Quebec Renews Notwithstanding Clause on Bill 96 Language Law

Premier Christine Fréchette has opened the spring session of the National Assembly with a bill that renews the use of the notwithstanding clause on Bill 96, Quebec's contested update to the Charter of the French Language. The move, signalled for weeks but tabled this week in Quebec City, ensures that key provisions of the 2022 language law remain shielded from Charter challenges for a further five years and sets up another round of constitutional friction with the federal government.

Fréchette, who was sworn in on April 15 as Quebec's 33rd premier after winning the Coalition Avenir Québec leadership race, has cast the renewal as a necessary measure to defend French in Quebec from what her government has long described as creeping anglicisation. Critics, including federalist parties at both the provincial and federal level, have argued that the renewal entrenches a problematic constitutional precedent and chills judicial review of provincial legislation.

What Bill 96 does

Bill 96, formally An Act respecting French, the official and common language of Québec, was passed by the previous CAQ government under Premier François Legault in 2022. The legislation tightened French-language obligations on businesses, immigrants and the public service, and capped the share of seats at English-language CEGEPs. It also amended the Quebec Constitution to declare that Quebecers form a nation whose only official and common language is French.

The most legally contentious elements of the bill are those that pre-emptively invoke Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Section 52 of the Quebec Charter of human rights and freedoms. Those clauses, known as notwithstanding clauses, allow a legislature to insulate specified statutes from judicial review on most fundamental rights grounds for five years at a time.

Because the original Bill 96 invocations have a sunset clause embedded in the Charter itself, they expire automatically and must be renewed by the legislature if the government wants the protection to continue. Fréchette's bill does precisely that, extending the invocations into the second half of the decade.

Why Fréchette is acting now

The technical reason is simple. The original invocations are approaching their five-year expiry, and waiting too long to renew would leave parts of Bill 96 vulnerable to court challenges that are already grinding through the appellate system. The political reasons are more layered.

Fréchette inherited a CAQ government that had been bleeding support to the Parti Québécois in the months before Legault stepped down. Renewing the clause is a way to signal to nationalist voters that the new premier intends to defend the heart of her party's legacy on language. It is also a way to draw a clear contrast with the federal Liberal government on questions of provincial autonomy heading into the October provincial election.

The premier has also tied the bill to a broader package of policies she is rolling out before the legislature rises for the summer break. That package includes a tax cut of one percentage point for roughly 75,000 small and medium-sized businesses, legislation to give women the right to know if a partner has a history of domestic violence, and a constitutional proposal that would codify a set of founding principles for Quebec.

How Ottawa is reading it

Prime Minister Mark Carney's office has been studiously careful in its public response so far. The prime minister has spoken in general terms about the need for governments at all levels to exercise the notwithstanding clause sparingly and only after full debate. He has stopped short of saying directly that he believes Quebec should not renew the protections, a line his Liberal predecessors had begun to push.

That restraint reflects the political reality Carney faces. Quebec was central to his April 13 majority victory, with the Liberals picking up seats in the Montreal suburbs and the Eastern Townships against a fading Bloc Québécois. A direct confrontation with the new premier over language policy would risk those gains and hand the Bloc a ready-made narrative of federal overreach.

The federal Justice Minister, Arif Virani, has reiterated Ottawa's position that the federal government will consider intervening in cases that reach the Supreme Court of Canada and that test the limits of the notwithstanding clause itself. Several such cases, including challenges to Saskatchewan's parental notification legislation and Quebec's earlier secularism law, are already moving toward the high court.

The legal landscape

Section 33 of the Charter allows Parliament or a provincial legislature to expressly declare that an act or a provision shall operate notwithstanding most of the fundamental freedoms, legal rights and equality rights protected by the Charter. The clause was a compromise crafted during the 1981 constitutional patriation negotiations to secure the agreement of provinces concerned about judicial overreach.

For decades after patriation, the clause was used sparingly. In the last decade, however, provincial governments in Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan and New Brunswick have all invoked it in different contexts, prompting concerns from constitutional scholars about a normalisation of pre-emptive use. Critics argue that pre-emptive invocation, before any court has had a chance to rule on a law's constitutionality, undermines the back-and-forth dialogue between courts and legislatures that the framers of the Charter contemplated.

The Supreme Court of Canada has held that the clause is constitutionally valid but has signalled, in recent decisions, that its courts will continue to issue declarations on whether laws would otherwise violate the Charter even when Section 33 has been invoked. That practice has the effect of putting moral and political weight behind rights claims even when judicial remedies are foreclosed.

Reaction in Quebec

Inside Quebec, reaction to Fréchette's bill has split predictably along familiar lines. The Parti Québécois has supported the renewal in principle while criticising the CAQ government for what it calls insufficient enforcement of existing Bill 96 provisions. Québec Solidaire has called the renewal unnecessary, arguing that the law's central French-language protections do not actually require Section 33 to survive Charter scrutiny.

The Liberal opposition in the National Assembly, traditionally aligned with anglophone voters in the Montreal area, has opposed the bill outright. Leader Marc Tanguay has called the move a political maneuver designed to shore up CAQ support among nationalist voters ahead of the October election rather than a serious response to any concrete threat to French.

Anglophone community organisations have been the most vocal critics. The Quebec Community Groups Network and several CEGEP student associations have organised protests and signalled intent to file legal challenges that test the boundaries of what the clause can shield. Those challenges face an uphill climb in the courts but may produce the kind of Supreme Court of Canada declarations that have proved politically influential in recent years.

Business and immigration implications

Bill 96 obliges businesses operating in Quebec to demonstrate compliance with French-language requirements in workplaces, customer interactions and documentation. Several multinational firms have, in private conversations with provincial officials, raised concerns about administrative burden and the difficulty of recruiting senior executives to Montreal when comprehensive French-language compliance is required.

Provincial officials have countered that the law has been in force long enough for businesses to adapt and that compliance has, in practice, been more flexible than initial headlines suggested. The Office québécois de la langue française has emphasised support and education over enforcement in its public communications, although individual cases continue to generate sharp coverage in the Montreal English-language media.

The immigration angle is also significant. Quebec retains constitutional jurisdiction over its own immigrant selection criteria and has tightened French-language requirements for both temporary and permanent streams. Those changes, combined with federal reductions in overall intake under Carney's new Immigration Levels Plan, are reshaping the demographic outlook for Montreal in ways that have not yet fully registered in housing or labour market data.

What's next

Fréchette's bill is expected to pass before the legislature rises for the summer, given the CAQ's majority government and the Parti Québécois's stated support for renewal. The premier has said she intends to use the spring session to advance as much of her agenda as possible, including the constitutional proposal and the small-business tax cut.

Court challenges to specific Bill 96 provisions will continue to work through the system, with at least one major case expected to reach the Supreme Court of Canada within the next eighteen months. The federal government's posture in those cases, particularly whether it intervenes and on which side, will be one of the most closely watched political signals of Carney's first year in office.

For Quebecers, the practical impact of the renewal is to entrench the status quo on language policy through to the end of the decade. For the rest of the country, the bill is the latest reminder that the most consequential constitutional debates in Canada continue to play out in Quebec City, with national implications that often outlast individual governments.