Questions
Your website, Bill 96 and Law 25: the short answers
What Québec businesses ask most often about their website, each answer in a few lines, with its sources. This is not legal advice.
- How do I check whether my website complies with Bill 96?
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Check four things. A French version exists and can be reached from the home page. The pages that matter, terms, checkout, pricing, contact, exist in French. Every English page has its French counterpart. No English string is left on the French pages: buttons, forms, messages. Veilleur's free check does this on about twenty pages in two minutes, quoting each offending string and the element that holds it.
- What does Bill 96 say about websites?
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It applies to the website of a business with an establishment in Québec. The Charter of the French language (s. 52) requires catalogues, brochures and commercial publications in French, and the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) applies it to websites. A version in another language is allowed if the French one is at least as complete and as easy to reach.
Sources: Charter of the French language, OQLF. In detail: Operanto's guide to Bill 96 and websites, in French.
- Is there a tool that automatically checks my website against Law 25?
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Yes, for what the site shows. Veilleur checks that no tracking cookie becomes active before the visitor consents or after they refuse (s. 8.1), that a privacy policy is published in clear terms (s. 8.2), and that the title and contact details of the person in charge of personal information are shown (s. 3.1). No tool checks what the site does not show, such as the incident register.
Sources: Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, Commission d'accès à l'information.
- How much does a Bill 96 and Law 25 compliance audit of a website cost?
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At Veilleur, the check is free: about twenty pages, the report in two minutes. The audit costs $399 one time: up to 500 pages, the quality of the French reviewed on 60 pages, a dated PDF report, your questions by email for 30 days and a month of monitoring included. Monitoring costs $79 a month per site, or $790 a year. Prices are in Canadian dollars.
Every plan: Pricing
- Can the OQLF fine me because of my website?
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Not at first. After a complaint, the OQLF reviews the site, writes to the business and gives it time to fix things. If nothing is fixed, the file can go to the Director of Criminal and Penal Prosecutions, and a court sets the fine: $3,000 to $30,000 per offence for a business, doubled for a second offence, then tripled.
Source: Charter of the French language, sections 205 and following.
- Must my site be entirely in French if I have an English version?
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No. The Charter does not forbid English on a website. It requires a French version at least as complete, as easy to find and of the same quality as the other. A menu, a cart or terms of sale offered only in English do not meet it.
In detail: Operanto's guide to Bill 96 and websites, in French.
- Can ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity read my site?
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They can if their robots are blocked neither by the robots.txt file nor by the firewall (Cloudflare blocks AI robots by default since July 2025), and if the text of the pages is in the HTML the server sends, as these robots do not run JavaScript. Veilleur's free check verifies it for ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google, Bing and Apple.
- Who is behind Veilleur?
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Veilleur is a service of Operanto Technologies inc., a Québec business established in Montréal and incorporated in 2026. To write to us: [email protected].
Your site, now
The free check answers these questions for your site: about twenty pages, two minutes, no account.
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