Quebec Car Seat Laws: Booster Rules Under Article 397 (2026)

Quebec law requires any child under 145 centimetres tall or under 9 years old to ride in a restraint system or booster seat, under article 397 of the Code de la sécurité routière, but the statute itself sets almost nothing beyond that single threshold, leaving the rear-facing, forward-facing, and booster-weight stages to SAAQ guidance rather than to the Code.

Jurisdiction scope: This article covers Quebec's provincial child-restraint law under the Code de la sécurité routière and SAAQ (Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec) guidance. It does not cover other provinces or the federal Motor Vehicle Safety Act's manufacturing standards in detail beyond the touchpoint that matters for Quebec drivers.

What Quebec law actually requires

Article 397 of the CSR sets one binding test. In a moving vehicle, any child under 145 cm tall or under 9 years old must be installed in a restraint system or booster seat that complies with regulations made under the federal Motor Vehicle Safety Act, and that restraint must be adapted to the child's weight and height per the manufacturer's instructions and properly installed.

That is the entire mandate. The Code does not itself define separate rear-facing, forward-facing, and booster stages, does not set a minimum weight for moving into a booster, and does not prescribe a specific readiness test for using a seatbelt alone. It sets a single outer boundary (145 cm or age 9) and otherwise defers to the restraint's own manufacturer instructions. Compare that to a companion article, 396, which requires everyone else in the vehicle to wear a seatbelt properly, and expressly carves out any child covered by article 397.

Article 397 was restructured by 2018, chapter 7, article 101 (in force April 18, 2018), which built the current taxi and medical-exemption framework while the threshold was still the old 63 cm seated-height test. The threshold itself was then changed by 2019, chapter 18, article 238, moving the article from 63 cm of seated height to the current 145 cm or age 9 test, in force April 18, 2019. Quebec's own official law database confirms both the before and after text of the article side by side, so this is a verified change in the underlying statute, not a media paraphrase.

Law vs. SAAQ guidance: keep these separate

Quebec's statute is deliberately thin on staging, and SAAQ's own published safety materials draw the same line this article draws: SAAQ labels the 145 cm / 9-year rule « la loi » and labels its rear-facing recommendation « la littérature », meaning research-based guidance, not statute. The table below keeps the legal floor and the safety recommendation separate on purpose.

SAAQ's guidance explicitly tells parents to keep using a booster past the legal minimum if a child still fails the 5-step test, meaning meeting article 397's floor and being genuinely ready to ride beltbelt-alone are not automatically the same thing.

Who has to comply, and the exemptions

Article 397 does not name who is penalized for a violation. It is written passively (a child "must be installed" in a restraint), unlike other CSR provisions that expressly say who commits the offence. By comparison to how the Code phrases adult seatbelt liability elsewhere, it is reasonable to expect the driver bears responsibility, but this is an inference rather than a fact stated in article 397 itself, and it should be read that way.

Three exemptions exist, all within articles 397 and 398:

• Manufacturer-unbelted seating positions. No restraint is required for a child in a seating position the vehicle manufacturer did not equip with a seatbelt, and only if no belted seat is available. This mechanism is the practical basis for why large school buses, most of which are not factory-equipped with seatbelts, do not require child seats, though the statute does not name buses specifically.
• SAAQ medical exemption (article 398). On written request, SAAQ may authorize an alternate restraint arrangement for exceptional medical reasons, for a period SAAQ sets.
• The taxi and police-vehicle fallback is conditional, not blanket. This clause only applies « à défaut de satisfaire aux conditions du premier alinéa », meaning only when the proper restraint requirement genuinely cannot be met. In that specific situation, a seatbelt alone is sufficient for a child in a taxi, a vehicle assimilated to a taxi, or a police vehicle, unless the child is manifestly unable to sit up straight or is otherwise covered by an article 398 exemption. In practice, this means Quebec does not require taxi operators to carry car seats and a parent without a portable seat can legally use a taxi with just the seatbelt, but the statute frames this as a fallback for an unmet condition, not as a standing carve-out for the entire taxi industry.

