For anyone observing today’s Quebec, the fervor with which the majority of Quebecers defend the neutrality of the state may seem surprising, even misunderstood by the rest of North America. Yet this stance is not a passing political whim. To truly grasp the current resistance to Ottawa’s legal assaults and to the claims of certain religious groups, one must dive into the modern history of the province. Quebec’s secularism is the direct product of a major collective emancipation: the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, which saw Quebec radically free itself from the absolute grip of the Catholic Church to build a modern, egalitarian and sovereign state.
How do various religious groups, including Islamism, a growing Muslim population, and other religious minorities who demand recognition of their traditions, currently articulate themselves to transform secularism in Quebec and influence its social values?
To answer this contemporary question, one must understand that Quebec did not reject the domination of one religious dogma only to embrace others fifty years later. Quebecois identity has been built on the refusal to allow religion to dictate behavior in the public space.
The Great Darkness and Clerical Domination
Before the 1960s, Quebec lived under the era historians call the “Great Darkness,” then dominated by the government of Maurice Duplessis and an omnipresent Catholic Church. At that time, the key institutions of society were not under the state, but under the clergy.
- The control of schools: The education system was entirely confessional, divided between Catholics and Protestants. The content of courses, morality, and access to higher education were closely monitored by religious authorities.
- Health care management: Hospitals and social services were administered by religious communities, often nuns who filled the gaps in public infrastructure.
- Social influence: From the pulpit, priests dictated public morals, condemned birth control, and interfered directly in citizens’ political choices, keeping Quebec in rigid conservatism.
This fusion between the Church and the social apparatus created a deep historical trauma. Quebecers paid a heavy price for this institutional submission, which explains their heightened sensitivity today to any attempt to reintroduce religious factors into the state apparatus.
La Révolution tranquille: The Birth of Modern Quebec
The election of Jean Lesage in 1960 marks the beginning of the Quiet Revolution, a 180-degree turn that will redefine Quebec’s DNA. In roughly a decade, the Quebec state takes control of the levers of its development and carries out a massive secularization of its structures.
The government creates the Ministry of Education in 1964, thereby wresting the control of schools from the hands of the bishops. Hospitals are nationalized, and the civil service modernizes in a purely secular manner. This transition from a theocratic society to a post-Catholic society happens at a blazing pace.
An indispensable pillar: The emancipation of Quebec women is intrinsically linked to this secularization. By freeing themselves from Catholic morality, Quebec women gained the right to be educated, to divorce, to enter the labor market, and to control their bodies. That is why, in the Quebec psyche, gender equality and secularism are two sides of the same coin.
From the Decline of Faith to Law 21: The National Consensus
Over the decades, Quebec’s churches have emptied, but the Quebec culture has kept a living memory of this struggle for freedom of conscience. Secularism has moved from an administrative process to a fundamental and non-negotiable identity value. When the debate over reasonable accommodations erupted in the 2000s, Quebec realized that its secular model was fragile, because it was not explicitly inscribed in its laws.
It is this long historical journey that led to the adoption, in 2019, of the State Secularism Act (Law 21). Far from being an exclusionary measure, this law is the logical culmination of the Quiet Revolution. By prohibiting religious symbols for state agents in positions of authority, Quebec protects the rights of citizens, and especially of children in public schools, to receive services that are completely neutral and free from any proselytism, whether of Catholic, Islamist or Evangelical origin.
Facing Canadian Multiculturalism: A Clash of Visions
Today, this historic consensus collides head-on with the Canadian multiculturalism model, embedded in Ottawa’s 1982 Constitution (which Quebec never signed). While the Anglo-Saxon model values the juxtaposition of communities and places individual freedom of religion above all, the Quebec model, inspired by republican ideals, prioritizes social cohesion and the primacy of the common public space.
Quebec rejects the trap of political correctness that would have us tolerate the return of retrograde religious practices or dogmatic pressures within our institutions. Understanding the roots of Quebec’s secularism means recognizing that bending today before federal courts or accommodating requests from traditionalist religious groups would be to renounce the sacrifices of the generations who built modern Quebec. Secularism is not negotiable, because it is the guarantor of our collective freedom.
