negotiating in bad faith, began an unlimited strike, demanding better pay and working conditions, a halt towards the growing inclination towards centralization at the university, and the safeguarding of collegial governance at the faculty level.

    Negotiations have been crawling ever since the Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL) was certified in November 2022 by the Quebec Labour Tribunal as the bargaining unit representing the McGill’s Faculty of Law tenured and tenure-track professors, a first for professors in the university’s history.

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  • Employers’ obligation to protect psychological well-being of workers expanded by Quebec bill

    The Quebec government, in an initiative welcomed by business and labour, is in the final stages of passing legislation that aims to further prevent and fight psychological harassment and sexual violence in the workplace by adding legal presumptions to make it easier to prove an employment injury or illness stemmed from violence at the hands of a co-worker or employer representative.

    Bill 42, now before the Quebec National Assembly undergoing a clause-by-clause examination, introduces a definition that encompasses all speech and language of a sexual nature, extends the time limit for filing a claim, broadens the general duties of employers’ obligation to protect the psychological well-being of employers, and introduces harsher penalties for non-compliance. The bill also compels arbitrators who take on grievances dealing with psychological harassment to take mandatory training.

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  • McGill law professors stage one-day strike to spur productive negotiations

    A newly certified bargaining unit representing McGill law professors staged a one-day strike after negotiations with the university administration over its first collective agreement stalled, the first time since the university’s founding two hundred years ago that professors erected picket lines on campus.

    The Association of McGill Professors of Law (AMPL), handed a strike mandate for a maximum of five days by its members in mid-December, asserts that the university is negotiating in bad faith in spite of the intervention of a government-appointed conciliator by arriving at bargaining sessions unprepared, refusing to meet on a frequent and regular basis, and rebuffing attempts to acknowledge that conditions that have been agreed upon cannot be unilaterally changed by the university and applied to AMPL members without their consent.

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  • Crown prosecutors taking Quebec government to court in wage dispute

    Days after Quebec’s adjudicators issued an ultimatum due to a lack of “concrete proposals” over their demands for major pay hikes, Quebec Crown prosecutors, “dismayed and insulted” by the Quebec government’s “bad faith” during negotiations, filed a motion before Quebec Superior Court to invalidate a government decision that affects their working conditions, the latest labour conflict to surface between the Quebec government and leading legal actors.

    The application for judicial review and motion, the second legal challenge the Quebec Association of Public Prosecutors for Criminal and Penal Prosecutions has mounted over the past three months, was launched after the Quebec government unilaterally rejected or modified recommendations made by an arbitrator appointed by both parties over normative conditions, including workload, family leave and remote working, said Guillaume Michaud, the organization’s president.

    “The aim of this appeal is to get the government to follow the recommendations of an independently appointed arbitrator,” explained Michaud. “If it doesn’t, we end up with a useless mechanism. This means that on day one when I sit down with the government to negotiate, I know that in the end it can decide what it wants. It makes no sense for the other side to have a say at the end and then decide what it wants.”

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  • New trend in case law emerges dealing with work-related psychological trauma

    A new trend in case law dealing with work-related psychological trauma has emerged over the past year that both clarifies the test dealing with workplace mental injury and will likely lighten the burden for employees to make their case, according to legal pundits.

    A series of decisions by the Quebec Administrative Labour Tribunal adjudicators have called into question the widely-held notion, fleshed out in the 1990s, that the event or series of events alleged to be the cause of the mental injury be objectively traumatic, a requirement that imposes a burden of proof that is higher than the balance of probabilities, noted employment and labour law experts.

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  • Quebec ruling ‘important step forward’ for labour rights

    Quebec’s provincial police officers, dissatisfied with the progress of labour negotiations, will begin donning colourful cargo pants, a tactic that was given the green light by a ruling that recognizes the right to modify uniforms as an “associational activity” that could be protected by the Canadian Charter.

    “We have no choice but to resort to a means of visibility that conveys a message of dissatisfaction,” said Jacques Painchaud, president of the Quebec Provincial Police Association (APPQ), in a press release.

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  • Appeal Court underlines employers do not have a free pass to ask questions to potential employees

    A prospective police officer who alleged that the Quebec provincial police force withdrew its pre-employment offer because he has Tourette Syndrome was rebuffed by the Quebec Court of Appeal after it found instead that he was not forthright and did not act in good faith during the hiring process.

