Advertising compliance in Québec and Canada: the rules that touch an account
An ad account that sells in Québec meets three sets of rules before the first bid optimisation: the protection of personal information (Law 25), the advertised price (Consumer Protection Act) and the price submitted in the product feed. This page frames them from the point of view of the ad account, not a law firm, and points to one guide per rule. It is not legal advice.
Before the pixel fires: Law 25
Since September 22, 2023, Law 25 requires the functions that identify, locate or profile a person to be off by default, and the person to be informed beforehand of the means to activate them. A Meta pixel that fires on page load, before any action by the visitor, is therefore, in our reading, not compliant, and this applies to any store selling to people located in Québec, wherever the store is established. As of September 6, 2026, the date of our check, Meta offered no consent mechanism for Canada: compliance is decided in the store’s consent layer.
The four-step test on a Shopify store is set out in Meta pixel and Law 25: a four-step Shopify test.
A second obligation concerns the data itself. Section 17 of the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector requires a privacy impact assessment before communicating personal information outside Québec. A pixel event or a conversion API event sent to Meta or Google, both hosted outside Québec, matches that situation since September 22, 2023. What an advertiser documents, without turning it into a months-long project, is in Data outside Quebec: the privacy impact assessment.
A third obligation concerns information to the public. Since the same date, anyone who collects personal information through technological means must publish a privacy policy in simple and clear terms (section 8.2). For a store that advertises, the question comes up tool by tool: are Meta, Google and the others in the text, by name or at least by category? The guide of the Commission d’accès à l’information and the review grid are in Privacy policy and advertising under Québec Law 25.
In the ad: the advertised price
Section 224 of the Consumer Protection Act prohibits charging a price higher than the one advertised, and section 224.1 specifies that the advertised price must include the total of all sums the consumer will have to pay to obtain the good or service, except Quebec sales tax and the federal goods and services tax, which may be excluded from it. For a Shopping or Meta ad displaying a product price, that settles most cases, since sales tax depends on the delivery province. The real risk sits elsewhere: in shipping, eco-fee, or service charges that never appear in the price attribute but still get added at checkout.
The detail by type of charge is in All-inclusive pricing in Quebec ads (s. 224.1).
In the feed: the price submitted to Google
For Canada and the United States, Google Merchant Center forbids including any tax, GST, QST, HST or sales tax, in the price attribute or in any other attribute. For Canada only, shipping costs must also be submitted exclusive of taxes. This is the opposite of the rule for France and the other countries where VAT must be included: a feed migrated as is from a French catalogue produces prices inconsistent with the landing page and gets disapproved.
The ten-minute check is in Merchant Center Canada: submit prices excluding tax, and the bilingual structure of the account on the page Bilingual advertising in Québec.
The order in which we check them
On an existing account, the consent layer and the firing of pixels come before any bid optimisation: a poorly implemented consent layer also quietly removes part of the conversions from reporting. In our view, the privacy policy comes next, because it has to name the tools actually installed, then the prior assessment for data leaving Québec, then the advertised price and the feed price, product by product. That order is a method choice, it comes from no statute.
Our work on a Google Ads account, consent included, is described on the page Google Ads agency in Montréal.
Before the pixel
- Profiling functions off by default
- Prior information on the means to activate them
- No native Meta consent mechanism for Canada
In the ad
- Advertised price: total of the sums to be paid
- GST and QST: may be excluded from the advertised price
- Shipping, eco-fee and service charges to watch
In the feed
- No tax in the price attribute for Canada
- Shipping submitted excluding tax, for Canada only
- Feed price equal to the landing page price
Common questions
Is a store established outside Québec covered by Law 25?
For the Meta pixel, our article concludes that the rule applies to any store selling to people located in Québec, wherever the store is established. It relies on the main changes of Law 25 published by the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec and on the text of the Act on LégisQuébec.
Does Meta offer a consent setting for Canada?
No. Meta’s documentation on data processing options (Data Processing Options for US Users) accepts only country value 1, for the United States, and lists fourteen US states, with no value for Canada or for Québec: we checked it on September 6, 2026, and it can change. Compliance is therefore decided in the store’s consent layer, before the pixel fires.
Does a pixel require a privacy impact assessment?
Section 17 of the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector requires this assessment before communicating personal information outside Québec, and before entrusting a person or body located outside Québec with the task of collecting, using, communicating, or keeping such information. In our reading, a pixel event or a conversion API event sent to Meta or Google matches that situation. The Commission d’accès à l’information’s guide serves as the frame.
Must the advertised price include GST and QST?
No, those two taxes may be excluded from it under section 224.1 of the Consumer Protection Act. The other sums the consumer will have to pay to obtain the good must be included.
Does a store have to publish a privacy policy?
Section 8.2 of the Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector provides that anyone who collects personal information through technological means publishes on its site a privacy policy in simple and clear terms. The guide of the Commission d’accès à l’information (December 2023) suggests naming in it the means of collection, the organizations that collect on the business’s behalf, the third parties and the possibility of transmission outside Québec.
Have the framework of your account checked
A written report on what fires before consent and on price gaps between the ad, the feed and the page.