Canada · North America
Moving to Québec City
Québec City quick facts
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Cost of living in Québec City
Can you move to Canada?
Pick your passport to see whether you can enter Canada — and what it takes to stay.
Entry rules come from github.com/imorte/passport-index-data, updated 17 February 2026. They change without notice — confirm with the official immigration service before booking.
Getting set up in Canada
The CSQ, the French requirement that decides it, and your SIN
Two governments, in sequence. Quebec decides whether it selects you and issues a Certificat de sélection du Québec; Ottawa then decides whether you are admissible and grants status. Since late 2024 the province's skilled-worker selection has been restructured around spoken French as a threshold rather than a bonus, which matters more in Québec City than anywhere — this is not a city you can settle in on English. Whatever route brings you, get a Social Insurance Number in your first week.
Read the full step-by-step guideExchanging with the SAAQ, mandatory winter tyres, and the hills
Quebec exchanges licences directly with the other Canadian provinces and with a defined list of countries, and requires testing from everywhere else. Insurance is split in a way most newcomers have never encountered: injuries are covered publicly and on a no-fault basis by the SAAQ, funded through licence and registration fees, while damage is private. Winter tyres are a legal requirement from 1 December to 15 March — unique in Canada — and in this city the escarpment, not the temperature, is what catches new drivers.
Read the full step-by-step guideOpening an account, building credit from zero, and why everyone here banks at a caisse
Opening a chequing account is easy — the major banks run newcomer packages that waive fees and need no Canadian credit history. The hard part is that your credit record does not cross the border, and here it gates the lease as much as the loan. The local specific is Desjardins: a member-owned cooperative network headquartered in Lévis that is the largest financial institution in Quebec and, in this region, the one most people actually use.
Read the full step-by-step guideRAMQ, the waiting period, and getting seen without a family doctor
The Régie de l'assurance maladie du Québec covers physician and hospital care. Coverage normally starts about three months after you register — but Quebec's social security agreements with a number of countries, France and Belgium among them, waive that wait entirely for their nationals. Quebec also uniquely requires every resident to carry prescription drug insurance. The practical problem here is not the card, it is the family-doctor shortage, and the province's front-line access point is how you work around it.
Read the full step-by-step guideA phone plan with no credit history, and why Quebec pays less than the rest of Canada
Canadian mobile is expensive and Quebec is the cheapest province for it, because Vidéotron built a real fourth network rather than reselling and the national carriers price against it here and nowhere else. Without a Canadian credit file a postpaid plan usually means a deposit, so most newcomers start prepaid or on a low-cost digital brand. For home internet, what reaches your particular unit is a property of the building, not of the street.
Read the full step-by-step guideTwo returns, residency by ties, and the credits only Quebec has
Quebec is the only province that administers its own income tax, so you file two returns every year rather than one. Canada taxes residents on worldwide income, and residency is determined by residential ties rather than a day count. Quebec's combined rates are among the highest in the country, offset by a set of provincial benefits — subsidised childcare, the lowest university fees in Canada for residents — that no other province matches.
Read the full step-by-step guideEach guide has verified costs, timelines, required documents, and the non-obvious gotchas — sourced from official government pages. Last verified August 2026.
Essential French phrases
Reading a list isn’t learning it. Globe Quest turns these into a trainer — hear each phrase spoken, drill them with spaced repetition, and get scored as you say them out loud.
What to know before you go
This is not Montreal — you will not get by in English here
CriticalAround 95% of the metropolitan area speaks French as a first language, and outside the tourist blocks of Vieux-Québec and the university, English is genuinely limited. Your landlord, your pharmacist, your child's school, your employer's HR system and every piece of government correspondence will be in French. People are welcoming about a foreigner's imperfect French and much less able to switch to English than in Montreal — not out of principle, but because many simply do not speak it. Arrive at a conversational level or arrive knowing that your first year is a language course.
Quebec selects its own immigrants, and the ministry that does it is in this city
CriticalFor most economic immigration you need a Certificat de sélection du Québec before Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada will process permanent residence. Quebec replaced its skilled-worker selection program in late 2024 with a new set of streams built around a hard spoken-French requirement rather than a points bonus. Planning a move here on advice written about Express Entry for Toronto or Vancouver is the most expensive mistake newcomers make, and it is entirely avoidable.
Roughly three metres of snow falls here every winter, and the city is built to move it
CriticalQuébec City averages about 300 cm of snow a season — more than Montreal, more than almost any city of its size on earth. The upside is that the clearing operation is formidable and life does not stop. The obligation is yours: winter tyres are required by law from 1 December to 15 March, the orange déneigement signs mean your car is towed if you leave it, and the Haute-Ville hills in freezing rain are the actual hazard, not the cold. Boots with real grip before your first storm, not after.
You file two tax returns, and the agency that collects one of them is headquartered here
CriticalQuebec is the only province that administers its own income tax. Every year you file a federal return with the Canada Revenue Agency and a separate provincial return with Revenu Québec, whose head office is in this city. Certified software handles both from one set of inputs, but you get two of every slip, two deadlines and two sets of correspondence — and every piece of general Canadian tax advice quietly assumes one return.
