In a striking irony, atheist journalist Toula Drimonis has spent nearly ten years defending Quebecers' right to religious freedom. Now, she argues the provincial government's ever-expanding secularism agenda has reached absurd new heights, suggesting a school lunch lady could proselytize between serving meals.
The Gradual Slide of Secularism Legislation
The journey of Quebec's secularism laws began in 2013 with the Parti Québécois's proposed Charter of Values. It accelerated in 2019 when the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) government passed Bill 21. This law banned public employees in positions of authority—including judges, police officers, and public school teachers—from wearing religious symbols at work.
Premier François Legault once described Bill 21 as a moderate measure to appease citizens who were "a little bit racist." However, the scope has widened significantly since. By early 2025, Bill 94 expanded the prohibition on religious symbols to nearly all school staff and volunteers.
The latest proposed legislation, Bill 9, casts an even wider net. It targets daycare workers, restricts prayer in public areas and universities, limits religious meals in government institutions, and curtails religious accommodations in schools. Drimonis questions the logical endpoint, asking where this expansion will finally stop.
Formal Equality vs. Substantive Impact
Jean-François Roberge, the minister responsible for secularism, maintains the CAQ's legislation targets all religions equally, calling it "equality for all citizens." Drimonis forcefully counters this claim, highlighting the critical difference between formal and substantive equality.
She points out that while the laws may apply to everyone on paper, their impact is profoundly unequal. The majority of Quebecers, though often identifying as Christian, do not actively practise a religion with visible symbols. Therefore, a ban on religious symbols at work demands nothing from them. In contrast, it disproportionately affects individuals from minority faiths for whom visible symbols like the hijab, kippah, or turban are integral to their religious practice.
"It's easy to abide by a directive that demands absolutely nothing of you," Drimonis writes, framing the laws as a form of indirect discrimination with substantively unequal effects.
Questioning the Logic of 'Protection'
A central pillar of the government's argument, particularly regarding the hijab, is the protection of women from oppression. Drimonis, identifying as a feminist, expresses resentment at being used as a "useful idiot" in this debate. She challenges the underlying logic of this position with a pointed question she has asked for a decade.
"How does forcing a woman to remove a religious symbol—and blocking her from an education or career if she refuses—help anyone who may have been forced to wear it?" she asks. She argues that preventing a woman from earning a living does not guarantee her bodily autonomy or protect her from hypothetical abuse.
For Drimonis, the CAQ's brand of secularism is not true religious neutrality. Instead, she sees it as inherently anti-religion and a symptom of a gradual erosion of fundamental freedoms in Quebec. From the proposed Charter of Values to Bills 21, 94, and now 9, she concludes that the government's approach makes little sense, unless the goal is a continued restriction on the public expression of faith.
