How to open a med spa in Quebec: costs, licences and timeline

By the team at New Age Spa · Updated 29 August 2026 · Sources checked 29 August 2026

Most guides to opening a med spa are written for the United States. They will tell you about a medical director, state boards and an LLC. None of that is how it works here, and following it will cost you months.

This is the Quebec version, with every regulatory claim linked to the body that makes the rule: what the money goes to, who is allowed to do what, the registrations in the order you actually need them, and an honest look at the calendar you are walking into.

What does it cost to open?

No government or industry body publishes a start-up cost for a Canadian medical aesthetics clinic, and any guide that quotes one without saying where it came from invented it. We are not going to invent one either, and we do not publish our own numbers. What we can give you is more useful: every line you will actually pay, what pushes each one up or down, and how to turn that into a real figure for your own market.

The only way to a number you can trust is quotes — from a contractor who has walked your unit, a supplier who has priced your device list, and a landlord who has named the term. Everything below tells you what to ask them for.

The last row is the one that closes clinics. A treatment room earns nothing while it is empty, and a new clinic's calendar does not fill in week one. Fund six months of rent, payroll and marketing before you open, or you will be making pricing decisions out of fear by month four. We go through this line by line in what it costs to open a med spa in Canada.

What the government will actually lend against

Here the numbers are published. Under the Canada Small Business Financing Program, a borrower can access up to $1.15 million in total. Of that, up to $1,000,000 is available as term loans, and no more than $500,000 of it may go to leasehold improvements and equipment combined — with a further sub-cap of $150,000 for intangible assets and working capital. The programme covers up to 90% of eligible costs.¹

That $500,000 sub-cap is the number to design your build around: a fit-out and a device list that together land under it are financeable through a chartered bank on a federal guarantee. Above it you are into BDC or vendor finance for the balance. The full comparison, including Quebec grant programmes, is in how to finance a med spa in Canada.

Buying the device or leasing it

Buying is cheaper over the life of the machine and heavier at the worst possible moment. Leasing keeps the opening cheque small and converts the risk into a fixed monthly cost you must earn against every month, busy or slow. Neither is wrong. What decides it is how much runway you have left after the build-out — and if the answer is "not much", lease. See lease or buy your equipment and what a laser machine costs in Canada.

Who is allowed to own a clinic, and who is allowed to treat in it?

These are two separate questions and conflating them is the single most common mistake.

Ownership in Quebec is open. Estheticians are not governed by a professional order, and no rule reserves clinic ownership to a health professional. Anyone who can register a business can own one. More on that in who can own a med spa in Quebec.

Performing the treatments is where the limits live, and the Collège des médecins du Québec draws them widely. Its position statement defines aesthetic medicine as « tout acte technique médical non chirurgical, réalisé à l'aide de tout instrument, substance, produit injectable ou dispositif utilisant toute forme d'énergie » — any non-surgical medical technical act performed with any instrument, substance, injectable product or device using any form of energy, for aesthetic purposes.²

On injections the position is unambiguous. They are performed by physicians; a nurse may administer treatment under an individual prescription from a physician, and an auxiliary nurse at the prescribing physician's office. The CMQ also requires that the prescribing physician remain reachable and available within 15 minutes of an injection procedure, so that a complication can be managed and an antidote given if needed.² That single requirement decides whether an injectables offer is realistic in your building before any question of cost arises.

The practical version: you can own the clinic, hire qualified people, and never touch a handpiece yourself. What you cannot do is put a service on the menu that nobody on your team is legally qualified to perform. Because the CMQ's definition reaches devices using any form of energy, have a lawyer review your specific intended menu before you sign a lease — the menu sets the room count, the device and the payroll, so it has to be settled first. We cover the boundary in what you can and cannot offer without a physician and the injectables question in who can inject in Quebec.

