Quebec’s Ministère de l’Agriculture, des Pêcheries et de l’Alimentation du Québec (MAPAQ) doesn’t only inspect restaurants. Grocery stores fall under its watch too, and one Montreal supermarket just found that out the hard way.
Marché C&T, located on Boulevard Laurentien in Ahuntsic-Cartierville, currently appears on MAPAQ’s list of suspended food permits, a public registry of businesses whose operating licence has been pulled over food safety concerns.
Under Quebec’s Food Products Act, a permit suspension happens when an establishment is flagged as a “risque supérieur,” meaning the operator isn’t effectively controlling risks on-site, usually after inspectors find the same issue more than once.
That’s exactly what happened here. MAPAQ’s public database of food safety convictions shows the Montreal location was fined three separate times over the past year, each time for the same violation: failing to keep the premises, equipment, and utensils used to handle food clean enough to meet provincial standards.
Three health inspection fines
- A violation dated March 21, 2025 led to a $1,600 fine, judged February 16, 2026
- A violation dated May 7, 2025 led to a $3,000 fine, judged December 2, 2025
- A violation dated September 16, 2025 led to a $3,500 fine, judged April 15, 2026
That’s $8,100 in fines within a year, all tied to the same recurring cleanliness problem.
Another location fined
MAPAQ’s records also show a fourth fine tied to the same operator, 9259-7269 Québec Inc., but at a separate Marché C&T location, this one at 8200 Boulevard Taschereau in Brossard. That fine ($500) came from a different kind of violation: as a retail business, the store’s bulk display of live bivalve molluscs didn’t include the required labelling identifying the harvest zone and harvest date, information that matters for food safety traceability with shellfish specifically.
That violation was dated October 16, 2025, judged February 9, 2026, and published February 17, 2026.
The Brossard location isn’t under a permit suspension, and its violation is unrelated to the cleanliness issues behind the Montreal suspension. But it does mean the same operator has now been fined at two separate stores within the same general timeframe.
What happens next?
A suspended permit isn’t permanent. The business needs to correct whatever’s driving the “risque supérieur” designation, and MAPAQ needs to confirm the location meets safety standards again before it’s allowed to reopen.
Is it still safe to shop there?
A fine or even a suspension doesn’t necessarily mean a store is unsafe to visit once it reopens. When a suspended establishment is cleared to resume operations, it means MAPAQ has confirmed the underlying issues were fixed and follow-up inspections showed compliance. Suspensions specifically exist for situations serious enough to warrant immediate action, but reopening only happens once the health risk has actually been addressed.
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