In May of 2024, the National Assembly of Québec renewed Bill 21, the ‘secularism law’ that forbids public sector employees from wearing religious symbols while working. Using the Charter’s notwithstanding clause, the Assembly has protected the legislation until 2029. In doing so, it also renewed the endless debate Canada has engaged in since the Bill’s passage in 2019.
It is a common maxim across the political spectrum that, in order to fight something, one must first understand it. This is a correct prognosis of the issue when it comes to Québec’s Bill 21,. Much has been said about the law, passed by Québec’s right-wing Coalition Avenir Québec in 2019, but much less has been understood (at least in English Canada). Bill 21 did not drop out of the sky, nor did Québec’s long entanglement with secularism generally. Especially for Marxists, it is important to analyze these trends in their historical and material context. It is only through a proper understanding that we can begin to struggle against Bill 21 and the repressive strain of ‘closed secularism’ that it embodies.
Québec’s fight against national oppression and the rise of secularism
Québec has a long history of national oppression, first at the hands of the British and then the Canadian state.Catholicism was a defining institution in the colony of New France, and continued to be an anchoring force in the territory after the British conquest in 1759. In fact, the British supported the Catholic Church in Quebec to maintain the feudal order.
But while the Catholic Church remained popular in Québec for two centuries after British rule began, its power was debased with the Quiet Revolution in 1960. A new generation of Quebecers looked back on their history and saw the Church not as a progressive or protective force, but as fundamentally repressive. It is now believed that the Catholic Church in Québec was responsible for the ‘backwardness’ of the province that existed well into the 1900s. Many Quebecers were disgruntled with how the Church had miseducated its congregations, promoted agriculture over industry, discriminated against marginalized populations, and pushed the colony into Confederation.
The Quiet Revolution created a strong anti-clericalist trend that made secularism the political norm in Québec. The early 1960s saw massive social and institutional changes in the province, including the nationalization of Church-owned and -run property, including hospitals, schools, and public parks. This period also saw a decrease in church attendance and religious affiliation. Quebecers sought freedom from control by the Catholic Church while also fighting against national oppression from the Canadian state.
But as separatist nationalism died down after two failed secession referenda in 1980 and 1995, that centrality shifted once more: this time, onto a nationalistic secularism.
Secularism has been an important component of Québec’s political landscape since the Quiet Revolution, but it only really became a prominent force in the 2000s. Prior to this, it was drowned out by the debates over language, nationalism, and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. With the aspiration for secession more or less undone, secularism took a front seat in the new millennia. In 2007, Premier Jean Charest created the Consultation Commission on Accommodation Practices Related to Cultural Differences, commonly known as the Bouchard-Taylor Commission. It aimed to resolve the ‘reasonable accommodation’ debate that had plagued Québec’s political discourse for some time; the question, essentially, was to what extent religious minorities were entitled to state accommodation for their particular religious practices. While Bouchard and Taylor produced a conclusive final report, the debate continued; that is, until the CAQ under Premier François Legault passed Bill 21 in 2019, effectively ending the rhetorical debate over secularism.
From freedom from the Church to discrimination against minorities
As stated, Bill 21 did not come out of nowhere, but has clear historical and material roots tracing from the historical dominance of the Catholic Church to the Quiet Revolution through the early 2000s. Bill 21 is an understandable though unfortunate outcome of centuries of history. The problem, for our purposes as socialists, is what to do about it. The problem is not that Québec wants to pursue a secularist path, but that the particular model of secularism outlined by Bill 21 is repressive and discriminatory. As has been well-noted, Bill 21 substantively discriminates against particular religious minorities such as Muslim women, Sikh men, and other religious minorities who wear religious symbols. In other words, while Bill 21 appeals to the historical fight for national liberation against Church power, its substantive impact is to increase the oppression of religious minorities and to divide the working class.
Putting Bill 21 in perspective is important for the popular struggle against it. Therefore, we should acknowledge that Bill 21 constitutes a derailment of Québec’s popular model of cultural diversity. Whereas English Canada has officially sanctioned multiculturalism as the policy for diverse groups and cultures in Canada, Québec has put forward a different approach: interculturalism. Interculturalism is not well understood outside of Québec, which hampers the ability of English Canada to effectively challenge this law. Interculturalism promotes not just the mere existence of many nations, cultures, and languages in a single space (which is multiculturalism), but an ongoing dialogue between these groups. It is about achieving integration via exchanges of ideas and beliefs between groups.
Interculturalism is also about establishing frameworks for protecting both majority and minority rights. While the majority nation in Québec, the Québécois, support secularism, religious freedom is of incredible importance to various minority groups in the province. According to the dialogue of interculturalism, both these things can be achieved, by passing a law enshrining a model of ‘open secularism,’ whereby both religious freedom and state neutrality are protected. Bill 21 departs from the concept of interculturalism in favour of a hardline ‘secularism’ that ultimately infringes upon the rights of minority groups in the province.
Putting Bill 21 in perspective also requires us to undertake a sociological analysis. While media reportage often leaves those of us in English Canada to believe that Bill 21 is universally condemned, it actually enjoys popular support in Québec, in large part because it actualizes the project of creating a distinct society. Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet has claimed that it has the support of 70% of Québec’s population. Another estimate places support for the Bill at 64%. However, the target of the bill is a dominant church institution, but religious and ethnic minority groups in public sector jobs. Nevertheless, if we wish to push the Québec government in an intercultural direction, our strategy must account for the sentiments of the majority as well as the minority.
Support Québec self-determination and religious freedom
Part of Québec’s national identity is embedded in this aspiration for the creation of a secular society. In seeking to develop the province along the destiny of a ‘distinct society,’ Québécois nationalists have relied on the past as much as the future. That is, memories of English domination and Church exploitation – followed by the oppression by the Canadian state – inform modern sensibilities about Québécois autonomy and secularism. This leads to the conclusion that the Québécois identity contributes to the protection of secularism in two ways: historic memory, and modern atheistic sensibilities. While Bill 21 does not affect the rights of the majority population of Québécois Christians and Atheists (who do not wear religious symbols), it serves to divide workers by maliciously appealing to these groups. With the public sector facing austerity, there is a need for workers to unite across religious lines – but instead the conservative Bill 21 scapegoats religious minority workers.
Despite the failures of the current model, secularism has a place in Québec. This is not just about the liberal democratic impulse for a strong separation of Church and state, but a historical development that began with the Quiet Revolution. The problem with the existing model of secularism (Bill 21), however, is that it targets religious minorities. Socialists, if they want to be effective, should be committed to understanding as much as combatting. It is only through proper understanding that Bill 21 can be successfully challenged. For socialists in English Canada, this means understanding Quebec’s historic struggle for national liberation, how this has been deflected to target religious minorities and divide workers, and the need to build a united movement.
Photo by @ibourgeault_tasse.
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