Secularism has long been a hot button issue in Quebec, and now the province is fighting back. Bill 21, which bans the wearing of religious symbols in public schools, has been challenged by the Supreme Court of Canada, and the PQ government, which leads in the polls and supports most of this stuff, also wants to ban elementary school students from wearing religious symbols.
00:01:32.200What you're seeing now is a competition between the two nationalist parties to see who is willing to go furthest in passing illiberal policies to make it more and more difficult for minorities to choose to be different.
00:01:46.060The antagonism that the Quebec government is creating within the Muslim population is not healthy.
00:02:11.620All right, let's get back to the action.
00:02:13.100In the 1940s and 50s, the Catholic Church had huge influence in Quebec, running schools and hospitals and dictating a lot of moral standards.
00:02:24.920In the 60s, Quebecers pushed back with the Quiet Revolution.
00:02:28.940The government gradually assumed control of health and education, and the church's influence gradually waned as Quebec modernized.
00:02:37.280The question of secularism seemed settled.
00:02:55.120And in the years that followed, there was a kind of frenzy in Quebec.
00:02:59.380A small town tried to adopt a bizarre code of conduct targeting Muslims.
00:03:03.820And there were shock headlines about various reasonable accommodations for religious groups.
00:03:09.780There was a public inquiry, recommendations, and various proposed laws.
00:03:14.920The one that finally stuck was the CAQ's Bill 21.
00:03:18.680That law prevents certain civil servants, including judges, prosecutors, police, and teachers, from wearing religious symbols while at work.
00:03:27.340And while the bill is being challenged before the Supreme Court of Canada, when Bill 21 passed, Francois Legault said essentially the question of secularism in Quebec had been settled, and now we could all move on.
00:03:41.900The controversy over an elementary school in Montreal reignited the debate.
00:03:48.060A government investigation found that a group of mostly Muslim teachers had created a toxic work environment at Bedford Elementary School.
00:03:56.660Among other things, the group dissuaded girls from playing soccer, avoided teaching sex ed, and sometimes prayed or spoke Arabic in class.
00:04:07.080Now, many note that the school administration was well aware of these problems for years but failed to act.
00:04:13.080But despite that, the CAQ said new, tougher rules were necessary.
00:04:18.600The education minister introduced new legislation that would extend the ban on religious symbols to include not just teachers, but all school staff, including lunch and after-school monitors, even volunteers.
00:04:33.280Now the premier says he'll introduce legislation banning prayer anywhere in public.
00:04:38.420And it's not just the CAQ, the PQ, which leads in the polls and supports most of this stuff, also wants to ban elementary school students from wearing religious symbols.
00:04:53.860Why is this the issue that never goes away in Quebec?
00:04:58.400Some say it's connected to that history.
00:05:00.640They lived it in the Catholic Church for years, for decades, not to say centuries, and decided that they didn't want it to be brought into other religious groups.
00:05:14.520Others say it's also connected to Quebecers' pride in their own unique identity.
00:05:18.640People have to realize that there's a very, very important consensus on this in Quebec, and that Quebec shows, again, it's a distinct society, as some people would like to continue to coin it.
00:05:33.060It's true Quebec's brand of secularism is different.
00:05:36.660Perhaps secularism isn't even the right word.
00:05:39.680It's no longer about secularism in the way that it's understood by the Supreme Court of Canada and in the rest of Canada, I would argue.
00:05:47.720I think it's become this much more muscular idea, in French, laïcité, an English term, which I'm not sure is a word, but laïcité, in Quebec, which I think has a very different flavor and a very different understanding of what's going on.
00:06:05.760Laïcité is about more than just separating church and state.
00:06:09.540It's really about separating religion from the public sphere.
00:06:13.520There's this belief or this perception that once you wear your religious symbol as a start, whether it be the hijab, anything, any scarf, cross, kippah, star game, anything, you are sending a message, and you are somehow indirectly influencing people who are easily influenced.
00:06:33.260Some people feel the enthusiasm for secularism or laïcité or whatever you want to call it in Quebec isn't really about protecting Quebecers and Quebec values.
00:06:47.980The motivation for Bill 21 was never actually to come to some sort of a societal compromise.
00:07:54.380What has worked is passing policies to target the rights of minorities.
00:07:59.300But for supporters of secularism, the debate really is about much more than just politics.
00:08:05.180There's always politics involved when you draft bills and have laws adopted.
00:08:11.620But in this case, you know, there's a really large consensus on this issue.
00:08:17.280All parties, you know, have agreed to some extent that the principle of secularism is the principle that should be implemented in Quebec.
