Elections Quebec will send voter information cards and election guides to households in French only ahead of the Oct. 5 provincial election, the first time in the agency’s history it has done so, after being denied an exemption from the province’s French language charter.
The agency said it sought permission to produce bilingual documents and was refused, CTV News reported Sept. 1 in a story by Rachel Lau and Joe Lofaro. The restriction flows from the Charter of the French Language as amended by Bill 96, the language law adopted in 2022, which limits the circumstances in which the Quebec government and its agencies may communicate with residents in a language other than French.
English versions of the material will still exist, but voters will have to go looking for them. Elections Quebec is printing a web address and a QR code on the French documents, both leading to an English page on its site. Two groups are exempt from the online-only approach: Indigenous voters, and people declared eligible to receive instruction in English under the charter. Both may request documents in English.
Premier Christine Frechette has declined to order the agency to reverse course, CBC News reported, saying the English information remains accessible. Critics counter that a QR code is not the equivalent of a document arriving in the mail, particularly for older voters who do not use smartphones and for people without reliable internet access.
Quebec Liberal Leader Charles Milliard wrote to Frechette on Friday calling the decision “an unjustifiable attack on the electoral rights of English-speaking Quebecers” and “a clear step backward from standard practice,” according to CBC News. Milliard argued the change breaks with established practice and compromises the ability of part of the population to take part in the vote.
A legal challenge is being organized. Eric Maldoff, a Montreal lawyer and former president of Alliance Quebec, has said the measure is an “unacceptable impediment” because English-speaking Quebecers are “not getting equal access” to voter information the law requires be delivered to every household. Maldoff has characterized it as a violation of a constitutional right and said a challenge could be filed within days. As of Monday, no filing had been confirmed.
The dispute runs on a compressed timeline, which is what distinguishes it from the language litigation Quebec sees in a typical year. Voter information cards tell electors where and when to vote, including advance polling dates, and for most households they are the primary notice that arrives. A court remedy would have to land early enough to change what goes in the mail. Arrive after that point and the case becomes a retrospective argument about an election already held.
It is also the first Quebec general election administered under a Bill 96 rule set that has not previously been tested against the machinery of voting itself. The law has been litigated before, including a challenge brought by the English Montreal School Board and a separate action by 23 bilingual municipalities, but those cases concerned education and municipal services rather than how an election is run.
Quebecers go to the polls Oct. 5.
Sources: CTV News (Rachel Lau and Joe Lofaro, Sept. 1, 2026), CBC News Montreal, Global News.
