Bill 42 amends several Québec labour statutes to strengthen prevention, reporting and remedial measures for psychological harassment and sexual violence in the workplace. It inserts a statutory definition of “sexual violence,” requires new training for arbitrators, expands the required content of employer harassment policies, creates presumptions to ease workers’ compensation claims arising from sexual violence, and adds new procedural and enforcement tools for tribunals and the CNESST.
The package matters because it shifts multiple legal levers toward a victim-centred approach: it makes it easier to establish work-relatedness for injuries from sexual violence, tightens confidentiality and complaint-handling rules, increases employer exposure to damages and compliance obligations, and centralizes prevention obligations within occupational health and safety frameworks. That combination alters how employers, unions, adjudicators and the CNESST will investigate, compensate and prevent workplace sexual misconduct.
At a Glance
What It Does
The bill amends the Labour Code, the Act respecting industrial accidents and occupational diseases, the Act respecting labour standards, the Act respecting occupational health and safety and related statutes to add prevention duties, procedural rights, evidentiary presumptions and penalties related to psychological harassment and sexual violence.
Who It Affects
Employers across all sectors (including principals and contractors), adjudicators and arbitrators, the CNESST, construction-industry representatives, trainees and artists covered by specific statutes, and workers who experience or report harassment or sexual violence.
Why It Matters
It repositions workplace sexual violence as an occupational risk subject to OH&S regulation and workers’ compensation presumptions, increases employer legal and financial exposure, and makes prevention policies and training a compliance focal point for workplaces and labour relations actors.
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What This Bill Actually Does
The bill creates a legal architecture that treats sexual violence in the workplace as both an occupational-hazard and a labour-standards problem. It inserts a broad statutory definition of “sexual violence” into the occupational health and safety statute and gives the CNESST regulatory authority to prescribe specific preventive measures employers and principal contractors must take.
By tying employer harassment policies to the workplace prevention program, the bill moves policy content from a stand‑alone obligation into the core OH&S toolbox.
On remedies and process, the bill changes how grievances and complaints are handled. Arbitrators hearing psychological harassment grievances must receive sexual-violence training as determined by the Minister, and parties may apply for pre‑hearing conferences.
Mediators gain explicit authority to terminate mediation if it’s not appropriate. The labour standards changes bar contractual terms that would prevent an employer from taking into account prior disciplinary measures for violence-related misconduct, and make it a prohibited practice to retaliate against employees who report harassment of others.For compensation, the Act respecting industrial accidents and occupational diseases adopts legal presumptions to ease proof that an injury or disease is work-related when it stems from workplace sexual violence, revises rules about who may access a worker’s medical record held by the CNESST, and requires specific offences for unlawful access.
The Act also adjusts the way certain indemnities are calculated and shifts how the costs of benefits for sexual-violence injuries are imputed among employers, while carving out exceptions when the perpetrator is the employer or an executive.The bill also makes sector-specific changes: it adds sexual-assault convictions to the disqualifying grounds for representatives in the construction industry and aligns artist- and trainee‑protection statutes with the new harassment-policy requirements. Finally, it contains transitional rules (temporary exemptions for arbitrators and phased commencement dates) and requires a five‑year statutory review by the Minister and CNESST to assess whether the new measures should be maintained or amended.
The Five Things You Need to Know
The bill requires arbitrators who arbitrate psychological harassment grievances to have received sexual-violence training as determined by the Minister (with a transitional exemption for arbitrators assigned before a date one year after assent).
A statutory presumption makes an injury work-related when sexual violence is committed by the employer, an executive officer (for legal persons) or a person whose services are used by the employer for the same establishment, unless the violence is strictly private; a related presumption applies to diseases arising within three months after workplace sexual violence.
Claims for employment injuries or occupational disease resulting from sexual violence must be filed within two years of the injury or of awareness of the disease, shortening the normal time window for certain cases.
The CNESST-holder medical-record regime is tightened: employers no longer have a general right of access to a worker’s medical file in the Commission’s possession, and the bill creates new offences carrying fines of $1,000–$5,000 for individuals and $2,000–$10,000 for others for unlawful access or related contraventions.
The Labour Standards Act now mandates a detailed policy to prevent and manage psychological harassment (including specific identification, training, complaint procedures, protective measures and a two‑year document retention requirement) and gives the Administrative Labour Tribunal power to order punitive damages against employers in harassment cases.
Section-by-Section Breakdown
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Arbitrator training and pre‑hearing conference authority
The bill inserts a provision requiring arbitrators who decide psychological harassment grievances to have training on sexual violence under terms set by the Minister, and clarifies that arbitrators may hold pre‑hearing conferences ex officio or on a party’s application. Practically, this gives the Minister leverage over arbitration competence and builds a procedural gateway (pre‑hearing conferences) to streamline or narrow grievances before full arbitration.
