Is my contractor licensed in Quebec?
Quebec has one register for essentially every construction contractor — and it shows something almost no other province publishes: who has had claims paid against them. Here is how to read it, in English.
Last checked against the registries 8 September 2026.
The short answer
Ask your contractor for their RBQ licence number and put it into the Registre des détenteurs de licence RBQ. It is free, it is updated every day, and it covers essentially every construction contractor in the province.
If you have moved from Ontario, this is the part worth internalising: Ontario licenses trade by trade and leaves roofing, painting and general renovation with no provincial licence at all. Quebec does the opposite. The Régie du bâtiment du Québec states that anyone who carries out or arranges construction work must hold a licence unless the law exempts them — and that the obligation also catches bidding, soliciting clients, and simply placing an advertisement. In Quebec, "there is no licence for that trade" is almost never the answer.
Registre des détenteurs de licence RBQ
The official register. It lists companies that hold a licence now, and companies that held one at any point in the past five years — so a contractor who recently lost their licence still shows up.
Search the register →0000-0000-00), not a company name, so ask the contractor for their
number before you start — the RBQ advises exactly that.
The English side is also thinner than the French, by design: every English RBQ page carries a notice that the English content is intended for people covered by the exceptions to the Charter of the French language. There is no English version of the RBQ page on making a claim against a contractor’s bond, or on signing a renovation contract. Everything those pages say is set out below.
The remedy you lose by not checking
This is the part of Quebec law almost nobody mentions, and it is the strongest practical reason to spend two minutes on the register before you sign rather than after.
Under section 50 of the Building Act, a client who contracted with someone who did not hold the proper licence may apply to have the contract cancelled, and to have a legal hypothec — Quebec’s construction lien — struck from the property title. Neither happens by itself: you apply, and a judge decides.
The same section then closes the door. The application will not be granted where it is established that the applicant knew the contractor did not hold the proper licence. Being told there is no licence and going ahead anyway is precisely what costs you the remedy.
The register protects the other remedy too. A claim against a contractor’s licence bond is only admissible if they held a valid licence when you signed the contract or while the work was done — so an unlicensed contractor leaves you with no bond to claim against either.
Which makes the practical advice short: check before you sign, and if there is no licence, do not sign. Undoing the contract afterwards means going to court, and in the meantime there is no bond standing behind the work.
Reading the register in English
Every licence holder’s file shows these eight things.
| What the register says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Nom(s) et coordonnées de l’entreprise | Company name(s) and contact details |
| Numéro d’entreprise du Québec (NEQ) | Québec enterprise number |
| Numéro de licence RBQ | RBQ licence number |
| Catégories et sous-catégories de licence | Licence classes and subclasses |
| Association ou compagnie offrant son cautionnement | Who provides their licence bond — the guarantee your claim would be paid from |
| Réclamations en cours ou indemnités versées, s’il y a lieu | Outstanding claims, or money already paid out to former clients, if any |
| Restriction de licence aux fins de travaux publics, s’il y a lieu | A restriction barring them from public contracts, if any |
| Liste des répondants sur sa licence et leur(s) domaine(s) de qualification | The named people who passed the competency exams behind the licence |
The two lists almost nobody finds
These are the reason Quebec’s register is more useful than any other province’s, and neither one needs a licence number — you can browse them by company name.
Entrepreneurs ayant des réclamations à leur dossier
Contractors currently subject to a claim, or whose licence bond has already paid indemnities to former clients, in the past five years. In the RBQ’s own words, a claim indicates the contractor did not honour their contract and did not reimburse the client. Downloadable as a CSV.
See the claims list →Liste des licences restreintes
Under section 65.1 of the Building Act the RBQ can restrict a licence. Read this one carefully: a restriction bars the holder from bidding on or holding public contracts, with an end date listed. It is not a finding about their work for homeowners.
See the restricted list →What the bond behind the licence is actually worth
Every licence holder has to post a licence bond, and that bond is what a claim gets paid from: $40,000 for a general contractor, $20,000 for a specialised one.
It covers deposits you paid for work that was never done, work left unfinished, defects and poor workmanship discovered within 12 months of the end of the work, plus court filing fees, bailiff fees and the interest awarded in a judgment.
It does not cover a new house or condo — that is the GCR warranty plan instead — subcontractors your contractor failed to pay, damages for delay, moral damages such as stress and inconvenience, punitive damages, or your lawyer’s fees.
Two clocks, and they are different. You have 12 months from the end of the work to discover the problem, and three years from discovering it to sue or to file. Missing either one ends the claim.
The bond is a shared pool, not an amount set aside for you. When the first admissible claim is accepted, a claim file opens for six months and other clients can join it. If the admissible claims add up to more than the bond, the money is divided pro rata among them. A claim arriving after those six months may get nothing at all, because the bond can already be empty — which is the practical reason to read the claims list above before you sign rather than after something goes wrong.
The RBQ sets out the eligibility checklist and the forms on its page for making a claim against the bond (French only); the English section has a shorter page on taking action.
A valid licence is not automatically the right licence
An RBQ licence carries classes and subclasses, and a contractor must hold the subclass that covers the work in your contract. Someone can hold a genuinely valid licence and still not be licensed for your job. The RBQ publishes a keyword index that maps a type of work to the subclass it requires — check the subclass on their file against the work you are buying.
