Quebec E-Scooter Laws: The ATPM Pilot, Extended to 2028

Quebec allows e-scooters under a single pilot regulation, the ATPM rules (C-24.2, r. 39.1.002), which was extended by an order signed June 29, 2026 that took effect July 18, 2026, two days before the pilot's original July 20, 2026 expiry, and now runs through July 20, 2028.

What's Legal Now: The ATPM Pilot, Extended to 2028

Quebec does not regulate e-scooters through permanent legislation. It regulates them through a ministerial pilot regulation made under the Highway Safety Code (Code de la sécurité routière), currently C-24.2, r. 39.1.002, the pilot project covering appareils de transport personnel motorisés (ATPM). This is the only regulation in force today. Two earlier scooter-specific rules, r. 39.1.2 (2018 to 2023) and its companion rental regulation r. 39.1.3, were repealed on July 20, 2023 and no longer apply, even though older sources still describe them.

The current pilot took effect July 20, 2023, dropping the minimum age to 14 with no licence requirement and covering a broader family of devices than its predecessor. It was amended twice after that, by A.M. 2024-17 and A.M. 2025-10. Then, on July 18, 2026, the pilot was extended to July 20, 2028, with several substantive changes covered below.

Because this is a pilot and not a permanent law, Quebec's Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility (MTMD) has said publicly that it expects to eventually move these rules into the Highway Safety Code itself through actual legislation. Ministry spokesperson Nicolas Vigneault, quoted by L'Express, put it this way: at the end of these two years, the ministry will have no choice but to pursue a legislative measure to eventually fold the rules into the Code de la sécurité routière. Until that happens, Quebec's e-scooter law can change again with the stroke of a ministerial order, the way it just did.

The Near-Miss: How Close E-Scooters Came to Becoming Illegal Again

This is worth stating plainly, because it very nearly did not happen. As late as April 16, 2026, roughly three months before the pilot's original expiry, a second MTMD spokesperson, Louis-André Bertrand, told the newspaper Le Soleil that the extension was still only a proposal: «Le Ministère envisage de proposer aux autorités le prolongement, jusqu'en juillet 2028, du projet pilote» (the ministry is considering proposing that the pilot be extended to July 2028). The newspaper added that without such an extension, starting in July 2026, these devices would once again fall under the Highway Safety Code, «lequel interdit l'usage de trottinettes électriques» (which prohibits the use of e-scooters).

In other words, according to that reporting, had the extension not gone through, e-scooters would have reverted to being illegal on Quebec roads the same month the pilot instead grew broader in scope. The extension order was signed June 29, 2026, published July 3, 2026 and took effect July 18, 2026, just two days before the original July 20, 2026 deadline. Anyone relying on older reporting about Quebec's scooter rules, including reporting from as recently as spring 2026, should treat it as superseded.

The Amending Order: Arrêté numéro 2026-10

The July 2026 amendment is Arrêté numéro 2026-10 du ministre des Transports et de la Mobilité durable, dated June 29, 2026, published in full in the Gazette officielle du Québec, Partie 2, July 3, 2026, no. 26A, pages 3493A to 3494A, and in force on the fifteenth day after publication, July 18, 2026 (section 8 of the order). The Highway Safety Code's own pilot-authorising provision, article 633.1, caps a ministerial pilot at three years with a possible two-year extension by the minister. Arrêté 2026-10 uses exactly that maximum extension, replacing the pilot's original three-year sunset clause (article 52) with the fixed date of July 20, 2028.

Because article 633.1 allows a pilot to be extended by no more than two years, and this extension uses both of them, the Code does not allow this pilot to be extended again past July 20, 2028. Keeping ATPM rules in force after that date will take another instrument, such as the legislative route the ministry says it expects to take.

Beyond the extension itself, the order added a new article 3.1 extending the pilot to private roads and shopping-centre grounds open to public traffic, added a new article 19.1 capping riders themselves at 25 km/h as a matter of conduct (distinct from the device's own motor cutoff, covered below), amended article 18 on protective gear, and restructured the fine schedule (covered in Penalties, further down this page). As of October 26, 2026, LégisQuébec's consolidation of the regulation (current to July 1, 2026) still had not integrated this order: it still shows the old article 4 with the 500 W ceiling, and article 52 appears as «Omis». A reader checking the regulation there should also read the order published in the Gazette officielle.

What Counts as an ATPM

The regulation defines an ATPM as an electrically powered, people-carrying device with at least one wheel and no enclosed cabin. That excludes motorcycles, mopeds, power-assisted bicycles, motorized mobility aids, toy vehicles and off-road vehicles.

