With new bill coming, a brief history of secularism under Legault's government

François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec government is preparing to table another bill aimed at tightening the province’s secularism laws.

The legislation, expected Thursday, builds on a years-long effort to limit religion in the public sphere — a concept known in French as laicité.

The coming bill has already drawn criticism from religious groups and civil liberties advocates.

Here’s how the province arrived at this latest chapter.

The secularism debate has been simmering in the province well before the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) came to power.

In 2007, the Liberal government under Jean Charest ordered a report on how to address the accommodation of religious minorities.

The commission came after heated debates in the media over whether, for instance, a YMCA in Montreal's Mile End district should frost its gym windows at the request of a neighbouring Hasidic synagogue, or whether publicly funded daycares should serve halal meals.

The commission, led by two academics, Charles Taylor and Gérard Bouchard, held hearings across the province.

Their report, released in 2008, recommended what was described as an “open secularism” that would reinforce state neutrality and limit visible religious symbols for state agents in positions of coercive authority, such as police officers.

The minority Parti Québécois introduced a “Charter of Values” in 2013 that went further than those recommendations, but it never passed into law.

The party lost the election the following year.

The next government, the Liberals under Philippe Couillard, tried to settle the issue in 2017 with Bill 62, which required face coverings to be removed when accessing public services.

Portions of that law were subject to a constitutional challenge — and opposition politicians, including Legault, argued it didn’t go far enough.

When Legault won a majority in 2018, one of his first priorities was a secular charter that went further than the Liberals’ religious neutrality law.