Penalties: what could and could not be verified

A violation of article 397 is a ticketable offence under the Code de la sécurité routière, but the specific fine amount and any demerit points that attach specifically to article 397 could not be verified against a primary penalty schedule that names article 397 by number. A search of the Code's own penalty provisions (articles 505 through 516) did not turn up any clause listing article 397 among the violations it covers.

The commonly circulated figure of an $80 to $100 fine plus 3 demerit points does not trace to article 397. Article 508 sets an $80 to $100 fine for violations of article 401 (a different seatbelt provision), and the demerit-points regulation separately maps article 396, the general adult seatbelt duty, to that same $80 to $100 band. But the Code's own article 510 lists article 396 under a different band entirely, $200 to $300, creating a conflict between two current, official Quebec legal sources over which fine applies even to article 396, let alone to the child-restraint article. Article 397 does not appear anywhere in the demerit-points regulation's penalty table.

Until that gap in the Code's own penalty machinery is resolved with a primary source naming article 397 specifically, this page will not publish a specific dollar figure or demerit-point count for a child-restraint violation. Readers who need a current, ticket-accurate number should confirm directly with the SAAQ or a Quebec courthouse.

Enforcement in practice

SAAQ's own 2022 safety fact sheet, using 2017 to 2021 annual averages, reports that children age 9 and under made up 14% of injured vehicle passengers, with an average of 4 deaths, 15 serious injuries, and 854 minor injuries per year among that age group. SAAQ states that when a car seat is used correctly, the odds of death or serious injury in a crash drop by up to 70%.

A separate INSPQ (Institut national de santé publique du Québec) source, using 2015 to 2020 annual averages, reports about 1,188 injured children age 9 and under per year, with 4 deaths, 19 seriously injured, and 1,169 lightly injured. These two figures use different time windows and likely different inclusion criteria, so they should not be averaged together, but both point the same direction.

A coroner's report into a fatal crash near Lac-au-Saumon (crash date August 5, 2021; report published May 3, 2022) found that of four children in the vehicle, two were properly restrained and two, ages 4 and 5 in a middle seating position, were not, sharing a single seatbelt that neither appeared to be wearing. Three people died in that crash, including the 5-year-old. The coroner issued no formal recommendations in that matter.

No dated SAAQ or police news release with actual ticket counts specifically for article 397 enforcement could be located. That absence reflects blocked or unavailable enforcement-statistics pages during this research, not a confirmed low enforcement rate, and it should not be read as either.

Beyond the legal minimum

Meeting article 397's 145 cm / age 9 floor is not the same as a child being safely secured. SAAQ's own published guidance, layered on top of the legal minimum, recommends keeping a child rear-facing until at least age 2, using a booster only once a child weighs at least 18 kg (40 lb), staying in a 5-point harness seat past the legal minimum until the seat's manufacturer-rated maximum weight, and applying the 5-step test before letting a child use a seatbelt alone. None of these recommendations are separately enforceable under the Code; they exist because SAAQ's safety research shows the legal floor is not always the safest choice for a given child's size.

The federal layer

Article 397 cross-references federal law directly: a restraint or booster must comply with regulations made under the federal Motor Vehicle Safety Act. That is the statutory hook for Canada's National Safety Mark requirement. Transport Canada has stated that a restraint sold or imported without the Mark would be considered illegal to use under a province or territory's traffic law. Practically, a seat bought in the United States and carrying only US certification, without the Canadian National Safety Mark, would not meet article 397's compliance requirement, making its use in Quebec legally questionable under this reading. This point is sourced to Transport Canada's general guidance rather than to a Quebec-specific SAAQ statement, since SAAQ's relevant web pages were not accessible during this research.

Consequences beyond a ticket

The strongest reason to comply with article 397 has nothing to do with enforcement. SAAQ's own data shows correctly used car seats cut the odds of death or serious injury by up to 70% in a crash, and the Lac-au-Saumon coroner's report is a documented example of what happens when two children shared one seatbelt in a crash that killed one of them. A low or unknown ticket count is not a safety endorsement, and the absence of published enforcement statistics is not evidence that non-compliance carries no real risk.

Information last verified August 14, 2026, against the current LégisQuébec consolidation of the Code de la sécurité routière and SAAQ-published safety documents. This is general legal information, not legal advice. Confirm current fine and demerit-point figures directly with the SAAQ before relying on them.