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Quebec stands out in North America as the sole jurisdiction with laws that limit language and religious rights. In recent years, it has banned public servants from wearing religious symbols and taken recent steps to further restrict the use of English.  

These are controversial laws, and they have been widely condemned outside French Quebec. But this criticism overlooks a fundamental distinction: It’s always been easier for English Canada to preserve language and identity. It doesn’t need laws to do it.  

As a minority in North America, French Quebec has always had to use state intervention to ensure the survival of its language and culture. That makes it an outsider on this side of the Atlantic. An outlier. And with the politics of language and religion colliding, it is all too easy to cast Quebec as the villain.  

The accusations and counteraccusations of intolerance only keep the country fractured, which is particularly counterproductive at this moment in our history when Canada’s very sovereignty is under threat. Canadians need to better understand a basic point: The ultimate objective of Quebec’s laws is inclusion not exclusion, the construction and protection of a distinct culture and social model. Dialogue demands mutual respect, even more so when values collide.   

A closed society?  

The ban on religious symbols (Bill 21) is being contested, and so are the English restrictions for businesses and the public service (Bill 96). Both will come before the Supreme Court of Canada. I don’t envy the judges. 

Thomas Mulcair, former leader of the federal NDP and onetime provincial cabinet minster in Quebec, recently condemned the “decline of rights in Quebec,” the province veering, he suggested, “ever closer to becoming a human-rights backwater.” These are strong words.  

Anyone seeking proof of Quebec’s distain for basic rights need only look at its language laws, starting with the 1977 Charter of the French Language (the landmark Bill 101, which prompted a mass exodus of anglophones). Bill 21 is the icing on the cake. Like Bill 96, it invokes the notwithstanding clause, riding roughshod over the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  

There are also the declarations by the Quebec premier. He has condemned public prayer and warned that immigration poses a threat to the French language. It is easy to conclude that, deep down, Québécois nationalists are anti-immigrant. Xenophobes. The conclusion that Quebec nationalism is intrinsically racist follows naturally.  

Yet were Quebec located in Western Europe, neither its laws nor perceived anti-immigrant rhetoric would raise eyebrows. Quebec might even be hailed as a paragon of tolerance.  

Thirty-five per cent of the French admit to being racist compared with 20 per cent of adults in Quebec (and 50 per cent in the U.S.). Anti-immigrant rhetoric in Europe is far more extreme with some political parties calling for wholesale expulsions.  

Several West European nations have banned the wearing of religious symbols in public workplaces. The European Court of Justice has upheld such bans on at least two occasions, ruling them permissible to attain broader social objectives. The rulings remain controversial.  

Debate is normal in democratic societies, and so it is that Bill 21 remains a subject of debate nearly six years after it passed in Quebec’s National Assembly. What is less normal is the quasi-unanimous condemnation of it and Bill 96 from outside French Quebec.  

I am not entirely happy with either bill. I would not have included schoolteachers in Bill 21. But it is unfair to conclude these laws are a sign of an inherently closed-minded society.  

Indeed, Quebecers are more open to immigration than other Canadians. This past October, 62 per cent of Canadians outside Quebec said they felt there are too many immigrants in Canada, an Environics survey found. That compared to 46 per cent of Quebecers.  

How then are we to explain the contradiction between a society seemingly open to immigration and laws that limit the rights of newcomers in matters of schooling, language, and religion?  

Natural vs. state-sponsored integration  

The first answer is demography. French-speakers remain a small minority in North America (about two per cent) of which they are painfully aware. Until the 1960s, high birth rates allowed francophones to renew their numbers and even settle new lands (Manitoba, Saskatchewan …). Those early francophones, let us remember, were visibly open to racial mixing, giving rise to the Métis nation. 

However, the post-1960 fall in birth rates meant that numbers could henceforth be renewed only by integrating newcomers. This simple fact largely explains why French Quebecers are more open to immigration than other Canadians, with the hope that immigrants will join the French-speaking majority. This brings me to:  

The second answer: integration. Linguistic and cultural integration is the natural norm in English-speaking North America. No laws are needed. The majority of English-speaking Canadians today are most probably of non-British stock. But in Quebec, stranded in an English sea, integration into francophone society has required state intervention, notably enforcing French schooling for immigrant children, the backbone of Bill 101, thus repealing the historical “right” to freely choose the language of instruction.  