00:08:26.100The CAQ has traditionally defended Bill 21 and other secularism measures that suspend constitutional rights as simply reflecting the will of the people.
00:08:35.980But some argue that the whole reason we have a constitution is to protect minorities from laws, even popular ones, that overreach.
00:08:46.780If LGBTQ people become unpopular, are we going to take away their rights?
00:08:50.840If English-speaking people become unpopular, are we going to take away their rights?
00:08:54.140If Black people become unpopular, are we going to take away their rights?
00:08:57.200If immigrants become unpopular, are we going to take away their rights?
00:09:00.020We have to decide as a society, are our rights worth more than a popularity contest?
00:09:06.280Clearly what the government and the PQ are telling us is no.
00:09:10.060Some experts say using secularism to score political points has its limits and may even backfire.
00:09:17.320Measures that reinforce secularism may perform well in the polls, but that doesn't necessarily mean they'll win votes.
00:09:24.620Take the PQ's Charter of Values, a precursor to Bill 21 that proposed banning all civil servants from wearing religious symbols.
00:09:33.460If we go back to 2013-2014, the idea of the Charter of Values was popular with most voters in Quebec, especially among Francophone voters.
00:09:44.600And yet, when the PQ ran on it, it didn't really work.
00:09:48.400The PQ lost that election, and Delaire says political parties now could learn from that experience.
00:09:54.760Those explosive issues, they become very interesting when you want to shake up things, because they have the power to shake up things, but they also have the power to sometimes explode in your hands as well.
00:10:06.740Even some who support Bill 21 say there may be limits in pushing secularism.
00:10:12.240Maybe Monsieur Legault will lose points on this at this point, because maybe he is going too far when, for example, he wants to press prayers in the streets.
00:10:20.480Many Muslim immigrants come to Quebec from Francophone countries, which should make it easier for them to integrate.
00:10:50.480We were told that we were equals, and that we would be able to contribute to society and benefit from society the same as everybody else.
00:10:57.880We're turning on the TV, and the people that are supposed to be representing us and our leaders are telling society that we're dangerous, and we don't share their values, and we need to be controlled, and our visibility needs to be hidden, and we need to be tucked away.
00:11:13.080Some experts even think that by aggressively pushing secularism, Quebec may end up right back where it started before the Quiet Revolution.
00:11:23.820You know, the Roman Catholic Church and its dominance in Quebec society was a kind of isolation for Quebec, and what is happening now is a use of laïcité and secularism in that more muscular form in Quebec to create a new isolationism for Quebec.
00:11:43.840That is not the way that you build a modern, vibrant French nation in North America, by taking your most educated and Francophone bastion of immigrants and telling them and passing laws that drive them insane.
00:12:02.900Bill 21 will be argued before the Supreme Court, and the PQ and the CAQ's secularism proposals will be debated during the election campaign next fall.
00:12:13.260You know, in France, secularism and the principles, it was implemented in 1905, you know, 120 years ago, and it's, there's still some debate in France, so yeah, it's going to continue in Quebec.
00:12:28.820Alright, so there's definitely a lot to unpack here. Let's get into it.
00:12:32.240Now, just to start off, I want to preface this by saying that I believe in the Constitution, and I believe in freedom of expression, and I don't want to sit here and vilify Muslims or tell you that Muslims are bad.
00:12:41.740I also want to point out that YouTube has rules against hate speech, so I also want to make it really clear that I don't hate Muslims, and I'm not advocating for hatred against Muslims.
00:13:42.780But they shouldn't be doing it in public, bothering other people, pushing the religions down people's throats.
00:13:48.120That's unacceptable, and as Canadians, we should not tolerate that.
00:13:51.680Now, my thoughts on organized religion, and you may or may not agree with this,
00:13:55.000is that organized religion, for the most part, has mostly outgrown its usefulness.
00:13:58.760Yes, it may have had its purpose in the 1st and 2nd millennia AD, but I don't think it's quite as useful or as necessary as it once was.
00:14:07.280Now, it's funny, because if you look at statistics, most people in Europe and North America are actually moving away from organized religion.
00:14:13.600However, we're opening our doors or borders to people that come from countries that are very religious.
00:14:18.820Now, there's nothing necessarily wrong with allowing Muslims to come to Western countries, and I'm not trying to make that argument.
00:14:23.720But I am saying there is a problem when we're too tolerant, and we're not doing enough to make sure that people from these other countries are assimilating and adopting Western norms.
00:14:33.140And also, like I was saying earlier, I don't like it when people push the religion onto other people.
00:14:37.820So that being said, I fully support 100% Quebec moving forward with this law.
00:14:42.800We can have no prayers in public, and no religious garments while you're holding public office.