Packaging Rules in Canada: What Has to Be Bilingual on the Box
By The Velocity Wear Team
Canadian brands generally get the garment label right, because the Textile Labelling Act is well known and suppliers ask about it. Packaging is where the same brands then trip, because it is governed by a different statute with its own requirements, and nobody prompts you about it while you are choosing a mailer.
The Consumer Packaging and Labelling Act applies to prepackaged consumer products, and it carries bilingual requirements of its own. This is orientation rather than advice — the Competition Bureau publishes the detail — but the shape is worth knowing before you commission packaging artwork.
The general principle
For prepackaged products, mandatory information generally has to appear in both English and French, with a limited exception for the identity and principal place of business of the responsible dealer, which may appear in either.
The practical reading for an apparel brand: anything you are required to state, state twice. Anything you choose to state is a marketing decision — but see the Quebec point below, because in one province that choice is narrower than it looks.
Where it shows up on a clothing product
- Retail packaging — a box, a printed poly mailer, a branded bag the garment is sold in.
- Hang tags carrying product information rather than pure branding.
- Care cards and inserts supplied with the garment.
- Multipacks, where the outer packaging is what the purchaser actually sees at the point of sale.
- Anything stating a quantity or measurement, which brings the metric requirements into play.
Metric, and why it catches importing brands
Where a net quantity declaration is required, Canada expects metric units. A brand that has been buying and specifying in imperial — which happens easily when the supply chain and the American market both work in inches and ounces — can end up with packaging that declares in the wrong system.
For most garments this arises less often than for, say, packaged goods, but it is worth checking against your specific product and packaging format rather than assuming apparel is exempt from everything.
Quebec narrows your discretion
Federally, optional marketing copy on packaging is your choice. In Quebec, the Charter of the French Language covers inscriptions on packaging and accompanying documents, and French must not be less prominent than another language.
So a mailer with a slogan in English and nothing in French is a federal non-issue and a Quebec problem. A brand selling nationally is selling into Quebec, which is why treating French as a first-class language throughout is simpler than maintaining two packaging specifications.
Design for two languages from the start
The recurring practical failure is space. A hang tag laid out beautifully in English, then handed to a translator, comes back needing roughly 15 to 20% more room — French runs longer than English for most equivalent copy — and the fix becomes shrinking type until it is barely legible, which is its own compliance problem.
Allocate the space at design stage. It is free then and expensive later, and the result is a better-looking tag rather than a compromised one.
Ordering packaging with production
Branded packaging, hang tags and woven or printed labels can be produced alongside the garments, which means one approval round rather than three suppliers and three schedules. It also means the bilingual content is checked once, at the same moment, rather than drifting between a label made in one place and a tag made in another.
Send the packaging copy with your artwork. Production runs 10 to 15 working days from artwork approval, and the approval is where all of this needs to be final.
