This spring, Quebec announced it was done with Canadian multiculturalism.
The province’s Coalition Avenir Québec government, led by Premier François Legault, introduced Bill 84, an act seeking to compel immigrants to conform to the province’s culture.
Under the new law, immigrants are expected to learn and use French as their primary language and embrace Quebec’s “common culture” and values, such as secularism, gender equality, and democracy. Organizations receiving government funding will also be required to align themselves with the legislation’s principles. The bill also makes changes to Quebec’s Charter to align human rights protections with the legislation.
“Multiculturalism no longer applies on Quebec soil,” said Quebec’s Immigration Minister Jean-François Roberge, adding that it belongs in the “dustbin of history.”
“We’re changing the narrative. We’re changing the social contract. We are returning Canadian multiculturalism where it should have stayed, that is to say, in the limbo of history. It is a model that has always been harmful to Quebec.”
Roberge, however, also stated that the goal of the bill was not to advocate instead for assimilation, but rather meaningful integration. “We’re not asking [immigrants] to erase themselves,” he noted.
Quebec currently bans teachers, police officers, judges, Crown prosecutors, and other public servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols like hijabs, turbans, kippahs, and crosses—a ban that will likely be extended to all school staff, support workers, and parents. It will also be partially expanded to students by banning them from wearing face coverings like burqas and niqabs.
Isn’t Quebec a liberal province?
For some, Quebec’s hard stance against multiculturalism and the wearing of religious symbols may seem at odds with the province’s progressive values.
Indeed, Quebec is arguably Canada’s most progressive province.
It is the province where Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives received the lowest percentage of votes in the last federal election.
In Canada, Quebecers are the most supportive of a woman’s right to an abortion, with 89 percent in approval. Quebec became the first Canadian province to legalize physician-assisted suicide in 2014. A decade later, it is the “world’s euthanasia hotspot” with rules so lenient that it has many experts worried.
Quebec was the first province to protect gay people from discrimination in 1977. Today, polling shows Quebecers are among the most likely to speak up against homophobia and transphobia.
Quebec also has an ultra-progressive environmental record, with a net-zero agenda that seeks to radically transition away from oil and gas.
One may therefore come to ask, why is this province, of all provinces, the one that’s rejecting multiculturalism? The answer can be found both in Quebec’s history and language.
Defining the issue
Multiculturalism, as defined by the Canadian government, is an ideology that ensures “all citizens can maintain their identities, take pride in their ancestry and have a sense of belonging.”
Integration, the approach Quebec prefers, is “the process of socioeconomic integration of immigrants and their descendants into a society through emancipatory and collective care values of the host country.”
The sparks that lit the fire
A series of recent events has laid the ground for this new legislation.
A 2024 investigation into a Montreal public elementary school found that a group of primarily Arab and North African teachers were teaching students in an ideological and religious manner, physically disciplining them, avoiding or watering down subjects such as sexual education and science, and mistreating students with disabilities. The report did, however, also note that other teachers with Arab and North African backgrounds had opposed the behaviour.
A 2025 report meanwhile found evidence of a “deteriorating” and “toxic climate” at Montreal’s Dawson and Vanier CEGEPs (educational institutions between high school and universities unique to Quebec), with radical militant student clubs—which advertise specific days for students to wear keffiyehs and sell “Long live the intifada” stickers the platforming of polarizing speakers, language courses becoming focused on Palestinian culture, and gender segregated Islamic prayer rooms.
Also happening amidst all of this have been Montreal pro-Palestinian protests that have been among the most radical in Canada, and possibly the Western world.
Pro-Palestinian protests in Montreal have featured praise for Hamas, calls for intifada, and celebrations of terrorism, as well as Nazi salutes, chants of “death to the Jews,” “explode the head of Zionists,” and calls for a “final solution.” An imam speaking at one of these rallies even called for Zionists to be killed, and an anti-Israel protest targeting a NATO summit saw demonstrators torch cars and smash the windows of buildings. These protests have also targeted synagogues.
A man holds up a sign during a demonstration in Montreal, Sunday, April 7, 2019, in opposition to the Quebec government’s newly tabled Bill 21. Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press.
Montreal has also seen shootings at a Jewish school, and synagogues have been firebombed and vandalized, and Jewish businesses have been hit with property damage and boycott campaigns.
Muslims in the province have also been gathering in public places to pray, including in front of Montreal’s Notre Dame basilica, causing further tension.
For Quebecers, these events put the notion of multiculturalism into serious question, especially given Quebec’s long-standing ire for institutionalized religion, dogmatism, and extremism.
“I want to send a very clear message to the Islamists. We will fight, and we will never, never accept that people try to not respect the values that are fundamental to Quebec,” said Premier Francois Legault in 2024.
Quebec’s ire for religion
Quebec’s history of institutionalized religion is unlike any other Canadian province.
Prior to the 1960s, the Catholic church played a dominant role in Quebec society. It was in charge of schools, hospitals, and newspapers. But the church ran these institutions in a way many came to view as dogmatic, regressive, and misogynistic.
Mounting public frustration led to the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, a period that saw the rapid secularization of Quebec society and the decline of institutional religion.
Women wear hijabs as they walk in the Old Port in Montreal, Thursday, August 11, 2022. Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press.
Today, Quebec is Canada’s least religious province. A 2022 poll found that 64 percent of Quebecers do not believe in God, and over 70 percent say religion is not important in their lives. Only 22 percent of Quebecers regularly attend religious services.
Since the Quiet Revolution, however, Canada has welcomed a growing number of Muslim immigrants. This includes Quebec, which welcomed a large number of immigrants from French-speaking North African countries like Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, as well as from Lebanon.
