Scie certification imposes 1,000 hours before June 8, 2026
Scie enters a new regulatory phase on June 8, 2026: certain municipal employees will need 1,000 hours of arboriculture training before they can handle work at ground level or on a ladder. The rule narrows who can do that work and forces cities to organize training and staffing around a new certification threshold.
1,000 hours is the core requirement under the ARBO-S certification, and the Ministry of Labour said the government adopted the regulation. For municipal employers, the immediate issue is operational: the certificate now sits inside the hiring and training process, not after it.
Granby hiring before June 8
Julie Bourdon, the mairesse de Granby, said the municipality is in the process of hiring an employee to do the training. That is the practical response to the rule: municipalities do not just need staff who can work, they need staff who can document the hours the regulation now demands.
Guillaume Tremblay, president of the Union des municipalités du Québec, is among the municipal figures tied to the debate over how the requirement will be absorbed locally. The pressure lands on city budgets and schedules at the same time, because the certification date arrives on June 8, 2026.
CNESST applies ARBO-S
The CNESST is responsible for applying the regulation, and it said by email to 106.9 Mauricie which interventions require an arboriculture certificate. Planting trees does not require a certificate because it is horticultural work, which leaves a narrower set of municipal tasks inside the new training box.
That distinction matters for crews that move between landscaping, maintenance and tree work. If an employee’s duties include the covered work at ground level or on a ladder, the new requirement applies; if the task is planting trees, the certificate is not needed under the rule described by CNESST.
Employment ministry and the 98,5 issue
The Ministry of Employment issues the certification and invests in the program, but it could not answer the questions raised and referred them to the Ministry of Labour and Education. That split shows how the rule now sits across several public bodies, even though one agency — CNESST — is the one applying it.
101 and 98,5 appear in the background material tied to the coverage, but the operational facts are the ones municipalities have to plan around now: the new ARBO-S certification, the 1,000-hour threshold, and the June 8, 2026 start date. For cities, the immediate next step is to line up training capacity before the rule takes effect.
