AI for HVAC companies in Quebec: French first, Law 25 built in

French as the default, not an add-on

The Office québécois de la langue française explains that French must be clearly predominant in commercial advertising and signage, and that websites and other content aimed at Quebec customers must be available in French. An AI greeting, a missed-call text and a quote follow-up are all customer-facing.

In practice:

• Greeting in French first, with an option to continue in English.
• Separate French scripts, written by a fluent person, not machine-translated from English.
• French templates for every follow-up, with the opt-out wording in French.
• French testing with Quebec accents, regional vocabulary and HVAC terms such as thermopompe, plinthes and fournaise.
• A human route for any caller the AI struggles to understand.

Speech quality in Quebec French varies between tools. Test it on recordings that sound like your actual customers before deciding.

Law 25 and AI: what the regulator says

The Commission d'accès à l'information, Quebec's privacy regulator, summarises two changes that apply directly to AI:

1. Automated decisions. When a decision about a person is based exclusively on automated processing of their personal information, the business must inform them no later than when it communicates the decision, and give them the chance to present observations to a staff member who can review it.
2. Identification, location and profiling. Before collecting personal information with technology that can identify, locate or profile someone, the business must tell them and explain how to activate those functions, which must be off by default.

How we design around it

The simplest protection is design: our Quebec setups avoid fully automated decisions about customers. The AI collects information and routes it; a person decides bookings beyond simple approved slots, prices, refusals and priority. Where any automated decision remains, we draft a French notice and name the staff role who reviews observations. We also check your tools for profiling or location features and keep them off unless a customer turns them on. Questions about how the law applies to your specific setup go to a Quebec privacy lawyer. See AI privacy and review rules.

The Quebec heating market

According to Statistics Canada, 70% of Quebec households used electricity for primary heating in 2023, with natural gas at 5% and wood at 4%. Away from the St. Lawrence lowlands the heating season stretches even longer, and snowstorms bring their own call surges. Calls lean towards baseboard, electric furnace and heat pump work, plus a smaller share of oil, gas and wood conversions.

As of October 2026, Hydro-Québec's LogisVert program offers grants for ENERGY STAR and cold-climate heat pumps based on rated capacity, among other measures, and notes the federal heat pump rebate coming in 2027. These are exactly the questions AI must not answer. It logs them and books a callback, and staff confirm current amounts with Hydro-Québec.

Regulators to point to

Contractor licensing in Quebec, and safety for gas, plumbing and pressure equipment among other areas, runs through the Régie du bâtiment du Québec. For an AI script, the only point that matters is that licence questions are answered by staff, with your RBQ number and subclasses to hand. If a caller asks for your licence number, a person provides it.

How we would set up AI for a Quebec HVAC company

1. Write French scripts first, then English.
2. Map automated decisions and remove them where possible.
3. Check tools for profiling and location features.
4. Test 40 calls in French before any customer hears the AI.
5. Run a 30-day pilot on overflow and after-hours using the pilot scorecard.

We are a marketing and consulting service, not a contractor, and we do no HVAC work in Quebec. For companies across the river in Ottawa, see our Ontario page, or browse all regions.