BY Dario De Felice & Emily Douris-Blondin
It’s 5:30 p.m. on a Saturday night at the busy Carrefour Laval shopping centre. Inside the Little Burgundy shoe store, co-manager Jayden Abraham lingers behind the counter as his shift runs past its usual end time.
“My life has to be rebalanced. I have dance classes in the evening, and now I have to push that to when I finish work,” Abraham says.
The store is among thousands of retailers across Quebec participating in a provincial pilot project that allows select businesses in three cities to remain open later than before.
A shopper exits the mall in the evening as newly extended hours aim to offer greater flexibility for customers and retailers. Photo by Dario De Felice.
Since October 2025, stores in Laval, Gatineau and Saint-Georges have been testing extended weekend hours, remaining open until 8 p.m. as a part of a government initiative aimed at boosting retail competitiveness.
“Over the past few months, we have seen not much retail traffic during the extended hours on Saturday and Sunday,” Abraham admits.
As of March 11, the government will expand the pilot project province-wide. It grants stores from boutiques to big-box retailers the option to open from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, except holidays.
That’s an extra six hours of weekend business. The province says it’s to counter fierce competition from online retail giants.
Data from Léger shows that the majority of Quebecers are satisfied with the current operating hours of grocery stores in the province. Léger web survey conducted with 1,001 respondents in Quebec between February 21 and 23, 2025, who were weighted to reflect the population. Infographic by Dario De Felice.
Robert Soroka, a marketing professor at Concordia University’s John Molson School of Business, believes the government’s plan may work.
“Purchases that involve significantly more deliberation are the categories that will benefit from the extended hours,” Soroka notes. Still, he cautions that each store will need to tailor its schedule to its clientele to make the most of new opportunities.
While the new hours are optional, many mall stores are contractually bound to follow the mall’s schedule.
Extended weekend hours are changing how retail businesses operate across Quebec. Here, we look inside Carrefour Laval to see how longer hours affect shoppers, workers, and businesses. Video by Emily Douris Blondin.
François Vincent, the Quebec vice-president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, says independent shop owners are divided over the extended hours. A recent CFIB survey found that 48 per cent oppose changing the rules, 40 per cent favour it, and the rest are undecided.
“Some stores may have to re-evaluate whether they continue to be inside a mall and change their hours; this is the same situation that we have in other provinces,” Vincent said.
For many, the biggest hurdle isn’t competition, but staffing. Damien Silès, General Director of the Retail Council of Quebec, says finding workers, especially for late or early shifts, remains a critical challenge.
The CQCD estimates more than 12,000 retail jobs are currently vacant, mostly outside Montreal.
A Walmart employee stocking shelves during his newly extended shift as part of Quebec’s pilot project. Photo by Dario De Felice.
“Stores will also have to calculate costs such as more electricity for staying open later and paying security guards and staff to know if it is worth it for them in terms of revenue,” Silès says. The council isn’t opposed to the government’s plan, but says more time and data are needed.
“So far, we definitely did not see an overwhelming number of people running into stores after 5 p.m., but now we will have to see how the rest of the province will react to the project,” Silès adds.
One of the reasons behind Quebec’s Act restricting business hours is to respect employees’ work-life balance. While much has changed in the retail space since the Act went into effect several decades ago, the TUAC 500 union, which represents retail workers across the province, argues the need to protect work-life balance remains unchanged.
“A lot of our workers are extremely worried,” says Rosannie Filato, director at the Montreal office of the TUAC 500 union. “We are especially worried about young workers, as they are often the ones who end up closing the stores. Instead of finishing at 9 p.m., they could be working until 11 or midnight, making it harder to study.”
Walmart Canada is one of the stores that chose to extend their hour at their Laval locations under the pilot project. Filato believes that could force others to follow suit.
“When we have big American corporations saying they will open late because they don’t mind that their workers don’t have any quality of life, it’s going to force other employers to open later to compete,” she says.
Filato says that stores expanding their hours will not necessarily create more jobs. It will instead lead to longer shifts for current employees and pressure for them to stay later.
Shoppers pass through a mall in Laval, Que., as extended opening hours aim to give customers more flexibility and businesses more opportunity. Photo by Dario De Felice.
They also say the extended hours are not even something consumers want put in place. According to a Léger poll commissioned by the United Food and Commercial Workers, two-thirds of Quebecers do not see the need to be able to shop for groceries after 9 p.m. Meanwhile, 78 per cent see the current working hours regulations as a way to protect employees’ work-life balance. Seventy-three per cent believe that extended hours would benefit very large stores and harm small businesses.
In the province of Ontario, there are no restrictions on retail hours, with stores being allowed to stay open 24 hours a day. Currently, some Toronto-area Walmart locations are open from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day of the week.
It remains to be seen whether Walmart will implement the same hours in Quebec under the new regulations and how many other stores will follow suit.
A shopper taking advantage of Walmart’s extended shopping hours in Laval, Que. Photo by Dario De Felice.
Abraham says he understands the reasoning behind extending hours on weekdays, but does not think they are needed on the weekends.
“We haven’t seen more people shopping after 5 p.m. on the weekend, so I don’t see how extending the hours even more makes sense,” he says.
Abraham admits he will have to continue adapting his schedule as Quebec’s extended hours take effect.
