Bill 58: Franco-Ontarian Bookstore Promotion and Protection Act, 2025

The most directly affected businesses are Franco-Ontarian bookstores — small, independent French-language bookshops with physical storefronts in Ontario that serve the Franco-Ontarian community through book sales, author events, and cultural programming. These stores would benefit significantly from mandatory purchasing rules that channel all French-language book orders from schools, hospitals, municipalities, government ministries, and other publicly funded institutions exclusively to accredited shops. On the other hand, larger retailers, online platforms, and out-of-province book sellers that currently supply French-language books to Ontario's public sector would lose access to that institutional market entirely. Any bookseller operating in Ontario — whether accredited or not — must also comply with new rules against predatory pricing and disguised advantages like undisclosed discounts or book donations, or risk penalties including loss of accreditation.