Predictably, such legislation was and is still viewed by many as an assault on basic rights. Yet, such legislation can also be viewed differently: the sign of a welcoming society, the opposite of exclusionary: come be part of us.  

Old-stock Québécois are the minority in the French public schools my grandchildren attend, and that indeed is the objective. French Quebec, like English Canada, has become a multiracial society with peoples of different origins sharing a common language. The hope is that they also share a common civic culture. 

Which brings me to religion.  

Here, we come to a collision of world views. French Quebec’s relationship with religion differs from that of the rest of North America. The place of religion in society is viewed less positively, a practice to be contained. No Quebec politician would think of declaiming “God bless Quebec.”  

The declared objective of Bill 21 is the enforcement of a secular (lay) public sector, including education, where the symbols of religion have no place. Its enactment at this point in time can be largely attributed to Muslim immigration and the rise of political Islam. To say otherwise would be hypocritical.   

Yes, polls suggest Quebecers hold a more unfavourable of Islam compared with other Canadians (52 per cent against 39 per cent for ROC). Their perception of all religions, including Christianity, is also less positive, however. But explicitly targeting Muslim symbols (i.e., the hijab), as does some European legislation, would be even more roundly condemned in a Canadian context.  

In January, the Quebec government tabled a framework to integrate immigrants, Bill 84. It primarily sets out guiding principles, among them secularism and the primacy of French. It also expressly rejects multiculturalism in favour of interculturalism. Both concepts continue to be debated. But the distinction is an open break with the federal declared vision of immigrant integration.  

Rights are rights are rights 

In December 1988, Clifford Lincoln, then Quebec minister of environment, resigned from Robert Bourassa’s Liberal government in protest against its use of the notwithstanding clause to shield Bill 178 from judicial review. The bill went on to impose the use of French-only commercial signs. 

“Rights are rights are rights,” Lincoln famously declared. “There is no such thing as inside rights and outside rights. No such thing as rights for the tall and rights for the short,” he added. “There are no partial rights. Rights are fundamental rights.” 

I do not doubt Lincoln’s sincerity. But he was wrong. Language rights are always political compromises. In Switzerland, for example, individual language rights valid across the nation are the exception. Language rights are not included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  

The political nature of language rights is manifest in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Citing the Department of Justice’s interpretive guide : “Unlike other provisions of the Charter, Section 23 and the other language rights are more akin to a right than a freedom (…) Section 23 guarantees both a social and collective right and a civil and individual right.” 

Like all compromises, the Charter’s brave attempt at balancing collective and individual rights leaves room for interpretation. This does it not make the rights concerned less worthy. However, declamations of moral superiority (or condemnations of moral laxity) have no place in this debate.  

More to the point, Quebec’s language laws, consistently condemned in the anglophone media, cannot help but shape perceptions and public discourse. The unfortunate confluence of the politics of language and religion has produced a moralizing discourse in which Quebec is inevitably the villain.  

Nothing better illustrates the mixing of language and religious rights than the English Montreal School Board’s decision to join a coalition contesting Bill 21. The implicit message is clear: We the anglophone community are the natural guardians of liberal values; this school board puts a higher value on religious rights than do French schools.  

To see this as moral clash is counterproductive. The clash is one of conditions. In one, linguistic and cultural integration occurs effortlessly. In the other, it does not. State intervention, especially in personal matters of religion and language, is rarely welcome.  

“Freedom” works where free choice naturally produces desired results. Suspicion of the state is deeply engrained in the North American (especially American) psyche. It’s further buttressed by the Protestant (Calvinist) ethic, the individual in direct communication with God. This is at odds with the Catholic Church, a quasi-state structure that has produced a different view of the responsibility of the state in maintaining social cohesion. After Quebec’s Quiet Revolution, the State (i.e., Quebec) simply replaced the church as the natural guardian of the community.  

Quebec’s social democratic model is a direct outgrowth of its interventionist (some would say, socialist) heritage. Yet again it makes the province an outlier in North America. 

Can this chasm of misunderstanding be bridged?  

Quebec will always be an outsider – a deviant – in North America. Its pre-emptive use of the notwithstanding clause for bills 96 and 21 is certainly open to criticism. But its use by Quebec is a reminder: Canadians do not share a universal view of rights. Can the law accommodate opposing views? The Supreme Court will soon have to decide. Defining which rights are fundamental and which are not will always be a delicate balancing act. Canada was built on compromise. Now more than ever (thank you, Donald Trump), compromise is needed.