Use of French in Federally Regulated Private Businesses Act — U-3.5 9
Language rights at work 9 (1) Employees of a federally regulated private business who occupy or are assigned to positions in a workplace in Quebec have the right to (a) carry out their work and be supervised in French; (b) receive all communications and documents from the federally regulated private business, including employment application forms, offers of employment, transfer or promotion, individual employment contracts, documents related to the conditions of employment, training documents produced for employees, notices of termination of employment, collective agreements and their schedules and grievances, in French; and (c) use regularly and widely used work instruments and computer systems in French. Continuation of right — former employees (1.1) An employee’s right set out in paragraph (1)(b) to receive communications and documents from a federally regulated private business in French continues after the employee ceases to be employed by the business. Duty (2) The federally regulated private business has the duty to ensure that employees are able to exercise the rights set out in subsection (1) and that persons who were employees are able to exercise the right continued under subsection (1.1). Duty — offer to fill a position (2.1) When a federally regulated private business that has workplaces in Quebec publishes in a language other than French an advertisement to fill a position — including through recruitment, hiring, transfer or promotion — that is assigned to one of those workplaces, the business must also publish the advertisement in French and ensure the simultaneous publication of both linguistic versions by means that are of the same nature and that reach a target public of a proportionally comparable size. Communication in a language other than French (3) For greater certainty, the right set out in paragraph (1)(b) does not preclude communications and documents from also being in English or another language other than French but, in the case of widely distributed communications and any documents, the use of French must be at least equivalent to the use of the language other than French. Individual employment contracts — contracts of adhesion (4) The right set out in paragraph (1)(b) does not preclude the federally regulated private business from entering into an individual employment contract that is a contract of adhesion with an employee exclusively in English or another language other than French, if the business and employee so agree and the business has already provided the contract to the employee in French. Individual employment contracts — other (5) The right set out in paragraph (1)(b) does not preclude the federally regulated private business from entering into an individual employment contract — other than a contract of adhesion — with an employee exclusively in English or another language other than French, if the business and employee so agree. Communications and documents (6) The right set out in paragraph (1)(b) does not preclude the federally regulated private business from providing to an employee communications and documents exclusively in English or another language other than French, if the business and employee so agree, even after the employee ceases to be employed by the business.