Four things that catch people out
The name on the contract must be the licence holder’s exact name. The RBQ says to check it character for character, abbreviations included — inc., ltée. A real licence number belonging to a different legal entity is a common shape of fraud, and the number alone looking valid is exactly what makes it work.
There is no dollar amount below which a contractor can skip the licence. The $20,000 threshold people repeat applies only to owner-builders doing renovation, repair or maintenance on their own property. Someone doing work for you needs a licence at any price, including a few hundred dollars of painting.
A licensed contractor cannot legally hire unlicensed subcontractors. Section 46 of the Building Act forbids a contractor from using the services of another contractor who does not hold a licence — so it is fair to ask who is actually going to be on site.
Permits are municipal, so ask your city. Quebec has no province-wide answer to whether your job needs a building permit or who files for it; that is set by your municipality, and it is worth one phone call. What the RBQ does say is that finding out whether a permit is required is the contractor’s job — so “we don’t need one” is an answer to verify with the city rather than accept.
The 10-day cancellation is not what people think
If you have moved from Ontario, unlearn this one. Ontario gives you 10 days on essentially any contract worth $50 or more that you sign at home. Quebec does not, and the Office de la protection du consommateur says so itself: contrary to popular belief, you are not always entitled to a 10-day period.
In renovation, those 10 days belong to contracts with an itinerant merchant, and the regulation under the Consumer Protection Act (P-40.1, r. 3, s. 7) confines that to five kinds of work: doors, windows, thermal insulation, roofing and exterior cladding. Section 7.1 adds the case where a merchant contacts you first — a call or a solicitation — and then comes to your home.
A kitchen or a bathroom signed at your kitchen table is not covered. Under s. 57 of the Consumer Protection Act, a merchant who signs at your home is not an itinerant merchant by that fact alone.
Where it does apply, it is strong. The 10 days run from the moment both you and the merchant hold a signed copy (s. 59), and stretch to a full year if the merchant had no OPC permit, no valid bond, or left required particulars out of the contract (s. 59 al. 2). They cannot take a cent before the cancellation period has run out (s. 60), any money they do hold sits in trust (s. 255), and offering you financing at your door is illegal (s. 244.7).
One useful consequence: a roofing or window contractor may stand behind two bonds. Where the contractor holds an itinerant merchant permit, the RBQ forwards a qualifying claim to the OPC so that bond can pay as well — though you cannot be compensated twice for the same loss. The OPC’s own itinerant sales section sets out the rules.
Other registers worth a minute
Corporation des maîtres électriciens du Québec (CMEQ)
Membership is required by law of every electrical contractor in Quebec, so absence from this directory is meaningful. Each entry also shows the firm’s RBQ file number and licence expiry, which is a free cross-check against the register.
Find an electrical contractor →Corporation des maîtres mécaniciens en tuyauterie du Québec (CMMTQ)
Membership is mandatory for plumbing and heating contractors. One caveat worth knowing: it is voluntary for refrigeration and fire-sprinkler contractors, so a firm in those specialties being absent proves nothing.
Search the CMMTQ directory →Garantie de construction résidentielle (GCR)
New residential construction in Quebec carries a mandatory warranty plan, and the builder must be accredited. This covers new builds, not renovations. The directory also shows inspection non-conformities and claim files.
Accredited business directory →Office de la protection du consommateur
Shows whether a merchant has received formal notices from customers, or whether the Office has intervened. The RBQ itself recommends this check, and almost no guide mentions it. The Office publishes guidance in English, but the lookup itself has no English address — the link below is the French one, and it is the only one.
Look up a merchant →The one thing you cannot check
You can verify the company. You cannot verify the individual. Quebec has no public lookup for a worker’s competency certificate — the CCQ portal is behind a login and the Commission puts the duty to verify on the employer, not on you. What you can do is ask to see the physical card, which carries the holder’s name, trade and expiry date.
When there is genuinely no licence to check
Quebec’s exemptions are narrow, and they are not trades. The RBQ’s list of work that is not construction includes felling trees, clearing snow and ice off a roof, inspections of any kind, delivering construction materials, mowing, and pumping concrete. The remaining exemptions cover public bodies, certain owner-builders, farm operations, some petroleum equipment, and a trustee in bankruptcy.
So if someone tells you their renovation work needs no RBQ licence, that is worth questioning. You can report unlicensed work to the RBQ, and file a complaint about a contractor you have already hired.
It is not a small offence. Under s. 197.1 of the Building Act, working outside the licence class carries a fine of $7,051 to $35,244 for an individual and $21,148 to $105,734 for a company, doubled on a second conviction and tripled after that. Those amounts are indexed every year, so treat them as current at 8 September 2026 and check the figure if it matters. They fall on the contractor; what is at stake for you is the section 50 remedy and the bond, above.
What a licence does not tell you
A licence proves someone is legally allowed to do the work and that a bond stands behind it. The claims list even tells you when that bond has already paid out. None of it tells you whether they turned up on time, cleaned up, or charged what they quoted.
That gap is what Pros We Know is for: it finds the trades already in your phone’s contacts, and when you search it puts the ones your own network has actually hired ahead of strangers. Licence status comes from the register above; the rest comes from people you know.
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Sources
Every link on this page is an official Régie du bâtiment du Québec page, and every fact here was read off those pages rather than recalled. Licensing rules change, so check the register itself rather than this page if something is borderline. Last verified 8 September 2026.