The lieutenant governor of Quebec is appointed in the same manner as the other provincial viceroys in Canada and is similarly tasked with carrying out most of the monarch's constitutional and ceremonial duties.

For instance, upon installation, the lieutenant governor automatically becomes a Knight or Dame of Justice and the Vice-Prior in Quebec of the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem.

It has been argued by Jeremy Webber and Robert Andrew Young that, as the office is the core of authority in the province, the secession of Quebec from the Confederation would first require the abolition or transformation of the post of lieutenant governor of Quebec; such an amendment to the constitution of Canada could not be done without, according to Section 41 of the Constitution Act, 1982, the approval of the federal parliament and all other provincial legislatures in Canada.

The shortest mandate by a lieutenant governor of Quebec was that of Sir Lomer Gouin, from January to March 1929, while the longest was Hugues Lapointe, from 1966 to 1978.

[13] The appointment of Jean-Louis Roux as lieutenant governor of Quebec by Governor General Roméo LeBlanc, on the advice of Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, stirred controversy, as Roux was well known as a strong opponent of Quebec independence and, soon after he took up the post, it was revealed that, as a university student in the 1940s, he had worn a swastika on his lab coat in protest of the proposal to invoke conscription for service in World War II and had participated in an antisemitic protest.