The labour market is unusually tight, which cuts both ways
ImportantQuébec City runs one of the lowest unemployment rates of any large Canadian city, year after year. Employers in health, construction, hospitality, insurance and the trades are genuinely short of people, so a candidate who can work in French is in a strong position. The catch is that the shortage is in French-language roles; the pool of jobs that can be done in English here is small and concentrated in a handful of tech and research employers.
The rental market is the cheapest of any large Canadian city, and the tightest
ImportantAverage rents here are well below Montreal's and roughly half of Toronto's. They are also chased by a vacancy rate that has sat near or under 1% for several years, so the constraint is availability rather than price. The Quebec cycle applies — most leases run 1 July to 30 June and the market clears in spring — and the strongest single move is to take over an existing lease by assignment rather than compete for a new listing.
Top industries & employers
Public administration
Government of Quebec ministries, the National Assembly, Revenu Québec, Ville de Québec, Hydro-Québec
The provincial government is far and away the largest employer in the region — the National Assembly, most ministries and Revenu Québec's head office are all here. Recruitment is in French without exception and many roles require Canadian citizenship or permanent residence.
Insurance & financial services
iA Financial Group, Beneva, Desjardins (Lévis), Promutuel, La Capitale
One of Canada's two insurance capitals. iA Financial Group and Beneva are both headquartered in the city, and Desjardins — the largest financial institution in Quebec — has its head office directly across the river in Lévis.
Software & digital
Coveo, Optel Group, LeddarTech, Korem, Beenox, Frima
Concentrated in Saint-Roch, the old working-class Lower Town district deliberately rebuilt around technology firms in the 2000s. Coveo is the flagship, and it is one of the few local employers where English is a working language.
Optics & photonics
INO, ABB Québec, Telops, Optel, Photon etc.
An unusually dense optics cluster grown around the Institut national d'optique and Université Laval's Centre d'optique, photonique et laser — a specialism this city has and most of Canada does not.
Higher education & health research
Université Laval, CHU de Québec–Université Laval, INRS, Institut universitaire de cardiologie et de pneumologie
Université Laval is the oldest French-language university in North America and anchors both the research hospitals and the optics cluster. Its Sainte-Foy campus is effectively a second downtown.
Tourism & hospitality
Fairmont Le Château Frontenac, Carnaval de Québec, Festival d'été de Québec, Groupe Le Massif
A UNESCO-listed old town and a genuine winter season make tourism a year-round employer rather than a summer one, and the sector's labour shortage here is chronic and well paid by Canadian hospitality standards.
Where to go in Québec City
Vieux-Québec
Landmark · Haute-Ville and Basse-Ville
The only walled city north of Mexico and a UNESCO World Heritage site — ramparts, the Château Frontenac, and the seventeenth-century streets of Petit-Champlain below the cliff.
Local tip: Take the Escalier casse-cou down to Petit-Champlain rather than paying for the funiculaire; it is free and it is the older route. And come in January, when the stone, the snow and the empty streets do something no summer photograph of this place has ever captured.
Plaines d'Abraham
Nature · Above the cliff, west of the walls
A 98-hectare battlefield park on the escarpment, with the river 60 metres below and the city's biggest events held on it.
Local tip: In winter the park grooms free cross-country ski trails and a skating loop, and almost nobody outside the neighbourhood uses them on a weekday. In July the same grass holds the Festival d'été main stage.
Quartier Saint-Roch
Neighborhood · Basse-Ville, below the cliff
The old industrial Lower Town rebuilt around software firms, independent restaurants and Rue Saint-Joseph — the city's counterweight to the tourist quarter.
Local tip: This is where people who work in tech actually eat and drink, and it is five minutes from the old town but feels like a different city. Note the microclimate: sitting below the cliff, it is measurably warmer and far less windy than Haute-Ville in winter.
Limoilou
Neighborhood · North across the Saint-Charles river
A tight grid of 1920s brick flats with outdoor staircases along 3e Avenue — the most liveable cheap central neighbourhood in the city.
Local tip: Rents here run several hundred dollars below Montcalm for a comparable flat and the walk to Saint-Roch is fifteen minutes. It is almost entirely francophone, which is exactly why newcomers who move here learn French fastest.
Île d'Orléans & Chute Montmorency
Nature · 15–20 minutes east
A farm island in the middle of the St. Lawrence, reached over a bridge that passes a waterfall 83 metres high — half again the height of Niagara.
Local tip: Do the island in September for the apple and blackcurrant harvest rather than in strawberry season, when the traffic on the single ring road is genuinely bad. The falls are better in deep winter, when the spray freezes into a cone at the base that people climb.
Grand Marché de Québec
Hidden gemFood · ExpoCité, Limoilou
The city's public market — Île d'Orléans growers, Charlevoix cheesemakers and cider makers under one roof, open year-round.
Local tip: It moved here from the Old Port in 2019 and a great many visitors still go looking for it at the water. Locals shop here on Saturday mornings; go before ten, and go in autumn when the island harvest is in.
Emergency numbers in Québec City
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