Over the last few years, Quebec has been labelled by the media as both the “least conservative province” in Canada, but also simultaneously as the province “leading the fight against wokeism.” The dynamic is fascinating and makes la belle province an outlier in a nation perceived by many to be consumed by left wing identity politics.
For some, the idea of a socially liberal society that rejects woke ideology may sound strange, but it’s exactly what we’ve seen in Quebec, as well as several European countries that are not addicted to American culture, media and entertainment.
Progressive Quebec
Quebec is indeed a very liberal place. It is the only province where Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives are not in the lead. In fact, Conservatives have not won the majority of seats in the province since 1988.
Of all Canadians, Quebecers are the most supportive of a woman’s right to an abortion (89 percent). Quebec became the first Canadian province to legalize physician assisted suicide in 2014, and a decade later, is the “world’s euthanasia hotspot” with a regime so lenient that it has many experts worried.
Quebec was the first province to protect gay people from discrimination in 1977, and polling shows Quebecers today are among the most likely to speak up against homophobia and transphobia.
Quebec is also the least religious province in Canada. A 2022 poll found that 64 percent of Quebecers don’t believe in a God, more than 70 percent say religion isn’t important in their life. Just 22 percent of Quebecers regularly attend religious services. Amidst this lack of religion, more couples in Quebec opt for common law relationships than marriage. According to Statistics Canada, there are more common law couples with children (48.5 percent) in Quebec than married couples with children (45.2 percent). Secularism has also become state law, with religious symbols being banned in government institutions, something supported by the majority of Quebecers.
Add to that, Quebec’s ultra progressive environmental record, with a net-zero agenda, that seeks to radically transition away from oil and gas.
But while Quebec continues to have a liberal legacy, the province has also repeatedly said no to wokeism.
Rejecting woke
At the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, Quebec Premier François Legault repeatedly rejected claims that Quebec is a systematically racist province. Rather than defund the police, Montreal’s left-wing mayor Valérie Plante opted to give them more money. In fact, polling shows that Quebecers may be just as wary of “defunding” the police as Albertans.
Quebec has also seen a multi-partisan pushback against “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) initiatives that discriminate against white men. In 2022, the Quebec National Assembly unanimously passed a motion promoting merit based hiring instead of DEI quota based hiring.
Quebec politicians have also rushed to the defence of Caucasian professors being cancelled by anglophone students over their use of the “N-word” in academic contexts. Quebec Liberal Party leader Dominique Anglade, the province’s first black woman party leader, was among those who defended the professors, declaring that, “political correctness has gone too far.” The province now has the strongest campus free speech legislation in the country.
Uniquely, the use of the “N-word” seems to have become a litmus test for Quebec politicians. During one of the 2022 provincial election debates, the leader of the left-wing Parti Quebecois Paul St-Pierre Plamondon made the leader of the even more left-wing socialist Quebec Solidaire party, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, say the title of FLQ intellectual leader Pierre Valiere’s famous book, White N****** of America, on live TV to demonstrate that he wasn’t woke. In English Canada, mentioning this book’s name, even behind closed doors, will end your career.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault comments on the provincial budget during a news conference, Wednesday, March 13, 2024 at the legislature in Quebec City. Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press
Earlier this year, the province’s National Assembly also voted unanimously to condemn the “invisibilization of women” following a Supreme Court of Canada decision that referred to a woman as a “person with a vagina.” Quebec politicians also unanimously passed a motion to preserve the word “woman” in all of Quebec’s laws.
The Legault government has even opted to ban shared gender neutral washrooms in public schools. The leader of the Parti Quebecois proclaimed last year that, “No one is going to force me to call someone else ‘mx’” after a non-binary teacher demanded children use the gender neutral prefix. Conservative Party of Quebec leader Eric Duhaime, who is openly gay, launched a petition against drag queen story hours in public institutions, citing the need to “protect our children.”