Current specifications, as read from the amending order and described on SAAQ's pilot page:

• Motor assist must cut off at 25 km/h. The July 2026 amendment replaced the device-power article entirely: the earlier 500 W motor ceiling no longer appears in the operative text, leaving the 25 km/h cutoff as the governing motor requirement.
• Maximum weight, including the battery, is 36 kg (article 5; this ceiling was already in the original 2023 text).
• Each wheel must be at least 190 mm in diameter.
• Each wheel needs a brake capable of stopping the device quickly on dry pavement (except for a gyroscopic vehicle, the device also needs at least two braking systems with separate controls, one of them mechanical and hand-operated if the device has a handlebar).
• Reflectors are required, rear and side, and night riding requires a white front light and red rear light visible from at least 150 metres. Reflective clothing or a wearable light can substitute for device-mounted equivalents.

The July 2026 amendment removed the 500 W motor ceiling. Arrêté 2026-10, s. 2 replaced article 4 of the pilot wholesale, and the new article 4 contains a single requirement: motor assist must cut out at no more than 25 km/h. No wattage figure survives in the operative text, which is why SAAQ's summary of mandatory characteristics no longer lists one. The 25 km/h cutoff, the 36 kg weight limit and the 190 mm minimum wheel diameter are now the governing device limits. Older guides still quoting a 500 W cap are describing the pre-July 2026 version of the rule.

One change does stand out. Montreal police (SPVM) confirm the ATPM category now includes devices with a seat and three-wheeled devices. The pre-2023 regulation required a standing device with no seat, and that restriction is gone. SAAQ's pilot page also expressly lists scooter-like vehicles with a seat or three wheels among the covered devices.

Where You Can Ride

Roads posted at 50 km/h or less: allowed. Riding is prohibited on roads posted above that limit, with narrow exceptions to cross at an intersection, use a roundabout connecting two qualifying roads, or use a bike lane that is physically separated from the roadway.

Bike lanes: allowed. ATPM riders are treated like cyclists for most Highway Safety Code purposes.

Off-street bike paths: according to the Ville de Québec, the pilot does not regulate these at all. That city page still describes the pilot as a three-year project with no mention of the 2026 extension, so treat its duration language as outdated, even though its statement about off-street paths appears to stand on its own.

Sidewalks: prohibited, except in case of necessity («sauf en cas de nécessité») or where signage requires or allows it. The rider must then go at a reasonable and prudent speed and yield to pedestrians. This is article 492.1 of the Highway Safety Code, which article 31 of the pilot applies to ATPM users, so it holds province-wide. The SPVM (Montreal police) page states the prohibition without mentioning these exceptions, and SAAQ writes «sauf exception» (except in certain cases).

Private property open to public traffic, new since July 18, 2026: a new article 3.1, added by Arrêté 2026-10, extends the pilot to private roads and other land where the public is allowed to circulate. The City of Blainville reads this as including parking lots, shopping centre grounds and parks. The same rules and the same fines ($100 or $200 depending on the violation, plus costs) apply there.

Local bans: the person responsible for maintaining a public road may, with appropriate signage, prohibit ATPMs on a bike lane or public road; the pilot sets out a dedicated sign for that ban (articles 33 and 34). Riders must obey that signage (article 32).

Rider Rules

Speed, age and safety gear

• Riders may not exceed 25 km/h, a rule added by the July 2026 amendment (new article 19.1) that caps the rider's own conduct, separate from the requirement that the device's motor cut off at that speed. Going faster than the cutoff, for example freewheeling downhill, can now be ticketed under this new conduct rule even if the motor itself is compliant.
• Minimum age 14, no licence required. That is a significant drop from the 2018 to 2023 regime, which required riders to be 18, or 16 with a moped licence. Riders must carry and produce proof of age if a peace officer asks.
• Helmet mandatory for every rider, no exception by age. It must be a rigid-shell, padded helmet with a chinstrap, correctly fitted and fastened, with no structural damage (repainting or adding reflective material is allowed).
• Extra protective gear is required only on an ATPM with no handhold: elbow pads, knee pads, gloves or other hand or wrist protection, and closed shoes (article 18, amended July 18, 2026, which no longer names gyroscopic vehicles). Since the same date, breaching it carries a $100 fine.

