Why Is Quebec Excluded From Contests and Sweepstakes?

If you have ever found a contest or sweepstakes you wanted to enter and read the words “open to all of Canada, except Quebec,” you weren’t imagining it. Quebec is excluded from contests, sweepstakes, and giveaways more often than any other part of the country, and sometimes it lands in genuinely odd company. Here’s a real eligibility list from an online hackathon, where Quebec sits in a tidy row between North Korea and Russia.

Spotted on a real online hackathon’s entry rules. Quebec, a Canadian province, listed beside Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Syria.

So why does one Canadian province keep getting left out of giveaways, sweepstakes, and prize draws? The short answer: for decades Quebec was the only place in Canada where running a contest meant registering with a government body and handing over a cut of the prize money. Plenty of organizers decided it was simpler to leave Quebecers out. The part most people miss is that the law behind all of this was scrapped in 2023, so many of those “except Quebec” lines are now guarding against a rule that no longer exists.

Why is Quebec excluded from so many contests?

Quebec is excluded because, until recently, it was the only Canadian province that treated contests as their own regulated legal category. Anywhere else in the country, you could launch a giveaway with almost no government paperwork. In Quebec, a contest open to residents meant filing with a provincial regulator, paying a duty tied to the prize value, and following formalities no other province asked for.

The regulator was the Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux, the same body that handles alcohol permits, gaming, and horse racing. It ran contests under a provincial law on lotteries, publicity contests, and amusement machines. For a marketing team in Toronto or New York running a national or global promotion, Quebec was the one jurisdiction that turned a quick giveaway into a registration project. The path of least resistance was a single line in the rules: not open to residents of Quebec. No other province in Canada asked you to do anything like it.

What made running a contest in Quebec so complicated?

Before the rules were repealed, a contest open to Quebec residents could mean registering with the Régie, paying a duty of up to 10% of the total prize value, posting security on large prizes, providing all of the rules in French, and filing a winners’ report within 60 days. No other province stacked up that much paperwork for a giveaway.

Add it up and a simple “win a $3,000 gift card” promotion picked up fees, forms, deadlines, and translation costs the moment it crossed into Quebec. For a national brand the math was easy: drop one province and skip all of it. That’s how Quebec ended up on so many “not eligible” lists, sometimes literally beside countries under international sanctions.

Wait, didn’t Quebec change the law?

Yes. Quebec repealed its publicity-contest regime on October 27, 2023. Organizers launching contests on or after that date no longer register with the Régie, pay duties, post security, or file winner reports. International contests had already been carved out two years earlier, on June 2, 2021 (opens in a new tab).

The change came through a 2023 law aimed at cutting red tape, and the Régie itself now confirms it no longer oversees publicity contests (opens in a new tab). In plain terms, the single biggest reason companies avoided Quebec is gone. A Canada-wide contest can now include Quebec without the duty, the bond, or the filing that used to make it a headache.

That June 2021 step matters more than it sounds. An international contest meant one open to participants both inside and outside Canada, which is exactly the category most global online promotions fall into. So for the better part of five years, the Régie was never even the obstacle for a worldwide giveaway open to Quebec.

So why do contests and sweepstakes still exclude Quebec?

Mostly habit, outdated legal templates, and one rule that didn’t disappear: language. Quebec’s Charter of the French Language still requires a contest offered to Quebec residents to be available in French. For an organizer who doesn’t already operate in French, excluding Quebec is the easy way out, even though the old registration regime is gone.

Three things keep the “except Quebec” line alive:

• Template inertia. Contest rules get copied from the last promotion, which was copied from the one before it. A template written in 2018 still says “excluding Quebec” or “void in Quebec,” and nobody has a reason to go read Quebec contest law to fix it.
• The French requirement. This part is real. The Charter of the French Language, strengthened by Bill 96, means rules, entry forms, and advertising shown to Quebecers need a French version. A US small business running an English-only giveaway would rather skip a province than build and maintain a second set of rules.
• Plain caution. Legal teams default to “exclude if unsure.” Quebec earned a reputation as the complicated province, and that reputation has outlived the complication.

The hackathon screenshot at the top is a perfect case. A global, online hackathon is the exact kind of international contest Quebec exempted back in 2021, so the Régie was never the issue. The exclusion is almost certainly a copied template plus a wish to dodge French paperwork, not a current legal requirement.

What rules still apply to contests in Quebec?

Quebec didn’t become a free-for-all. Contests there still answer to the same core rules as the rest of Canada, plus the province’s French-language law. What disappeared was the Régie-specific registration, duties, and reporting, not consumer protection or honesty.

A contest run in Quebec today still has to be available in French, and like everywhere in Canada it needs a no-purchase-necessary route and a skill-testing question to stay on the right side of the rules against illegal lotteries, with the important details disclosed up front. Quebec’s Consumer Protection Act and ordinary contract law apply on top. That’s all routine. A well-run, bilingual contest can absolutely include Quebec, which is something a Quebec-based company is built to do from day one.

How Lodavo fits in

This one gets a little personal for us. Lodavo was built in Montreal, and our weekly prize draws operate as contests, the same legal category this whole story is about. Excluding our own province was never on the table.

Every week, users who save earn free tickets in a draw with a chance to win up to $10,000, and a guaranteed prize of at least $100 always goes to a user. It runs the way Canadian contest law expects: no purchase necessary, a skill-testing question, age of majority, open to legal residents of Canada, Quebec very much included. Everything works in French and English, because we’re a Quebec company and that’s simply how we operate.

The saving part is the fun part. You earn your tickets by saving in the bank account you already have, and Lodavo never holds your money, so the draw is pure upside on top. If you want the background, our guide to prize-linked savings in Canada explains how the model works, and if a free prize draw sounds too good to be a contest, our is prize-linked savings gambling explainer walks through why it isn’t. You can see every weekly result on the winning numbers page.

Quebec spent a long time as the province everyone left off the list by default, usually for paperwork most people never knew existed. That paperwork is gone now, the exclusions are slowly catching up, and in the meantime there’s at least one draw that was built here, with Quebecers in it from day one.

Ready to enter a contest that actually includes Quebec? Download Lodavo free on the Apple App Store (opens in a new tab) or Google Play Store (opens in a new tab) and get your first tickets for saving this week, Quebec included.

Terms and conditions apply. No purchase necessary (alternate method of entry available). Skill-testing question required. Open to legal residents of Canada who are the age of majority. Odds depend on the number of eligible entries received. Full rules and odds at our contest rules.