Commentary
The Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) first won a majority government based partly on its promise not to hold another referendum on Quebec independence. But it has been engaging in nation-building all the same, using law-craft to steadily implement a monolithic concept of what it means to be a Quebecer—one that insists on the absolute primacy of the French language and is both anti-religious and exclusionary at its core. It promises to do enormous damage to anyone who doesn’t meet the CAQ’s strict definition.
Avenir means “future” and the future of Quebec, as envisioned by Premier François Legault and his government, rests upon three pillars: language, laïcité—that is, secularism—and a common national identity that rests upon those first two….