You wouldn’t guess it listening to Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois these days, but there was a time when the separatist party courted ethnic minorities rather than treating them with suspicion. “We have to form with the cultural communities a new world, a model society, better, free, open and welcoming,” said Gérald Godin, immigration minister under René Lévesque in the 1980s. “For cultural diversity is the guarantee of a nation’s enrichment and open-mindedness.”
The contrast with the PQ’s current campaign is striking. If elected, the party says it will prohibit public-sector workers from wearing such religious symbols as the hijab, yarmulke and turban. It will force immigrants to pass a French test before they can run for public office, submit a petition to legislators or make political donations. And it will block new arrivals and their children from attending English post-secondary colleges, going further than the original architects of Bill 101 dared.
Now when Ms. Marois declares her openness to immigrants, there is a significant “but” that follows.
“We insist on conserving our identity, our language, our institutions and our values,” she says. Those values “are not negotiable. We do not have to apologize for who we are.” What has traditionally been a party of the left, attracting voters as much for its social-democratic program as its independence project, has veered sharply to the right on the question of Quebec identity.
Pierre Bosset, a law professor at Université du Québec à Montréal, said he was a lifelong PQ supporter until the party transformed after finishing third in the 2007 election. Leader André Boisclair, who had proposed removing the crucifix from the National Assembly and defended accommodations for religious minorities, was squeezed out and replaced by Ms. Marois, who immediately adopted tougher language.
“For me, that is the ugly strain of Quebec nationalism, and I do not share that vision at all,” Mr. Bosset said. He and others in his circle of “liberal intellectuals of the left” have switched their allegiance to Québec Solidaire, the left-wing sovereigntist party that won its first seat in 2008.
“I think it’s significant that people who have been sovereigntist for a very long time and voted for the Parti Québécois, who voted Yes in both referendums, are leaving the PQ,” he said.

Jacques Pelletier, a literature professor at UQAM, is an indépendentist who quit the PQ decades ago. He sees the party’s embrace of an inward-looking nationalism as a reaction to the failure of the PQ’s sovereignty project. “It’s a return to a kind of traditional nationalism that defends a history, defends a culture, defends a past, rather than a project for the future,” he said.
Daniel Weinstock, a law professor at McGill University, was a young undergraduate when he landed a job with a Jewish community organization during Mr. Lévesque’s tenure as PQ premier. Montreal’s Jewish community was not exactly made up of rabid sovereigntists, but Mr. Godin earned grudging respect, Mr. Weinstock recalled. “He was definitely seen as somebody who really wanted to use his ministry as a way of creating, certainly a sovereign Quebec, but also an inclusive Quebec, a Quebec that would make no distinction between old-stock and new-stock Quebecers.”
I think it’s significant that people who have been sovereigntist for a very long time and voted for the Parti Québécois, who voted Yes in both referendums, are leaving the PQ
The current PQ approach, he said, has a dual purpose. On the surface, it is an appeal to francophone Quebecers outside Montreal who are fearful that immigration is eroding the French language and Catholic heritage on which the province was built. This is the electorate that deserted the PQ in 2007 in favour of the Action Démocratique du Québec, which campaigned against the accommodation of minorities.
But the PQ’s proposed secularism charter, which would ban public servants from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols (a crucifix on a chain would be OK) and its citizenship law, which would oblige candidates for office to have an “appropriate knowledge” of French, also seem designed for constitutional challenges. Mr. Weinstock said the initiatives would never survive a Charter challenge, which would allow a PQ government to argue that Quebec is stifled within Confederation.
“It’s a way of trying to create winning conditions [for a referendum], not by proposing a positive inclusive view of Quebec that people could be enthusiastically drawn to,” he said. “It’s a way of doing it by stratagem and gimmickry and by appealing to negative things. It’s dangerous in terms of playing around with minority rights. It’s not a very viable or stable basis for creating a new society.”
Jean-François Lisée, who advised Ms. Marois on the citizenship initiative when she first proposed it in 2007, is running for the PQ in the Montreal riding of Rosemont and would be a shoo-in for a cabinet post should the party be elected.
He said opinions are divided on whether the PQ’s plans would withstand a court challenge, but he acknowledged a defeat in the Supreme Court of Canada would not be all bad. It would be a rejection of a “reasonable demand” by judges “named without our advice or consent,” interpreting a Constitution “that was adopted without our advice or consent,” he said. “Will that say something about our ability to be free within Canada? Yes it will.”
Mr. Lisée said the restrictions the PQ proposes are necessary to protect the French language and the core values of gender equality and the neutrality of the state. He cited demographic studies predicting that people whose primary language is French will be a minority in Montreal within 15 years.
“We’re in peril of losing critical mass in Montreal,” he said. “We turned our back to multiculturalism a long time ago, but clearly when you become a Canadian citizen you are being peddled multiculturalism, so we want to give a counter message: ‘You swore allegiance to the Queen and to a Constitution that was not adopted by Quebec, and you can vote in Canadian elections, that’s fine. But if you want to be a Quebec citizen, well there’s a distinct society here, and so there are distinct values and a ceremony that you need to go through.’ ”
The [PQ] policies are intolerant, but they’re not racist
The PQ might have helped its case if Ms. Marois had managed to present its identity platform in a more coherent fashion. The party has never specified which religious symbols it would ban and for which jobs. Mr. Lisée said there might be a more “laissez-faire” approach to religious symbols among hospital staff. On citizenship, Ms. Marois said the French requirement would apply to all Quebecers, before correcting herself a day later to say anglophones and First Nations members would be protected by a grandfather clause.
The PQ proposals are not in the same league as the discourse of far-right parties in Europe, who simply tell immigrants they do not belong, Mr. Weinstock said. But they still send a troubling message. “The other way of being bad to immigrants is to say you have no place here unless you play by a very tightly scripted playbook, and here it is…. The [PQ] policies are intolerant, but they’re not racist,” he said.
Mr. Bosset fears the PQ platform, if enacted, will strain inter-cultural relations. “The message it sends is that it is acceptable to discriminate against new arrivals in Quebec,” he said. “For example if the [secularism] charter is passed and public servants do not have the right to wear religious symbols, it will be seen as acceptable in broader society to discriminate against people wearing a hijab or a turban.”
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