Quebec Has Become a Bastion of Religious Intolerance

Premier François Legault wants to ban prayers in public spaces, his latest crusade for religious intolerance. 

Legault’s rationale is that Quebec is a secular state, as reinforced by “Quebec values.” He isn’t the first politician to use Quebec nationalism as a pretext for religious suppression.

In 2013, Premier Pauline Marois, with the Parti Québécois, proposed to ban religious symbols from public institutions. Banning private religious schools, particularly Jewish schools in Montreal, has been at the core of public debate since Jean Charest. 

However, this is not about protecting Quebec values — this is about hatred of “invasive” religions. Even the Quiet Revolution of René Lévesque had priests as ministers, and Lévesque was himself a supporter of religion in public life.

Raymond Gravel, a Catholic priest, was a Member of Parliament for the Bloc Québécois. Can you imagine what the public reaction might be if an imam, a rabbi, or a pujari was elected to the legislature? We already know how that would go. 

Since taking office, Legault has made laïcité through force a central tenet of his government. He has banned “ostentatious” religious symbols from public service, removed religious imagery from political institutions, including removing the Crucifix from the Salon Bleu, and wants to go further. 

The government has even decried “Islamism in schools,” of which there is no evidence beyond fabricated social media disinformation. Muslims are now expected to stop praying in public because it is “scary” — an expectation more Maoist than Canadian. All while this government and its supporters deny religious bigotry even exists.

To further remove all doubt that this is anti-democratic vitriol, Legault has repeatedly used the Notwithstanding Clause to push his policies through. The clause is an assault on equal rights and inclusive democracy, particularly as socially repressive Quebec governments like this one have used it to ram down measures that restrict individual freedoms. Legault wants to use it again. 

Public displays of devotion are part of many religions. Most of Quebec’s religious population has outward-facing rituals, be it a cross, kippah, khimar, kirpan, or prayer itself. Studies show exposure, not segregation, helps normalize diversity and integration — in other words, Quebec can’t expect people to live comfortably together while it denies entire populations their rights as human beings. Research bares this out. Religious freedom makes societies freer, richer, and more innovative. 

A secularist might respond that “they are shoving their religion down our throats.” In free societies, individuals don’t get offended at someone wearing different clothes than them, speaking different languages than them, or praying to a different God. Freedom can feel like oppression to the fragilely intolerant. No one is harmed by preaching; if you don't like it, just ignore it or leave.

Like it or not, religion plays a fundamental role in how people, and societies, form their values. When you tell a religious person that they cannot peaceably practice their faith, you effectively rob them of their identity, denying them a critical part of who they are. Even Franco-Québécois laïcité traces its roots back to cultural Catholicism.

In a free country, religious people should not have Molotov cocktails thrown at their community centres. They should not lose their jobs for wearing a religious garment. They should not have their places of worship burned down. Religious people know which way the wind is blowing. Laws like this will worsen this horrific hostility, and therefore these horrific trends. Religious Quebecers already feel less safe than ever before. Some are beginning to leave the province. 

If the goal is to drive away anyone who thinks differently, then Quebec is doing a great job. But if Quebecers want to live in a society where everyone can be the truest versions of themselves, then, laïcité or not, religious freedom — including the ability to practice in public — is an absolute necessity. 

In 1967, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau declared that there is “no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Now, we must affirm that there is no place for the state in the nation’s prayer books, either.