Hiring plumbers in Quebec: CCQ and RBQ roles explained

What to take away

Hiring plumbers in Quebec means working under both the CCQ and the RBQ, and the two regulators do not answer the same question.

What the CCQ and RBQ each control for Quebec plumbing employers

The RBQ licenses the business. It decides whether your company may hold itself out as a plumbing contractor, which class applies, and who carries the qualification behind it. The licence belongs to the company, and the company keeps it valid.

The CCQ governs the workforce on construction sites under the Act respecting labour relations, vocational training and workforce management in the construction industry. It runs the placement system, the apprenticeship framework, the training funds and the collective agreement that sets wages and conditions for plumbing trades. If your work sits inside its jurisdiction, you hire through its channels.

Both apply at once. The RBQ asks whether you can legally contract. The CCQ asks whether the person you send is allowed to be there. For how these layers stack against other provinces, see our guide Plumbing contractor license requirements for 2027.

The test before you advertise anything: does the licence class cover the work, and do the CCQ rules cover the worker? A gap in either one is a stop-work order waiting to happen.

RBQ licence classes and how to determine the right one

Quebec issues no single general plumbing licence. The class you need follows the nature of the work you contract to perform, not the size of your company. A contractor who installs and repairs building plumbing sits in a different class from one doing specialty work only.

Two kinds of class can cover the work. The specialty subclass 15.10, plumbing and heating contractor, lets you contract that work on its own. A building class — residential building, commercial and institutional building, or industrial building — lets you take a general contract in which plumbing is one part of the job.

The subclass number printed on the licence is the one that counts. The RBQ's licence framework pages list every subclass and the work each one covers, so match your own subclass against the scope before you sign a bid.

Every class requires a qualifying individual who meets the RBQ competency conditions for it. That person is not interchangeable with a journeyperson on the tools. Many companies need both, and one person can sometimes fill both roles when the qualifications line up.

The RBQ publishes a tool that walks through the questions and returns the licence required for your situation. Run it before you incorporate, before you bid, and before you hire anyone whose job depends on the licence. It is the reference point for how to determine the licence required.

Three things catch out-of-province firms. A licence held in Ontario or Alberta carries no weight here. A licence held by an individual does not cover a new company. Adding a class later means a fresh application, not a same-day amendment.

If you are building the role from scratch, our guide to screening plumbing hires structures the interview around qualification rather than gut feel.

CCQ hiring rules, union placement and apprentice ratio checks

Inside CCQ jurisdiction you do not post an ad and pick a name. The Commission operates a placement system, and employers are expected to hire through it for the trades it covers. A contractor needing a journeyperson registers the need and draws from the pool the CCQ maintains.

Workers hold CCQ competency certificates. Verify the certificate before the person starts, not after payroll has run.

Apprentice ratios are the other half. The CCQ sets how many apprentices an employer may carry relative to journeypersons on site, and the ratio is not a suggestion. One apprentice too many puts the crew off ratio, which exposes you to penalties and can halt the work.

The ratio is read stage by stage, so a first-stage apprentice and a near-qualified one do not count in the same block. For plumbing, the working pattern has been one apprentice for each journeyperson on site, with the permitted number rising as you add journeypersons.

Treat that as typical rather than fixed. The binding numbers sit in the Regulation respecting the number of apprentices and in the CCQ's trade schedules. Read the current plumbing row before you set the crew, and rebuild the plan whenever you add a journeyperson.

Wages come from the plumbing trade's collective agreement, not from your own scale. The CCQ publishes the rates and they move on a schedule. Budget from those rates and from the remittances that ride along with them, not from what a competitor in a neighboring province pays. Our guide to plumbing contractor pay rates and labor costs for 2027 covers the payroll side in more depth.

For employers new to the system:

French-language obligations for Quebec plumbing employers

The Charter of the French Language applies to workplaces in Quebec. A plumbing contractor is not exempt because the crew speaks English on site. The obligations reach hiring, internal communication and the documents employees sign.

Job postings must be in French. If you advertise in English as well, the French version has to be available and at least as prominent. A posting that exists only in English is a complaint waiting to be filed.

Individual employment contracts, offer letters and written policies must be in French unless the employee requests otherwise in writing. Collective agreement documents and CCQ materials already arrive in French, so the practical gap is usually your own onboarding paperwork.

Day-to-day communication with employees is expected to happen in French. Where a worker does not speak French, the employer still provides the French version of anything written, and cannot use language as a reason to exclude a qualified candidate.

The exception route exists but is narrow. A firm can apply to the Office québécois de la langue française (OQLF) for a francization certificate or a derogation in specific circumstances, and that paperwork is not something to improvise after a complaint.