Presumptions, filing windows and benefit‑cost allocation
The Act now contains presumptions that ease causation: certain injuries from sexual violence are presumed work‑related and related diseases are presumptively employment injuries if they arise within a short post‑incident window. The bill also creates a uniform two‑year filing rule for claims tied to sexual‑violence injuries/diseases and modifies how benefit costs are allocated among employers, while explicitly excluding imputation where the perpetrator is the employer or its executives. Those mechanics lower the evidentiary barrier for claimants but also reallocate financial exposure across employer groups.
Medical‑record access and new offences
The bill removes an employer’s general right to obtain a worker’s medical record from the CNESST and narrows what an inspector or CNESST‑held health professional may disclose to employers. It creates criminalized administrative offences for employers, authorized persons and health professionals who obtain or use medical records contrary to the new rules, with fixed fine ranges. This tightens privacy protections while creating a deterrent backed by financial penalties.
Expanded employer policy duties, anti‑reprisal and remedies
Employers must adopt a comprehensive policy to prevent and manage psychological harassment that explicitly includes measures for conduct of a sexual nature, identification and control of psychosocial risks, training programs, complaint procedures, protective measures, confidentiality safeguards and at least a two‑year retention period for related documents. The Act also prevents contractual clauses from precluding employers from considering prior violence‑related discipline, prohibits reprisals for reporting harassment of others, lets mediators end inappropriate mediations, and authorizes punitive damages awards by the Administrative Labour Tribunal.
Definition of sexual violence, regulatory power and sectoral alignment
Sexual violence is defined broadly in the OH&S Act to include unwanted gestures, comments and behaviours with sexual connotations, including issues around sexual and gender diversity. The CNESST gains regulatory authority to prescribe prevention measures tied to that definition; related provisions incorporate the employer policy into established prevention programs and extend similar policy rules to trainee and artist protection statutes, while the construction‑industry statute adds sexual‑assault convictions to disqualification grounds for representatives.
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Every bill creates winners and losers. Here's who stands to gain and who bears the cost.
Who Benefits
- Workers who experience sexual violence: lower evidentiary hurdles for compensation, clearer complaint procedures, confidentiality and protective measures and access to punitive damages increase practical remedies and recognition of workplace harms.
- Trainees, artists and workers in high‑contact sectors: the bill explicitly extends policy and prevention duties to trainee protections and artist‑producer relationships, bringing groups previously on the margins into the OH&S and labour‑standards framework.
- Workers who report harassment or cooperate in complaints: explicit anti‑reprisal protection and confidentiality rules reduce the career and reputational risks of reporting, and mediator authority to end harmful mediations prevents re‑victimization.
Who Bears the Cost
- Employers (broadly): adoption of expanded prevention programs, mandatory policy content, training, documentation retention and potential exposure to punitive damages increase compliance and financial liability — and cost‑allocation rules shift some compensation costs across employer units.
- CNESST and adjudicative bodies: the agency and tribunals must develop regulations, training standards for arbitrators, case‑processing practices and enforcement capacity, creating administrative and budgetary burdens.
- Representatives and employers in construction and cultural sectors: new criminal‑record based disqualification rules, added policy obligations and added statutory processes will require vetting, possible hiring changes and new contract terms to manage liability.
Key Issues
The Core Tension
The central dilemma is between a victim‑centred, preventive compensation regime that lowers barriers and imposes collective accountability and the procedural fairness, administrative capacity and financial predictability employers and adjudicators need: easing proof and expanding remedies improves access to justice but increases contested liability, privacy‑management conflicts and enforcement burdens with no simple way to fully satisfy both imperatives.
The bill stacks several remedies and presumptions aimed at easing victims’ paths to relief, but each creates implementation questions. The presumptions for work‑relatedness are fact‑sensitive; drawing a line between workplace conduct and strictly private violence will require careful guidance and case law, and employers will press for procedural protections to contest causation.
Similarly, removing employer access to CNESST medical files strengthens privacy yet may complicate legitimate workplace investigations where employers claim they need medical information to assess fitness for work or accommodation requests.
Operationalizing the Minister‑determined training for arbitrators and the CNESST’s forthcoming regulations will determine how uniformly the new regime is applied. If training standards are narrow or under‑resourced, arbitration quality and timeliness could suffer.
Cost‑allocation changes that spread benefits costs among employers can reduce the risk for a single employer but raise premiums or levies broadly; there’s a risk of cross‑subsidization that employers and insurers will challenge. Finally, the two‑year filing windows for sexual‑violence claims trade open, victim‑centred presumptions for a shorter statute of limitations, which could unintentionally bar late disclosures linked to trauma.
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