eDiscovery Canada · Québec
eDiscovery
in Québec.
Québec runs discovery through the case protocol, caps oral examinations, and lets the record arrive in two languages. We plan, review and disclose accordingly — in French and English, natively.
Bilingual EN + FRData hosted in CanadaNo ingestion feesSenior-led
Civil-law discovery,
done in both languages.
Québec litigation is its own discipline. The Code of Civil Procedure builds discovery into the protocole de l’instance rather than a standalone discovery motion culture, oral examinations are capped or unavailable below monetary thresholds, and the documents — les pièces — carry correspondingly more of the case. Getting them collected, understood and disclosed well is not a support task here; it is strategy.
noticia works in French and English as equals, from Montréal and Ottawa. The same reviewer reads the French thread and its English reply; productions and correspondence go out in the language the file requires; and everything stays on Canadian infrastructure throughout.
The local rules
Evidence under the
Code of Civil Procedure.
The Code of Civil Procedure makes the case protocol the backbone of discovery: under article 148, the parties must agree how the case will proceed — including pre-trial examinations, their number and length, and the procedure and time limit for pre-trial discovery and disclosure — and under article 246 the disclosure of exhibits follows what that protocol says. Evidence not disclosed as required cannot be produced without the court’s authorization (art. 252). The duty to preserve relevant evidence arrives even earlier, in article 20’s duty to cooperate.
Oral discovery is deliberately constrained: no pre-trial examination at all where the claim is under $50,000, and a five-hour cap — three in family matters or under $100,000 — everywhere else (art. 229). The documents do more of the work as a result, and Québec law meets them halfway: under the Act to establish a legal framework for information technology, a technological document has the same legal value as paper, with integrity presumed unless genuinely contested (CCQ arts. 2838, 2840). Proportionality, article 18, governs all of it — for parties and judges alike.
One more Québec reality: the record is bilingual. Pleadings may be filed in French or English, and exhibits arrive in whichever language they were written. A review team that reads only one language is reading part of the file.
Preparing a case protocol? Our free discovery protocol generator drafts the evidence schedule on the Québec CCP — articles 148 and 246, exhibit numbering, production format — ready to edit in Word.
What we do
One stage, several,
or all of it.
We support law firms, in-house counsel and public bodies in Québec along the whole eDiscovery timeline. Take one stage or hand over the file: our team becomes your team, and you buy only the slice you need.
Preserve & collect
Litigation holds, custodian interviews and defensible collection from M365, Google Workspace, mobile devices and the DMS — with hashes and chain of custody.
Process & assess
Everything into one reviewable set — deduplicated, threaded, de-NISTed — and an early cut that drops the volume you pay to host.
Review
Bilingual reviewers inside Nuix Discover, with Claira handling first-pass volume and showing its reasoning. Your team keeps every call.
Produce & defend
Exchange-ready productions in the agreed format, with the paperwork — schedules, logs, affidavits — that makes them stick.
Every service is à la carte — the whole menu lives on our services page. We also host Nuix Discover on Canadian infrastructure, put Claira’s AI-assisted review inside it, and take on migrations from platforms being retired out from under their owners.
Managed review
Document review support in Québec.
Review is where eDiscovery budgets go to die, so it is where we put the most structure. Documents arrive grouped with their threads, families and near-duplicates; first-pass volume goes through Claira, AI-assisted review inside Nuix Discover that shows its reasoning on every call; and bilingual reviewers make the decisions that matter.
For teams in Québec, that means review support that scales without a hiring spree — staffed quickly, QC-sampled throughout, with privilege screening, redactions and a defensibility record you can stand behind in court.
FAQ
The usual
questions.
How does discovery work in Québec without an affidavit of documents?
Through the case protocol: articles 148 and 246 of the Code of Civil Procedure have the parties agree the procedure and time limits for disclosing exhibits and other evidence, and article 252 bars producing what was not disclosed as agreed. The protocol is where formats, deduplication and metadata should be settled — we draft that schedule and then run it.
Do Québec courts accept electronic documents as originals?
Québec law is ahead of most on this: the Act to establish a legal framework for information technology gives a technological document the same legal value as paper, and the Civil Code presumes its integrity unless the challenger proves otherwise on a preponderance (arts. 2838, 2840). What matters is preserving integrity — exact copies, documented handling — which is precisely how we collect.
Do you have people in Québec?
Our team works from Ottawa and Montréal, and matters in Québec run the way modern eDiscovery runs everywhere — hosted review, remote collection tooling and video calls. Where your counsel sits does not change where your data sits: it stays in Canadian data centres. When an on-site collection is genuinely needed, we arrange it.
Where does our data live?
In Canada. Review runs on Canadian-hosted infrastructure certified to ISO 27001 and SOC 2 Type II, and your documents stay here through processing, hosting, review and production.
Where we work
The same discipline,
wherever the matter sits.
Electronic evidence does not care which courthouse it is headed for; the local rules do. We work under all of them.
Start with
a scope.
Send a note about the matter and a senior member of the team replies inside two business days — or today, if it cannot wait.