Treat French as the default and English as the add-on. For the documents a new hire actually signs, our compliance checklist for new owners covers the paperwork side of onboarding.

Continuing education and licence maintenance: what to check

An RBQ licence is not a one-time purchase. It carries continuing education obligations and licence maintenance dues, and both run on a cycle tied to the licence holder's file.

The hours attach to the individual who qualifies the licence, not to the company. If that person leaves, the company's compliance position leaves with them until a replacement is in place.

The RBQ keeps a continuing education file for each licence holder where completed training is recorded, and checking it is how you confirm the hours are credited before a renewal.

The details sit under My continuing education file.

Dues are set by the RBQ and billed on the licence renewal cycle. The amount varies with the class you hold and the size of the business, so two contractors in the same class can be billed different sums. The current schedule is published with the payment page.

Dues are separate from the education requirement, and paying one does not satisfy the other. Licence maintenance dues are payable to the RBQ on the schedule it sets, and non-payment can suspend the licence no matter how many training hours are on file. The process is described under Paying your licence maintenance dues.

The classes and the obligations that come with them are set out in the RBQ's licence framework pages. Read them once properly rather than in fragments during a renewal crunch.

Build the calendar around the licence holder, not the fiscal year:

Payroll, source deductions and Quebec hiring paperwork

Quebec payroll carries two remittance streams on top of the federal ones. Employers remit the provincial income tax they withhold, Quebec Pension Plan contributions, Quebec parental insurance plan premiums and the health services fund contribution to Revenu Québec. A payroll setup copied from Ontario will produce errors in the first pay period.

On the construction side, the CCQ collects its own remittances on top of the usual deductions. Those cover the training fund, the industry funds and the benefits that come with the collective agreement. They are calculated on hours worked and on the published wage rates, so underpaying a worker also understates the remittance.

The training fund contribution has stood at 1% of payroll. The other rates come from the collective agreement and are published in the CCQ's contribution tables, which change with each agreement cycle.

Every employee needs provincial and federal paperwork completed before the first pay run: identification, banking details, and the tax forms both levels of government require. The Gouvernement du Québec sets out the general employer duties for hiring and managing staff, and those duties apply alongside the CCQ rules rather than instead of them.

Workers' compensation in Quebec runs through the CNESST, the provincial workplace health and safety board, and construction employers register and report to it on a separate footing from most other industries. Misclassifying an employee as a contractor to avoid the remittances is a costly error, and the CCQ and the tax authorities both look for it.

Year-end adds provincial slips to the federal ones. If you are expanding into Quebec from another province, the cleanest approach is a payroll provider that already handles Quebec construction, or an accountant who does. Our hiring and training guide covers the wider staffing sequence if you are building the team at the same time.

Checking a subcontractor's RBQ licence before you hire

A general contractor who brings in a plumbing subcontractor inherits the risk if that licence is not valid. The RBQ's public licence register, Info-Licence, is open to anyone, and checking it takes minutes.

Start with the licence number and confirm the company name matches the one on the contract, not just the one on the truck. Then confirm the class covers the work in the scope, and that the licence is active on the day the work starts.

Check the qualifying individual as well. A licence can be suspended because the person behind it let dues or education lapse, even though the company looks healthy from the outside. That is the failure mode that catches general contractors most often.

Ask for proof of CCQ registration and, where relevant, the competency certificates of the workers who will be on site. If the subcontractor cannot produce them, the ratio and certificate problems become yours when the inspector arrives.

Keep a dated record of each check. If a subcontractor's licence lapses mid-project, that record shows you verified at the time you engaged them, which matters when the file is reviewed.

Common questions

Do I need both an RBQ licence and CCQ registration?

Yes, if your work falls inside construction jurisdiction. The RBQ licence lets the business contract for plumbing work, and CCQ registration covers you as an employer of construction workers. One does not substitute for the other.

Can I hire a plumber from Ontario to work in Quebec?

Not on an Ontario licence. The worker needs the CCQ competency certificate for the trade, and the company needs its own RBQ licence. Interprovincial Red Seal certification may support the application, but it does not replace the Quebec credentials.

What happens if I exceed the apprentice ratio?

The crew is off ratio, which exposes the employer to penalties and can stop the work. For plumbing the working pattern has been one apprentice per journeyperson, read stage by stage, but the binding figures sit in the Regulation respecting the number of apprentices and in the CCQ's trade schedules, so check the current plumbing row before you set the crew.

Do job postings have to be in French?

Yes. Postings must be in French, and any English version must be accompanied by the French one with at least equal prominence.

What if the licence holder leaves the company?

The licence depends on a qualifying individual, so you need a replacement who meets the competency conditions for that class. Until one is in place, the company's ability to contract legally is in question.