Bill 84 and National Integration, a Further Step towards Social Cohesion

The original French-language version of this letter first appeared in Le Devoir with the title Le PL-84 sur l’intégration nationale, une étape de plus vers la cohésion sociale.

Nadia El-Mabrouk, François Dugré, Marie-Claude Girard, Etienne-Alexis Boucher, Lucie Jobin, Lyne Jubinville & Raphaël Guérard

Members of the Board of Directors of the Rassemblement pour la laïcité (RPL or Alliance for Secularism).

Publication Date: 2025-02-12

We welcome Draft Bill 84, enabling legislation proposed by the Minister of Immigration, Jean-François Roberge, which deals with national integration. To recognize the importance of this type of action, we need only recall a few developments which have marked news in Quebec in recent years.

Recall, for example, the “toolset” (« carnet d’outils ») proposed by Institut F, whose objective was to “facilitate access for immigrant and racialized women to services in their neighbourhood, in order to promote their inclusion.” Was it about offering immigrant women information about their host country, access to employment, Quebec institutions, secularism or learning French? Nothing of the sort. The booklet was entirely intended to “educate” these women about the scourges of racism, neo-racism, “white supremacy culture,” “coloniality,” etc. What a strange way to promote integration or make newcomers love Quebec!

This booklet, funded by the City of Montreal and the government of Quebec, leads them to perceive their host country as a hostile territory where they risk being constantly victims of racism from “old stock” Quebecers. The enabling legislation on national integration will, it is hoped, make it possible to avoid spending taxpayers’ money on such divisive projects that poison living together.

We also remember the state-subsidized daycare centres that selected children based on their religion or ethnicity, or the Bedford School held hostage by teachers who imposed their language and their conception of education on their pupils, while violating the teachers’ requirement for religious neutrality, the students’ freedom of conscience and equality between girls and boys. Among the solutions provided by the school’s management, the report mentioned training in Canadian multiculturalism or the attempt “to rebuild bridges” with a mosque and a religious community centre advocating the veiling of young girls. How can we accept or even consider encouraging such religious infiltration in our schools?

A law on national integration would certainly have been a valuable tool to avoid certain pitfalls. However, the situation seems mainly to be due to breaches of secularism in schools and, to remedy this, the solution would be to promote the State Secularism Act (Bill 21) further, to fully implement it and to adopt measures to help enforce it in schools.

Thus, we particularly welcome the stipulation of the Directive from the Minister of Education concerning religious practices in schools (April 2023), which specifies that “a student has the right to be protected from any direct or indirect pressure aimed at forcing or influencing him or her to conform to a religious practice.” It is also in the name of integration and social harmony that Quebec has a legitimate interest in contributing to the education of citizens whose religious standards must not be allowed to take precedence over common law.

Secularism as a Model to Replace Canadian Multiculturalism

Canadian multiculturalism encourages the fragmentation of society into communities where religious practices and symbols are often considered markers of identity and community. Far from advocating State religious neutrality, this model instead promotes the manifestation of different religions in public and State spaces and encourages almost absolute respect for all religious practices. It is this model that facilitates ghettoization and religious fundamentalism and deprives members of cultural communities of their right to freedom of conscience and religion.

Indeed, if religion is considered an essential identity, it is no longer a choice. How, then, can we talk about freedom? Conversely, State secularism enshrines all freedoms, including religious freedom, provided that common law is respected, constraints are not imposed on coreligionists and they are not isolated from other citizens.

State secularism is therefore an essential constituent element of national integration, making it possible to avoid ghettoization and to promote social cohesion. We believe that it should be presented more as such in Bill 84.

Furthermore, we fear that presenting secularism as a “cultural” trait of Quebec will create misunderstanding among people identified in the draft legislation as immigrants or cultural minorities. Let us recall that the State Secularism Act was defended by Muslim cultural associations as well as by many parents of cultural minorities demanding access to a truly secular school system.

It was teachers and parents from North Africa who first denounced the sectarian actions of the teachers at Bedford School and many other schools and daycare centres, because they are the ones who have the most to lose from religious indoctrination and radicalization. They are the ones who must be heard, not their community “representatives” for whom they did not vote and who are encouraged and funded by Canadian multiculturalism.

In other words, the threat to State secularism and Quebec values, including equality between women and men, does not come—although a period of adaptation may sometimes be necessary—from immigrants or cultural minorities, but rather from religious fundamentalism and its desire for division.

This is why we support Draft Bill 84 and its promotion of French as a common language, but our main recommendation is to recognize State secularism, not as one element among others of Quebec’s specificity, but as the foundation for Quebec’s model of living together and national integration.