    In a decision in line with prior jurisprudence, the Quebec Appeal Court sheds new guidance that advises employers to exercise caution when drafting questionnaires, particularly medical queries, even in cases when pre-employment offers have been made, according to employment and legal experts. The unanimous per curium ruling acknowledges that it is a difficult balance to achieve between asking overly broad questions that may be deemed to be discriminatory under the Quebec Charter of human rights and freedoms and drafting “too specific” questions that may deprive employers of relevant and necessary information.

    “It provides some guidelines to employers,” remarked Finn Makela, a law professor at the Université de Sherbrooke where he teaches labour and employment law. “One, it’s not an open bar. Employers can’t just ask super vague questions. And second, the decision also confirms the jurisprudence that the employer needs to justify in their specific circumstances why questions are related to job functions. So that gives some guidance. But, as the Cour of Appeal says, it’s not always easy.”

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  • Quebec justice system in the midst of ‘collapsing, say leading legal actors

    The Quebec justice system is in the midst of “collapsing,” sagging under the weight of underfinancing and bedevilled by a “catastrophic” shortage of court personnel, with more than 20 per cent of employees resigning in a year, prompting leading legal actors to describe the situation as “embarrassing” and even more alarmingly, kindling a public lack of confidence in the province’s justice system.

    The situation has never been so dire, worse than late this spring when a vexed legal community warned the Quebec government that the justice system, mired in a series of crippling labour standoffs that spurred mounting adjournments, was desperately in need of more funds to prop up the justice system. But while tense labour relations with a host of legal actors have subsided since the fall thanks to new collective agreements and a new legal aid accord, legal pundits assert far more has to be done to halt the exodus of courtroom personnel who are leaving in droves because remuneration is simply not competitive.

    “There is a crisis in the justice system that has led to a crisis of confidence,” noted Catherine Claveau, president of the Quebec Bar. “And I, as the president of a professional order whose primary mission is the protection of the public, when the situation of underfunding in particular means that our institutions are undermining the right of citizens to have access to effective and quality justice, well for me, this corresponds to a real crisis.”

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  • McGill law professors unionized

    Almost a year to the day when McGill law professors formally launched proceedings to become recognized as an exclusive bargaining unit for faculty members, the longer than expected legal battle culminated with an unequivocal victory after the Quebec labour board issued granted certification, a first for professors in the university’s 200-year history.

    The “slam dunk” decision by the Quebec Administrative Labour Tribunal sets the stage for changes to the labour landscape at McGill, with the new union intending to flex its muscles over a growing inclination towards centralization at the university, safeguard the collegial governance at the faculty level and negotiate a collective agreement that will provide better working conditions and security, according to leaders of the Association of McGill Law Professors (AMPL).

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  • Quebec justice system in crisis

    The Quebec justice system, buckling under the weight of years of chronic underfinancing, is stricken by such a serious manpower shortage that hardly a day goes by without a trial, a preliminary inquiry or a sentence being delayed or postponed, an untenable situation that could lead to “significant harm” to the public and undermine faith towards judicial institutions, warn top legal officials.

    The “catastrophic” situation is exacerbated by tense labour relations with a host of different legal actors and the Quebec government, with legal aid lawyers recently launching half-day strikes, private sector lawyers who take on legal aid mandates now refusing to accept cases dealing with sexual and intimate partner violence, and court clerks launching walkouts that may metamorphose into a strike.

    “The situation is at a minimum very troubling,” remarked Catherine Claveau, head of the Quebec Bar. “The system has reached its limits. At the moment, there are very real risks of breakdowns or disruptions of services that could cause significant harm to citizens and generate a great deal of insecurity towards judicial institutions.”

    Former Quebec Superior Court Chief Justice Jacques Fournier is just as concerned by the turn of events, asserting that parts of the justice system is in the midst of cracking, a state of affairs that will unlikely improve with an ageing workforce progressively retiring – unless more monies are poured into the justice system.

    “It’s very, very worrisome, very worrisome, because it’s not going to get better,” said Justice Fournier, who along with the chief justices of the Court of Quebec and the Quebec Court of Appeal wrote a letter to the Quebec government last year entreating it to boost the salaries of their judicial assistants. “To be satisfied with justice that is delivered in twelve, fifteen or eighteen months is not ideal. In my opinion, justice should be rendered almost in real time. It will take major investments to modernize, but modernizing in terms of access and in terms of speed of execution.”

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Law in Quebec
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