Conduct while riding

• No passengers, no towing, and no clinging to a moving device.
• Turn signals required, given continuously and with advance notice, unless it would be unsafe to do so.
• Phones and headphones are banned while riding, apart from a securely mounted display showing only trip-relevant information. These bans do not apply while the rider is stopped at the edge of the roadway or on the shoulder without obstructing traffic (article 28).

Legal status and impaired riding

• Not registered or insured as a road vehicle. For the purposes of the pilot, ATPMs are excluded from the Code's definition of a road vehicle (article 3). On insurance, SAAQ applies its own exclusion, covered further down this page.
• Impaired riding: the Criminal Code makes no exception for ATPMs. The Criminal Code defines a motor vehicle as a vehicle, other than railway equipment, that is "drawn, propelled or driven by any means other than muscular power" (section 2), and the "conveyance" covered by the impaired-operation offence includes a motor vehicle (sections 320.11 and 320.14). The pilot's article 3 exclusion applies only for the purposes of that provincial pilot; it does not change the Criminal Code, which is federal law.

No Demerit Points, Even With a Ticket

This is a genuinely unusual feature of Quebec's pilot. Article 43 of r. 39.1.002 disapplies Quebec's demerit-point system to ATPM users entirely, overriding the Code's general points provision. A ticket under this regulation is a pure fine. It never adds points against a rider's driver's licence, even if that rider also holds one. No seizure or impoundment provision was found in the regulation itself; the research looked specifically and found none, though that is not proof a separate municipal bylaw power could not exist.

Penalties

The July 2026 amendment restructured the equipment and conduct fine schedule. As it now stands:

Two of those rows run the opposite direction from what most riders expect: the regulation also fines drivers and cyclists for failing to yield to an ATPM rider. That is a duty owed to the rider, not by the rider, and it is worth knowing if a driver or cyclist causes a collision with you. For context, the repealed 2018 to 2023 regime fined riders $200 to $300 for most violations. Current rider-side equipment fines are lower, at $100, with $200 reserved for the mass limit, the motor-cutoff requirement and the new rider speed-conduct rule, while the driver-fails-to-yield range is unchanged.

Enforcement in Practice

Evidence of active, on-the-ground enforcement is real but thin, and this page states exactly what is and is not confirmed.

Quebec City (SPVQ): the police service runs targeted enforcement operations on bike paths and has reported a rise in infraction notices to ATPM users. No published count and no reliable date were found for these operations; treat the timing as unverified.

Thérèse-De Blainville region: the intermunicipal police force RIPTB reportedly launched an enforcement and awareness campaign called Projet Voltage covering Boisbriand, Lorraine, Rosemère and Sainte-Thérèse starting summer 2026, targeting ATPM and power-assisted bicycle riders over rising risky behaviour. This was found through search; the source page itself was not independently opened, so treat it as reported rather than confirmed.

Radar enforcement: since the July 2026 amendment, police can now set up radar operations specifically checking the 25 km/h cap at a municipality's request, according to MTMD spokesperson Nicolas Vigneault.

Fatalities: the Bureau du coroner du Québec has recorded 10 deaths of e-scooter users province-wide since 2020, according to Drummond-district coroner Yvon Garneau speaking to a reporter. Victims ranged from age 32 to 69, and roughly half were not wearing a helmet. That age range cuts against the assumption that this is mainly a youth safety problem. The underlying coroner's report was not located at a stable public URL, so this figure is attributed to the coroner's public statement rather than to a document this page can link to directly.

No formal MTMD or SAAQ evaluation report on the pilot's outcomes has been located, and INSPQ injury data was not researched for this page. Both are open gaps, not confirmed absences.

The Municipal Layer: Montreal and Quebec City

Montreal. Privately owned and on-street riding follow the provincial ATPM pilot; the SPVM restates the province's rules and adds two enforcement priorities of its own, no sidewalk riding and no riding while impaired. Montreal ran a shared e-scooter and e-bike pilot with Lime and Uber's Jump e-bikes in 2019, drawing over 370,000 trips between late June and mid-November, but the city shut it down in February 2020, describing it as a failed experiment: only about 20% of scooters were being parked in designated areas, and the city cited poor cohabitation with pedestrians. Montreal police issued 324 tickets at $60 each for missing helmets during that pilot. These 2019 to 2020 figures come from press reporting, not a located City of Montreal communique. Montreal has not brought a citywide dockless rental service back since.

The one exception is Parc Jean-Drapeau, where the park authority runs a contained Lime scooter service: up to 200 scooters across 12 stations, confined entirely to the park, minimum age 16 (a rental-contract term higher than the province's 14), mandatory helmets, a single rider per device, a 15 km/h cap in the park's slow zone, and hours of 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. This is a park-only arrangement, not a relaunch of citywide shared scooters in Montreal.

