The Law Now Answers "How Long Should It Last?"
For decades, "how long should a fridge last?" had no legal answer in Canada. Quebec just gave it one.
Under Quebec's anti-planned-obsolescence law (Bill 29), new appliances and electronics sold or leased in Quebec from October 5, 2026 carry a warranty of good working order: a fixed period during which the device must keep working, and if it doesn't, it gets repaired for free. Parts, labour, and reasonable shipping included.
The durations:
- 6 years: refrigerator, freezer, range/oven, air conditioner, heat pump
- 5 years: washer, dryer, dishwasher
- 4 years: television
- 3 years: laptop, desktop computer, tablet, cell phone, game console
No registration, no fee, no opting in. It applies automatically from the date of delivery, and it's on top of the manufacturer's warranty, not instead of it. A 1-year manufacturer warranty on a fridge is now legally irrelevant for five more years.
What the Warranty of Good Working Order Covers
The rules, per the Office de la protection du consommateur:
Free repair is the remedy. If a covered device stops working properly within its period, the merchant or manufacturer must repair it at no cost to you: parts, labour, and reasonable transport or shipping.
You choose who to claim against. Merchant or manufacturer, your pick. The store that sold it can't send you off to the manufacturer to get rid of you.
New goods only, from October 5, 2026. Devices bought before that date stay under the existing legal warranty (more below). Used goods don't start a new period, but here's the notable part: the warranty follows the product. Buy a two-year-old fridge secondhand and the remaining four years of coverage come with it. That quietly makes recent used appliances in Quebec a better deal than anywhere else in North America.
What it doesn't cover: damage from misuse or accidents, and normal maintenance items. A phone you dropped in a lake is your problem; a phone whose screen controller died on its own is theirs.
You Also Still Have the Legal Warranty, and It Can Go Further
Quebec already had the strongest consumer warranty in Canada before this: the legal warranty under the Consumer Protection Act, which says goods must be usable for a reasonable time given their price and conditions of use, with no fixed cutoff at all.
The two now stack:
- The warranty of good working order gives you certainty: inside the fixed period, a breakdown is covered, full stop, no argument about what's "reasonable."
- The legal warranty gives you reach: it can extend beyond the fixed period when a reasonable lifespan would be longer. A $4,000 built-in refrigerator that dies at year seven is past the 6-year good-working-order period, but a reasonable person doesn't expect a $4,000 fridge to last seven years, so the legal warranty claim is still live.
Think of the fixed durations as the floor Quebec has now put under every argument, not the ceiling on what you can claim.
How to Make a Claim in Quebec
Step 1: Check your dates. Delivery date plus the duration for your device category. Bought after October 5, 2026 and inside the window? You're covered.
Step 2: Contact the merchant or the manufacturer, in writing. Name the warranty: "This device is covered by the warranty of good working order under the Consumer Protection Act. I'm requesting a free repair." Include proof of purchase and what's wrong. For pre-October-2026 purchases, claim under the legal warranty instead: state that the device hasn't lasted a reasonable time for its price.
Step 3: If they refuse or stall, file a complaint with the Office de la protection du consommateur and send a formal notice (mise en demeure) with a deadline. The OPC publishes templates.
Step 4: Small claims. Quebec's Small Claims Division handles consumer disputes without a lawyer, and Quebec judges have a long record of taking the legal warranty seriously.
Keep every receipt and message. And before you accept "it's not worth fixing" from anyone, check what the repair should actually cost. If it's covered, the answer is $0.
What This Changes for Repair vs Replace
This law rewrites the repair-or-replace math for Quebec:
Inside a warranty period, repair always wins. The usual question, "is a $300 repair worth it on a $700 washer?", disappears when the repair is legally free. Before paying any repair bill on a covered device, check the table above.
Extended warranties just got harder to justify. Retailers sell protection plans that largely duplicate what Quebec law now provides free. A 3-year protection plan on a laptop that already carries a 3-year warranty of good working order is paying twice for the same years. See our extended warranty analysis.
Durability data matters more, not less. The law sets minimums, but brands differ wildly beyond them. Our brand reliability rankings, built from 300,000+ community repair records, show which brands are still working long after any warranty ends. Buy the brand that doesn't need the warranty; keep the warranty as the backstop.
Manufacturers will adapt designs. A law that makes 6 years of fridge repairs the manufacturer's cost is a direct incentive to build fridges that don't break, and to keep parts available. That's the point.