Law in Quebec

Under Bill 84, An Act respecting national integration, Quebecers who are immigrants are expected to learn French, “participate fully” in French in Quebec society, enrich Quebec culture, embrace state secularism and equality between women and men, and adhere to “democratic values and Quebec values” expressed in particular by the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms. The proposed legislation, pegged as a framework bill, contentiously stipulates that the provincial government “may determine the forms of financial assistance” that can be granted to legal persons or enterprises financed in part by one or more government agencies. Just as controversially, the bill proposes amendments to the Quebec Charter, notably its preamble and sections 9.1, 43 and 50.

There is growing backlash against the bill. At least 30 former Quebec ministers and professors signed an open letter in the French-language newspaper Le Devoir chastising the provincial government for adopting an assimilationist or melting pot approach that represents a clear break with the model inherited from the Quiet Revolution. “Affirming the specificities of the Quebec approach is essential if we are to offer a credible and fair alternative to Canadian multiculturalism,” said the opinion piece, which was signed by five former Quebec provincial ministers of all political stripes. “In our view, the CAQuist initiative does not do this. On the contrary, the message it sends to immigrants will be detrimental to the project of a welcoming Quebec society.”

“There are many things that bother me about Bill 84, above all its non-consensual nature,” said Louis-Philippe Lampron, a law professor and a human rights expert at the Université Laval and one of the signatories of the missive. There is a consensus in Quebec, added Lampron, that the tradition of Canadian multiculturalism, long controversial in the province, does not “fit” the Quebec model of managing diversity.

While it is “obviously legitimate” for Quebec to think about a framework for managing cultural and religious diversity, Lampron said the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government lost all credibility to deal with such sensitive issues after the way it passed in 2019 the controversial Bill 21, Act respecting the laicity of the State, which prohibits the display of religious symbols by certain public employees in the public space. The Quebec’s government forceful approach in enacting Bill 21, coupled with its usage of the notwithstanding clause and its amendment of the Quebec Charter without obtaining the unanimous consent of the Quebec National Assembly, “completely undermined the CAQ’s legitimacy in proposing a diversity and diversity management regime in Quebec,” said Lampron.

The government’s aim, added Lampron, is to include interpretative clauses in the Quebec Charter to allow for “culturally different interpretations” than those found in the Canadian Charter. “They are once again remodelling, or at the very least proposing to modify the Quebec Charter, once again, without treating this document as the fundamental law that it is supposed to be,” said Lampron. “The problem is that amending the Quebec Charter is no small matter.”

Bill 84 is little more than a policy paper with few concrete details that will only end up further stigmatizing newcomers and create a hierarchy of rights, according to Sam Boskey, first vice-president of the Ligue des droits et libertés, a not-for-profit human rights organization based in Montreal. “It’s not a piece of legislation, it’s really a political rant,” said Boskey. “If integration is an issue, they haven’t defined it, or issued any policy statement or any government analysis. The preamble goes on for a page and a half of blatantly political value statements. What on earth is a judge supposed to do looking at this?”

Boskey suspects that with the CAQ government badly trailing in the polls, they are trying “to wave the flag and prove their nationalist credentials which gave birth to this piece of legislation.” But immigrants, if Bill 84 is passed, will bear the brunt and “the individual burden of their integration” into Quebec at a time when the provincial government is cutting education, francization and integration programs, added Boskey.

The Ligue also finds it deeply troubling that the Quebec government intends to amend the Quebec Charter by adding yet another overlay to section 9.1, as they did with Bill 21. That section stipulates that a person, in exercising his human rights and freedoms, shall maintain a “proper regard” for democratic values, State laicity, the importance given to the protection of French, public order and the general well-being of the citizens of Quebec. It is a section that the Supreme Court of Canada said in Ward v. Quebec (Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse), 2021 SCC 43, [2021] 3 S.C.R. 176, “ temper[s] the absoluteness of the freedoms and rights set out in ss. 1 through 9.”

“By adding layer after layer into 9.1, what they are doing is creating a hierarchy of rights,” said Boskey. “The things listed in 9.1 are supposed to have more priority than the other rights, and this goes against the basic principles of human rights law, which is rights are indivisible. This demonstrates to us, at least, that this government may want to use the vocabulary of human rights, but there is really very little respect for the Quebec Charter, and there is very little concern for the human rights impact of the legislation that they’re going to be undertaking.”

Many of these concerns over Bill 84 are too shared by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA). Bill 84 is the “wrong way” to ensure that newcomers are welcomed and included into the cultural fabric of Quebec society, said Harini Sivalingam, director, equality program at the CCLA. Quebec has historically rejected the Canadian multiculturalism model in favour of an intercultural model, which is open to diverse cultures while continuing to preserve the distinct Quebec culture and language, said Sivalingam, echoing remarks made by the open letter signatories.

“We think that Bill 84 moves away from that intercultural model and into a dangerous trend of assimilation,” said Sivalingam. “We need to strengthen integration, not further divide groups and communities — and Bill 84 really does. It’s a divisive law that will only serve to alienate newcomer community groups instead of actually fostering integration.”

The CCLA is also troubled by the fact that the Quebec Charter and the values that are entrenched in existing rights and freedoms, will be subordinated by the proposed bill, said Sivalingam. “That’s actually very concerning because there’s important rights protections in the Quebec Charter around equality, around religious freedom, around just like the dignity and inherent rights of all groups in Quebec, and so we think it’s very problematic to have those changes that would subordinate the Quebec Charter to an ordinary legislation,” said Sivalingam.

Equally disturbing, according to the CCLA, is that the Quebec government has framed Bill 84 as a framework bill as it has wider-scale application to different agencies or departments throughout the Quebec government apparatus. “So it impacts all of these different aspects of government, from education to health care to housing, that have a direct impact on people’s lives,” she added.

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This story was originally published in Law360 Canada.