Rental and free-floating shared devices follow the exact same ATPM rules as privately owned ones. There is no separate legal track for rental fleets under the current pilot, unlike 2018 to 2023, when a companion regulation governed rentals separately.

Quebec City. The SPVQ's own page restates the provincial rules and states that off-street bike paths are unregulated by the pilot (see above). The city has no shared or dockless scooter service and, according to a Réseau de transport de la Capitale (RTC) spokesperson quoted by Le Soleil in April 2026, there is no plan to introduce scooters. The RTC's stated priority is expanding its àVélo bike-share network amid tramway construction. According to Le Soleil, the former head of mobility on the city's executive committee rejected self-service scooters in spring 2024, citing problems other cities had experienced.

What a Ticket Does Not Cover: The Insurance Gap

This is the finding that matters most for anyone actually riding, whether or not they ever see a ticket.

Quebec's public no-fault auto insurance plan, run by SAAQ, does not cover a solo e-scooter accident. SAAQ's own page listing what the plan does not cover states plainly that it excludes accidents involving devices like scooters, skateboards and similar motorized personal transportation devices, «except when that accident involves a moving vehicle covered by the plan» (translated from the original French). In practice, that means:

• A rider who falls, hits a curb, or loses control alone, with no other vehicle involved, is not covered by the no-fault plan. That rider is on their own for medical costs, disability, and lost income, falling back on personal health coverage, disability insurance, or an ordinary civil claim.
• A rider who is struck by a car, truck or other vehicle that the plan does cover is covered on the same no-fault basis as a pedestrian or cyclist hit by a vehicle.

This exclusion is SAAQ's own rule for its plan. The pilot's article 3, which excludes ATPMs from the definition of a road vehicle only for the purposes of the pilot, is not its source. A solo fall therefore sits outside the no-fault net that protects drivers, passengers and even cyclists in a vehicle collision. Outside that no-fault plan, ordinary civil liability under article 1457 of the Civil Code of Quebec applies by default, meaning a rider, or someone injured by a rider, generally has to establish fault to recover damages through the courts, a slower and less certain path than a no-fault claim.

Riding Where It's Not Allowed Does Not Make It Safe

Even where enforcement is thin or unproven, as several of the sections above make clear, riding somewhere the rules do not permit, or without a helmet, or without insurance coverage in mind, is not a low-risk choice just because a ticket is unlikely on a given day. A rider stopped tomorrow is charged under the law as written, not the law as it is usually enforced. And as the insurance section above shows, the biggest risk in Quebec is not the fine at all. It is a solo fall that no-fault coverage will not pay for, regardless of whether anyone was watching.

Related Resources

• E-Scooter Laws in Canada: Province-by-Province Rules
• E-Scooter Laws Around the World

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Last updated: 2026-10-26.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are e-scooters legal in Quebec?

Yes, under a provincial pilot regulation, the ATPM rules (C-24.2, r. 39.1.002), extended on July 18, 2026 to run through July 20, 2028. It is a pilot, not a permanent law, and it has already been amended several times.

How old do you have to be to ride an e-scooter in Quebec?

You must be at least 14, with no licence required. Riders must be able to prove their age to a peace officer on request.

Do I need a helmet to ride an e-scooter in Quebec?

Yes. Every rider must wear a properly fitted, undamaged helmet with a chinstrap, regardless of age.

Does an e-scooter ticket put points on my licence in Quebec?

No. Article 43 of the pilot regulation specifically exempts ATPM riders from Quebec's demerit-point system. Violations are fines only.

Is an e-scooter accident covered by Quebec's no-fault auto insurance (SAAQ)?

Only if a moving vehicle covered by the plan is involved. A solo fall or crash with no other vehicle is not covered, according to SAAQ's own list of what its no-fault plan excludes.

Can I ride an e-scooter on the sidewalk in Quebec?

Generally no. The Highway Safety Code (article 492.1, applied to ATPMs by article 31 of the pilot) prohibits it, except in case of necessity or where signage requires or allows it. The rider must then go at a reasonable and prudent speed and yield to pedestrians.

Can I ride an e-scooter in a mall parking lot or park in Quebec?

Since July 18, 2026, the ATPM rules extend to private roads, parking lots and shopping centre grounds open to public traffic, including parks, with the same fines as anywhere else ($100 or $200 depending on the violation, plus costs).