Today, Quebec has the second-largest Muslim population in Canada, with more than 420,000 Muslims making up five percent of the province’s population and 11.9 percent of Montreal’s population.
Fundamentalist Islam consists of very traditional views on women’s rights and homosexuality, as well as strict religious practices that include needing to pray five times a day.
Canadian multiculturalism has sought to accommodate the Muslim community by allowing them to wear religious clothing, providing prayer rooms in schools, Muslim prayer leaders in universities, allowing mosques to broadcast calls to prayer during Ramadan, and allowing banks to offer Muslim clients Halal mortgages.
Quebec, however, due to its strong secular identity and historical struggles with religion, has been less receptive or supportive of these accommodations.
In 2005, the Quebec National Assembly unanimously passed a motion condemning Islamic Sharia Law. The motion opposed “the establishment of so-called Islamic tribunals in Quebec,” after a proposal was put forward in Ontario to have Sharia courts.
Governments of all political stripes, from Pauline Marois’s Parti Québécois to Philippe Couillard’s Liberals, and now François Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec, have each taken steps to limit what many Quebecers view as the excesses of Islam, in order to protect secularism, women’s rights, and guard against perceived threats to the progress made since the Quiet Revolution.
Similar initiatives have been undertaken in France, another country with a Catholic past that has embraced the liberal values of secularism and is now grappling with issues related to fundamentalist Islamism. Arguably, however, France’s issues are far more serious.
Others see the province’s response as having racist roots.
“This is the most important civil liberties battle in our lifetime,” said the National Council of Canadian Muslims.
“This renewed attack on the fundamental rights of our community is just one of several recent actions taken by this historically unpopular government to bolster their poll numbers by attacking the rights of Muslim Canadians,” the council said in response to the expansion of the religious symbols ban in schools.
It should be noted, however, that Quebec’s secularism agenda does not target Islam alone, but also affects Jews and even Christians. It is an indiscriminate stance against religion in public institutions.
In addition to having an ire for religion, Quebec is keen on protecting the French language.
A man holds a Quebec flag at a rally in Montreal Saturday, June 6, 2009 aimed at protecting the French language. Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press.
Protection of the French language
Quebec is the only majority-French-speaking jurisdiction in North America.
That said, the speaking of French in the province has been steadily declining.
The proportion of Quebecers who primarily speak French at home dropped from 81 percent in 2016 to 79 percent in 2021. On the Island of Montreal, only 51 percent of residents primarily speak French at home, a decrease of 2.6 percentage points over five years. The share of Quebecers who primarily use French at work has fallen by 11 percent since 1997.
Fifty-eight percent of Quebecers aged 18 to 24 use French exclusively at work. In 2000, that number was 64 percent. In some industries, the share of French use has dropped by 10 to 11 points.
The number of students who graduated from French-language high schools but enrolled in English CEGEPs has risen from 18 percent in 2011 to 25 percent.
Meanwhile, just 42 percent of Quebecers use French-language platforms online.
A simple visit to downtown Montreal showcases this reality. Just enter a store on Ste. Catherine Street, and you’re likely to be served in English.
Canadian multiculturalism has sought to accommodate a plurality of languages and provide services to newcomers in their languages. Peel Regional Police makes public service announcements in Punjabi, and the national anthem has also been sung in Punjabi at NHL games. At the Vancouver International Airport, signage is in English, French and Chinese. Politicians routinely address ethnic communities in their languages and include these languages on their campaign signs and literature.
Quebec, on the other hand, wants French to remain its dominant and sole official language.
Concerns over the French language prompted the Quebec government to introduce Bill 101 in 1977, and Bill 96 in 2022, establishing a Charter of the French Language, requiring signage to be in French, and requiring the use of French in certain settings.
And it’s why Quebec is mandating that immigrants learn French.
Historical significance
There is also historical significance to consider in the multiculturalism debate, namely, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s decision to adopt multiculturalism over biculturalism.
In the 1960s, French Canadians in Quebec increasingly demanded that their language and culture be a major part of political and economic decision-making. In response, the Royal Commission on Bilingualism and Biculturalism was formed with a mandate to study the relationship between English and French to try and seek “an equal partnership.”
The commissioners endorsed a notion of official biculturalism, in which Canada has “two founding peoples,” the French and the English, and that only French and English should be recognized as official languages.
Trudeau, who was no fan of Quebec nationalists, then proceeded to implement French and English as official languages in the Official Languages Act. However, he opted to ditch biculturalism for multiculturalism, seeking “a policy of multiculturalism within a bilingual framework.”
“Although there are two official languages, there is no official culture, nor does any ethnic group take precedence over any other. No citizen or group of citizens is other than Canadian, and all should be treated fairly,” said Trudeau at the time.
That decision did not bode well in Quebec.
Then-premier Robert Bourassa told Trudeau, “concerning the principle of multiculturalism, Quebec does not adopt the approach of your government. […] Quebec must take, within its own territory, the role of prime defender of the French language and culture.”
That sentiment was echoed by others in the province.
Right from the get-go, Quebec opposed multiculturalism, which saw it as a slap in the face.
Combining this historical context with the modern challenges multiculturalism poses to protecting the French language and upholding secularism helps explain why Quebec, Canada’s most progressive province, has rejected multiculturalism.
In doing so, Quebec has not only put a federal ideology into the “dustbin of history,” but has also, in effect, revived and enshrined Robert Bourassa’s assertion that multiculturalism is incompatible with Quebec’s status as a distinct society within Canada.
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Elie Cantin-Nantel is political journalist based in Ottawa. He is the founder and publisher of EMCN Media, an independent digital media venture…