Now, all of this is not to say that wokeism is completely non-existent in Quebec. The ideology has its supporters, but they exist in the more fringe pockets of society, and more so in the anglophone parts of society. The francophone Quebecers who support elements of woke ideology also tend to be more open to having conversations with people who disagree with them.
Unlike in the rest of Canada, the most divisive elements of wokeism have, for now, not become mainstream in Quebec.
But why is Canada’s “least conservative” province also seemingly Canada’s most “anti-woke” province?
Why is Quebec a national outlier?
Defining “woke” and its origins can help us better understand why it hasn’t taken root in French Canada.
Wokeism is a dogmatic American ideology rooted in Marxism that demands people be awakened by “critical consciousness.” It uses identity characteristics like race, gender, sexuality, income, and body size to determine if someone is an “oppressor” or an “oppressed,” and demands that necessary action be taken to fight and dismantle whatever or whoever has been deemed “oppressive.” That “necessary action” often translates into aggressive censorship and attempts to cancel.
Wokeism differs vastly from liberalism, a philosophy that champions the “belief in progress, the essential goodness of the human race, and the autonomy of the individual.”
Virtually all of the concepts and theories that fuel modern-day woke ideology, especially those linked to race and gender, have been coined by American scholars and activists. These ideals have since entrenched themselves into the American left, as well as America’s institutions, including entertainment and the news media.
Wokeism seeped into English Canada through the anglophone public heavily consuming American media and culture and English Canada’s political class being heavily influenced by American policymakers practicing the ideology.
Statistics show that a significant number of English Canadians get their news from American media outlets. Anglophone Canadian outlets also extensively cover American news. When it comes to entertainment, English Canadians frequently use American streaming services like Netflix. The majority of fall 2023’s top 10 most watched TV shows in English Canada were American shows.
Quebecers on the other hand do not consume American contents to the same extent, due to an evident language barrier as well as common anti-American sentiments. Instead, Quebecers watch Quebec content from the province’s sizable arts and culture sector, and get their news from francophone outlets.
Data shows that Quebecers watch much more television, relying less on streaming services and podcasts. The ratings for fall 2023’s most watched show in Quebec are more than six times higher than the most watched show in English Canada. And the shows Quebecers are watching aren’t American. The top 10 most watched TV shows in Quebec are all local productions.
Statistics also show that Quebecers get their news from outlets like Radio-Canada and TVA, as well as local newspapers, rather than from American outlets.
This matters because unlike CNN, MSNBC or Hollywood, Quebec’s entertainment and news sectors are not woke. The province’s cultural sector is actually more influenced by France, a country that has declared war on wokeism. The same goes for Quebec’s political class. The Quebec left is far more influenced by the European left than the American left.
This has helped socially liberal Quebec buck woke trends.
It should also be noted that Quebec’s history of institutionalized religion has given it an ire for dogma – something wokeism is full of.
Prior to the 1960s, the Catholic Church in Quebec ran the province’s schools, hospitals, as well as entertainment and several periodicals. The church ran these institutions in a way that many perceived as dogmatic and regressive.
Public pressure built and was released during the Quiet Revolution in the 1960-1970s – which saw the secularization of Quebec and an end to mass institutionalized religion.
Secularization is truly key to why Quebec is still such a liberal place today, and also key to why, across all of Canada, Quebec is the place where people are most likely to have unfavourable views of all religions.
Given that wokeism is a dogmatic ideology that critics say is illiberal and today resembles a new religion, it shouldn’t come to too much of a surprise that Quebecers, including those who lived through the Quiet Revolution and now cherish the province’s liberalism, are not keen on adopting it.
Élie Cantin-Nantel is The Hub’s Ottawa Correspondent. Prior to joining the team, he practiced journalism for a variety of outlets. Élie also has experience working on Parliament Hill and is completing a joint honours in communication and political science at the University of Ottawa. He is bilingual....
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