François Legault won Quebec’s provincial elections last week and will soon become the next premier. He has already vowed to stop government workers — including cops and teachers — from wearing religious symbols like hijabs and yarmulkes and turbans “in order to protect Quebec’s secular society.” It’s a move that trounces on religious freedom in the name of religious neutrality and creates far more problems than it solves.
But if religious symbols have to go, then what about the large crucifix that hangs in Quebec’s National Assembly…?
Apparently that cross can stay right where it is because Legault claims there’s nothing religious about it.
The crucifix hanging in Quebec’s National Assembly is a historical symbol, not a religious one, even though it represents the Christian values of the province’s two colonial ancestors, premier-designate François Legault said Thursday.
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The crucifix, he said, invokes the role of French Catholics and British Protestants in Quebec’s history. He made no mention of Indigenous people.
“In our past we had Protestants and Catholics. They built the values we have in Quebec. We have to recognize that and not mix that with religious signs.”
