On December 2, 2025, the Québec Minister of Justice tabled Bill 10, An Act to protect consumers against abusive practices in ticket reselling and online subscription renewal (the Bill), which proposes multiple amendments to the Consumer Protection Act (CPA).
The Bill targets key areas that have seen a rise in consumer complaints, including online subscription renewals, ticket reselling practices, and the right of consumers to post reviews or share feedback. It also strengthens consumers’ rights to obtain restitution for fees charged to them following a contravention of the CPA.
Important changes to online subscription renewals
The Bill seeks to introduce new rules for contracts involving sequential performance of services provided at distance. Such rules apply, for example, to consumer contracts for monthly mobile phone plans, online streaming services, cloud service subscriptions, and similar offerings.
Merchants offering such services will be required to make available a button, accessible online and readily identifiable allowing consumers to terminate the subscription.
For products or services offered to consumers free of charge or at a reduced price for a specified period, where the merchant intends on raising the price afterwards (e.g., free for the first 30 days, then, $10 per month), merchants will have to notify consumers in writing, 2 to 10 days before the end of the promotional period, drawn up clearly and legibly, indicating both the end date of the promotion and the price that will apply once the contract continues.
The proposed rules will also require merchants to clearly and legibly disclose any additional fees charged to obtain the service, alongside the disclosed installment amounts. Where the amount of the installments is provided verbally, merchants will be required to mention any other fees charged to obtain the service immediately after the announcement of the amount of the installments.
In order to encourage compliance with these proposed rules, the Bill will introduce administrative monetary penalties when a merchant fails to provide the online cancellation button or send the required written notice on time. Non-compliance with these obligations will also constitute a penal offence, for which the maximum penalty will be set at 5 per cent of the business’s worldwide turnover for the preceding fiscal year.
Right to restitution for consumers
The Bill also seeks to strengthen consumers’ right to obtain the restitution of fees paid to a merchant in certain circumstances where those fees have been charged in contravention of the CPA. This would apply, for example, when a consumer has been charged additional fees that were not included in the initial price disclosed by the merchant, in violation of section 224 of the CPA.
Importantly, this right of restitution would apply even if the consumer received a prestation in return, and in addition to the other recourses available under the CPA.
Protecting consumer reviews
The Bill also expands consumers’ rights to share their experiences concerning the products or services. In particular, merchants will be prohibited from including in consumer contracts contractual clauses preventing consumers from publishing or communicating a review concerning the products or services offered by a merchant or concerning a merchant’s conduct.
Stricter rules for ticket resale
The Bill will also establish stricter rules for digital ticket resale platforms.
Anyone who operates a digital platform dedicated to reselling tickets will be required, as soon as the consumer accesses the platform, to inform the consumers in a prominent and intelligible manner that their platform is a ticket resale platform and that tickets may be available at lower prices from the vendor authorized by the event producer. In the event that tickets are offered for both sale and resale on a platform, consumers will have to be informed, at the same time and in the same manner, that certain tickets available on the platform are tickets being resold.
The Bill also intends to prohibit any person from reselling a ticket to a consumer without having first expressly brought to the attention of the consumer the following information :
- The identity of the authorized vendor, the possibility that tickets may be available from that vendor, and the price announced by that vendor;
- That the ticket is being resold;
- The place or seat the ticket allows the ticket holder to occupy (if applicable); and
- The name of the last owner of the ticket.
The Bill also prohibits anyone from charging fees for the transfer of a ticket.
The resale price charged for a ticket will also not be permitted to exceed the price announced by the vendor authorized by the producer of the event unless: (a) the event producer has first consented to the higher resale price, (b) the ticket is resold in compliance with the agreement entered into with the producer of the event, and (c) the maximum resale price of the ticket agreed to by the producer of the event has been expressly brought to the attention of the consumer before the resale.
Event producers will be required, as soon as possible, to inform both the authorized vendor and any reseller with whom they have an agreement for the resale of tickets about the cancellation of the event or of any modification to its schedule or location. Subsequently, anyone selling or reselling a ticket to a consumer will be required to inform the consumer of such information as soon as possible.
Lastly, an irrebuttable presumption will apply to anyone who, by technological means, allows a third person to resell a ticket and receive payment of the price of the ticket. Such a person will be deemed, for the purposes of certain aforementioned obligations, to be reselling the ticket, charging the price of the ticket or facilitating the resale of the ticket, as the case may be.
Coming into effect
If the Bill is passed as tabled, the additional right to restitution and the protections applicable to consumer reviews will come into force on the date of assent. Other changes are set to come into force three months after the Bill’s assent.
Businesses should start reviewing their practices to prepare for compliance with the proposed amendments and align with the new requirements of the Bill. For further information on the Bill and its potential implications, we encourage you to contact the authors or the key contacts listed below.