The registrations, in the order you need them

1. Choose the structure. Incorporation or sole proprietorship. Talk to an accountant before you register anything — the choice affects tax, liability and how you will eventually sell.
2. Register with the Registraire des entreprises du Québec and receive your NEQ, the ten-digit Quebec enterprise number. Registration is mandatory as soon as you trade under a business name rather than your own.³
3. Register for GST and QST. Aesthetic services are taxable supplies. You may stay unregistered only while you are a small supplier — taxable supplies of $30,000 or less over four consecutive calendar quarters.⁴ A clinic passes that in its first months, so register up front rather than crossing the line mid-quarter. Registering also lets you claim input tax credits on the build-out and the device, which at this stage is real money. Step by step in registering a clinic business in Quebec.
4. Municipal permits and zoning. This varies by borough and it is the step most likely to surprise you — check the zoning for the specific address before the lease is signed, not after.
5. Insurance. General liability, equipment, and professional liability covering every service you offer. Read what voids it; some policies exclude specific devices.
6. Verify the device is licensed. Aesthetic lasers and IPL platforms are medical devices in Canada. Class II, III and IV devices need an active Medical Device Licence, and only licensed devices may be marketed here. Look the licence up yourself in Health Canada's Medical Devices Active Licence Listing — it is free, public and searchable by device or company name.⁵ How to read it: is that laser Health Canada licensed?

What Quebec does differently

You are opening a bilingual business, legally

Under the Charter of the French Language, a business offering goods or services to Quebec consumers must respect their right to be informed and served in French, and that obligation extends to catalogues, brochures, flyers and any other commercial document — printed or online on a website. Websites and social media must be available in French; another language may be offered in addition. The Office québécois de la langue française publishes the guidance for businesses.⁶

In practice this means the French version is not a nice-to-have you get to later — it is part of launching. Budget for it as content, not as translation, because a mechanically translated site reads like one and clients notice.

The calendar is not flat

Aesthetic demand in Quebec moves hard with the seasons. Laser work concentrates in the darker months and thins out in summer; November behaves unlike any other month in the year. A clinic that opens without a plan for the quiet weeks discovers the problem at the worst possible time to be learning it — see the month-by-month calendar.

The market is dense and price-aware

Greater Montreal has a lot of clinics and clients who compare openly. Competing on price against an established room is a losing position for a new one. Competing on what you can prove — results, staff, honest pricing published in the open — is not. More in the Quebec med spa market.

A realistic 120-day timeline

Four months is the fast version and it assumes financing is already arranged. Six is more common. Plan the lease start date around that, because rent begins whether or not the permit did. The detail is in how long it takes to open a med spa, and the document your lender will ask for first is covered in how to write a med spa business plan.

Three ways in, not one

Build your own. Total control, lowest fees, and every mistake is yours to fund. Best if you have operated in the industry and know what a full appointment book actually requires.

Buy an existing clinic. You inherit a client list and staff on day one, and also whatever is wrong with the business. What you are really buying is the rebooking rate; ask for it before you ask for anything else. See buying an existing med spa versus opening a new one.

Take a franchise. You trade fees and independence for a tested model, training, supply and a brand clients already know. It suits an operator who wants to run a clinic rather than invent one. The honest comparison is in open your own clinic or buy a franchise.

New Age Spa operates four clinics in Greater Montreal and New Age Academy, and is opening the model to franchise partners in Quebec. If the third route is the one you are weighing, the numbers behind it are shared with candidates under NDA — not published on a blog.

Talk to us about a franchise

General information for people planning a business in Quebec — not legal, tax or accounting advice. Regulations change; confirm scope of practice, permits and tax obligations with your own advisors and with the bodies linked above before committing. This page publishes no cost figures of its own: the only amounts quoted are the published limits of the federal financing programme and the sales-tax threshold linked above. Nothing here is a representation of the financial performance of any New Age Spa location or franchise. This page is not an offer to sell a franchise; where the law requires one, an offer is made only by disclosure document.