Quebec does not have security interests that are perfected. It has hypothecs that are published — and a buyer searches a different register to find them.
Short answer
A movable hypothec is Quebec’s functional equivalent of a security interest, built on a different legal foundation. Article 2660 of the Civil Code of Quebec defines a hypothec as “a real right on movable or immovable property made liable for the performance of an obligation,” conferring on the creditor “the right to follow the property into whatever hands it may come, to take possession of it, to take it in payment, to sell it or to cause it to be sold.” It can be created with or without delivery, and the blanket version — over a whole universality of a business’s movable property — is limited to a person, partnership or trustee operating an enterprise. See Civil Code of Quebec, art. 2660.
Where a PPSA jurisdiction uses perfection by registration, Quebec uses publication. Article 2941 provides that “publication of rights allows them to be set up against third persons, determines their rank” — but “rights produce their effects between the parties even if they are not published.” See Civil Code of Quebec, art. 2941. Ontario’s PPSA defines the underlying concept differently, as “an interest in personal property that secures payment or performance of an obligation” — vocabulary Quebec’s Code does not use. See Personal Property Security Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. P.10, s.1(1).
A buyer of business assets in Quebec searches the RDPRM by the seller's name, not by serial number the way a PPSA search typically runs. The Code presumes the buyer searched: registration puts anyone dealing with the property on notice, the reverse of Ontario's rule that PPSA registration is not itself constructive notice. A hypothec on a universality of movable property generally follows replacement assets sold in the ordinary course of the debtor's business rather than being defeated by the sale — but a buyer taking the whole business as a block is not the ordinary-course purchaser that rule protects.
This particular case-file cluster does not include a Quebec secured-lending file. Case Files: a Bank Act security the PPSA search never held is the Ontario mirror of this exact buyer-diligence question — what a clean registry search does and does not confirm — and the Quebec register mechanics are worked through in the article linked in Sources below.
A 30-minute call is enough to tell you whether AI pays for itself here.
Canadian small-business transaction data is not published anywhere, so most valuations in this country quote an American benchmark. The Deavo–Treadstone Acquisition Index is a daily record of Canadian listings built to replace that: asking-price distributions by province and city are published now, and days on market, departure rates and asking-to-sale spreads follow as the series lengthens. Leave an email and we will tell you as each measure lands.
No pitch, no listings. One email when the first report lands.
