Law in Quebec

News about Quebec legal developments

Public law

  • Divisive constitutional bill draws praise from proponents and scorn from critics

    The Quebec government tabled an extremely broad and contentious bill that will enshrine a provincial constitution and introduce sweeping legislative changes that will dramatically change the provincial legal landscape while curbing countervailing oversight on multiple fronts, according to constitutional law experts.

    Bill 1, introduced without inclusive, cross-partisan consultation or input from civil society and the Aboriginal peoples, is an expansive patchwork of new statutes that would enact the Constitution of Québec, the Act respecting the constitutional autonomy of Québec and a constitutional council. The Québec Constitution Act, 2025 outlines a set of “founding principles,” including secularism, the equality of women and men, the right to abortion, the immigration integration model as opposed to multiculturalism, and French as the only common language of Quebec. As well, it enshrines the right access to medical assistance in dying in Quebec’s Charter.

    Bill 1 also proposes a hierarchy of collective and individual rights, explicitly proposes to make gender equality prevail over the exercise of religious freedom in case of conflict, and bars a large number of organizations that receive public funds to mount legal challenges to laws declared by the government as protecting the “Québec nation,” its constitutional autonomy and “fundamental characteristics.” It also stipulates that a court cannot on its own initiative “seize itself” of any matter over the constitutionality of a rule of law without a formal application from the parties involved.

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  • Quebec Appeal Court rejects constitutional challenge over kafala

    A constitutional challenge against federal and Quebec regulations that allow Canadian residents to sponsor a child for family reunification only if the child is their biological or adoptive child was rebuffed by the Quebec Court of Appeal in a ruling that underlines the challenges facing Canadian citizens or residents of Muslim faith who want to sponsor a child though kafala, a form of legal guardianship in Muslim law countries.

    The decision, while not surprising, continues to put Canadians of Muslim faith in a bind as it compels them to transgress their religious beliefs to adopt, and is expected to make it more arduous for them to sponsor a child under kafala, according to legal experts. The ruling also confirms that only the Western family model is recognized as valid for starting a family in Canada, maintain some pundits.

    “If you’re a Muslim who respects your faith through kafala, a form of care deeply rooted in Islamic tradition, Canada is closing the door on you,” remarked Awatif Lakhdar, a kafala expert and a Montreal family lawyer with Lavery. “Unfortunately, kafala is not equivalent to full adoption, and the current sponsorship system does not facilitate family reunification for a person who has resorted to kafala.”

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  • 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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  • Monday’s Medley (Issue 01)

    Each Monday I will provide a potpourri of Quebec legal developments. Here’s the first issue. It begins with the Supreme Court refusing to hear an appeal from the Mohawk Mothers, Hydro-Québec ordered to pay $5 million to a First Nation, a $2 million for contaminating water, a class action settlement dealing with psychiatric patients, and a class action that was certified against a Montreal billionaire.

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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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  • Bill aims to curb delays but stakeholders call for more resources

    A new bill that seeks to curb delays in the justice system and rein in stays of proceedings will be conferring new powers to the justices of the peace by allowing them to oversee criminal court appearances and bail hearings, a development that has received lukewarm praise by Quebec’s main legal actors who were longing for more monies into the system.

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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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  • Quebec legal world divided over notaries gaining access to the bench

    The Quebec government, after scant debate and without the input or testimony of several major legal actors, has forged ahead in spite of forceful opposition by lawyers’ organizations with a controversial and divisive bill that will allow notaries to be appointed to the bench of provincial courts.

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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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  • Quebec Appeal Court sets precedent over First Nations police underfunding

    In an “important precedent,” the Quebec Court of Appeal held that Ottawa and Quebec breached their duty to act honourably after it refused to adequately finance the police department of a First Nation to ensure that its services were equal in quality to those offered to non-Indigenous communities, according to aboriginal law experts.

    The ruling, deemed by pundits as a “pretty striking way of reading” Canada’s agreements with First Nations on programs and services, ordered both the federal and the Quebec government to pay the Pekuakamiulnuatsh Takuhikan First Nation, located in Quebec’s Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean region, $1.6 million to cover years of underfunding of its police force. A year ago, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal concluded in Dominique (on behalf of the members of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation) v. Public Safety Canada, 2022 CHRT 4 that the same First Nation were victims of discrimination due to inadequate police funding, a decision Canada is seeking judicial review.

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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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  • 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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  • Quebec Court reaffirms authority of Aboriginal communities in youth protection

    First Nations that have implemented youth protection legislation under the auspices of the federal Bill C-92 have jurisdiction over youth welfare regardless of place of residence held a provincial court judge in a decision viewed by legal experts as a precedent.

    The long-awaited decision, widely regarded by legal pundits as an important stepping stone towards the right to self-government for First Nations, reaffirms the generic right to self-determination, confirms the authority of Aboriginal communities to withdraw children from the care of Quebec youth protection authorities, and highlights the importance of negotiating in good faith.

    “This is the first judgment in such a matter, and we hope it will create a precedent,” said Frédéric Boily, a lawyer with Simard Boivin Lemieux in Dobeau-Mistassini in the Saguenay-Lac-Saint Jean region who represented the the Conseil des Atikamekw d’Opitciwan, an intervener in the case. “So another Aboriginal community that wanted to follow in our client’s footsteps would indeed have good moorings on which to build.”

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Law in Quebec
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