The watchword of all secularism projects is “neutrality”, but Quebec secularism in its current form is not neutral. Rather, it is biased against religious institutions and people of faith.
Newsroom (05/06/2025 1:05 , Gaudium Press) Quebec’s religious leaders are pushing back against a troubling trend: the province’s so-called laïcité (secularism) is no longer a neutral framework for governance but an ideological weapon wielded to exclude faith from public life.
The latest warning comes from an ecumenical coalition, spearheaded by Quebec’s Catholic bishops, which submitted a brief to the province’s secularism review committee in May 2025. Their message was clear: “Secularism must not become the preserve of anti-religious militants.”
Yet that is precisely what is happening. Under Premier François Legault’s government, secularism has morphed from a principle of state neutrality into an aggressive campaign to sideline religious communities—particularly those that dissent from Quebec’s progressive orthodoxy.
A Secularism That Isn’t Neutral
Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) came to power in 2018 promising to avoid divisive independence referendums. Instead, it has pursued a different kind of nation-building—one that enforces a rigid, state-defined identity centered on the French language and an increasingly militant secularism.
This vision has been codified in laws like Bill 21, which bans public-sector workers from wearing religious symbols, and Bill 96, which reinforces French as Quebec’s sole official language. Both laws rely on the notwithstanding clause to shield them from constitutional challenges—a telling admission that they conflict with fundamental rights.
Now, Bill 84—the CAQ’s latest effort to define Quebec’s “common culture”—explicitly lists secularism as a core value, alongside gender equality and the French language. But what does this secularism actually entail?
According to former Parti Québécois leader Jean-François Lisée, it is not mere neutrality but an active rejection of religious influence.
In a 2021 article in Le Devoir, Lisée trumpeted Bill 21 as “feminist, anti-discriminatory and avant-garde.” In contrast, he denigrated the “great religions” as “fundamentally misogynistic and opposed to equality between men and women.”
The CAQ has embraced this view, treating faith not as a legitimate part of civil society but as a threat to Quebec’s progressive project.
The Exclusion of Believers
The consequences are already apparent. In 2023, an evangelical Christian group’s contract with a government-owned convention center was abruptly canceled because of its pro-life stance—despite organizers insisting the event was about worship, not activism.
Tourism Minister Caroline Proulx justified the decision by declaring such events “against the fundamental principles of Quebec.” Premier Legault went further, vowing to ban public prayer in certain spaces and even floating the use of the notwithstanding clause to do so.
Now, Bloc Québécois leader Yves-François Blanchet wants to expand Bill 21’s religious symbol ban to federal workers in Quebec, calling church and state “fundamentally incompatible.”
A Dangerous Precedent
This is not secularism—it is state-enforced atheism. True secularism ensures that government remains neutral, not that citizens must abandon their beliefs to participate in public life.
Quebec’s religious leaders are right to resist. A society that excludes faith communities from the public square is not a tolerant one—it is an authoritarian one. If Quebecers value freedom, they must push back before this ideological secularism becomes irreversible.
The question is no longer whether Quebec will remain distinct—but whether it will remain free.
- Raju Hasmukh with files from Catholic Register
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