As Quebec approaches its October 5 election, right-wing parties are not only competing over taxes, public services, or the economy. Another, more dangerous competition is taking place: who can appear tougher on migrants and religious minorities, and who can go further in using the language of “protecting Quebec’s identity” and “secularism” to justify exclusion?
This is happening while working-class families face a housing crisis, a rising cost of living, and deep problems in health care and education. Instead of holding governments, austerity policies, and chronic underinvestment responsible, migrants, asylum seekers, and religious minorities are increasingly being turned into convenient political targets.
From State Neutrality to Policing People
Since Bill 21 was adopted in 2019, the meaning of secularism in Quebec has gradually shifted. What should be a principle guaranteeing the neutrality of the state toward religion is increasingly being used to impose restrictions on individuals in workplaces, educational institutions, and public spaces.
On September 1, new restrictions came into force under Quebec’s strengthened secularism legislation. The rules prohibit religious practices in a wide range of spaces controlled by public institutions and affect both individual and collective religious practices.
Collective religious practices on streets and in public parks are also prohibited unless a municipality grants an exception.
These restrictions expose a fundamental contradiction: the state can claim to be “neutral” toward religion while deciding where an individual is allowed to pray.
This contradiction is particularly clear at Montreal’s public transit agency, the STM. Employees can continue to use wellness rooms for meditation, relaxation, and yoga—but they can no longer use them for prayer.
At the Université de Montréal, people wishing to pray are expected to leave the campus.
The question is not whether Quebec should be a secular society. The question is: Does state secularism mean freeing public institutions from religious control or giving the state greater power to regulate the personal beliefs and practices of workers and students?
Muslim Women and Workers Pay the Price
This is at the heart of the warning issued by a broad coalition of Quebec civil society organizations in the Declaration Against the Instrumentalization of Secularism.
The declaration, initiated by organizations including the Observatoire des inégalités raciales au Québec, the Observatoire pour la justice migrante, the Fédération des femmes du Québec, the Ligue des droits et libertés, and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, does not reject secularism. On the contrary, it argues that state secularism is an important democratic principle because it separates the state from religion while protecting freedom of conscience and belief for everyone.
What the signatories reject is the use of secularism as a tool of exclusion.
The declaration points to the consequences of Bills 21, 94, and 9: workers losing employment opportunities, students being shut out of certain professions, and parents being prevented from fully participating in their children’s schools. These restrictions disproportionately affect Muslim women who wear religious symbols.
The declaration also warns that these policies contribute to a climate in which racism, intolerance, and discrimination against minorities become increasingly normalized.
Its signatories are calling on all political party leaders to commit to a secularism that respects human rights and to repeal Bills 21, 94, and 9 if they form the next government.
Read and sign the Declaration Against the Instrumentalization of Secularism
Migrants at the Centre of the Election Campaign
This debate cannot be separated from the broader political attacks on immigration.
Parti Québécois leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon wants to reduce the number of temporary immigrants in Quebec by more than half — from over 500,000 to between 200,000 and 250,000. He has repeatedly linked immigration levels to pressure on housing, schools, public services, and the future of the French language.
The Quebec Conservative Party is pushing the debate even further.
On September 14, Conservative leader Éric Duhaime proposed cutting social assistance for asylum seekers by 25 percent and restricting their access to subsidized housing and daycare services. He justified the proposal by claiming that many asylum seekers come to Quebec to take advantage of social programs. He also wants to cut the number of refugees and family reunification admissions within Quebec’s non-economic permanent immigration categories.
In this narrative, an asylum seeker—someone who may have fled persecution, war, or danger—becomes a suspect who must prove that they are not “taking advantage” of Quebec society.
The Parti Québécois has also made defending and expanding Quebec’s current model of secularism a central part of its political program. An overwhelming majority of PQ members have supported restrictions on public prayer and religious practices in publicly funded educational institutions.
The Quebec Liberal Party has taken a different position on some aspects of Bill 21. Its leader, Charles Milliard, has said a Liberal government would not renew the notwithstanding clause protecting parts of Bill 21 from constitutional challenges when it expires in 2029—a position the PQ has attacked as a threat to Quebec’s model of secularism.
There are real differences between the parties. But the political terrain itself has shifted: migrants, asylum seekers, religious minorities, and particularly Muslims are increasingly forced to defend their basic rights in an election debate framed around who belongs in Quebec and under what conditions.
Racism Does Not Stay Inside Parliament
Political rhetoric has consequences beyond the National Assembly.
People and organizations challenging discriminatory policies are not only confronting government decisions. They are also facing a growing climate of hostility.
This became visible during the weekly mobilizations outside Minister Christine Fréchette’s office. As the protests reached their 15th sit-in, organizers reported threats and a flood of racist comments on their social media page.
Migrants Did Not Create the Crisis
During an election campaign, it is easy to blame newcomers for the housing shortage, migrants for overcrowded schools, or asylum seekers for pressure on public services.
But migrants did not privatize housing. They did not cut investment in public services. They did not create the health-care crisis. And they did not design an immigration system that deliberately keeps hundreds of thousands of workers in temporary and precarious status.
Migrant workers are part of the working class that keeps Quebec’s warehouses, factories, restaurants, care services, transportation systems, and other essential sectors running.
Many pay taxes and perform essential jobs while simultaneously living under the threat of losing their immigration status, work permit, or right to remain in Canada.
Turning these workers into scapegoats will not build a single affordable apartment. It will not open another classroom. It will not put another nurse in a hospital.
It only redirects working people’s anger away from those responsible for the crisis.
A Secularism That Protects Freedom, Not One That Punishes Difference
The choice is not between secularism and religion.
We can defend a secular state while defending the right of a Muslim worker to pray, the right of a woman wearing a hijab to work, the right of a Sikh worker to wear a turban, and the right of a Jewish, Christian, atheist, or any other person to live according to their beliefs—or lack of belief—without discrimination.
A secular state should be neutral toward its citizens. It should not demand that people become religiously invisible before they can fully participate in society.
As the October election approaches, one of the most important questions facing labor and anti-racist movements is whether we will allow political parties to turn workers, migrants, and minorities against one another—or redirect the debate toward what working people actually share: wages, housing, public services, working conditions, immigration status, and the right to live with dignity.
The strongest response to the politics of scapegoating is solidarity.
The IWC’s Montreal Rise Up campaign (Montréal Debout) against Act C-12 and the mass deportations is a model for mobilizing neighborhoods to address the anti-immigration policies due to the scapegoating of immigrants and migrant workers for the housing, economic, and social service crisis. It is a method of mobilizing people from the ground level to change the ant-immigrant narrative of the state. To learn more about this, please refer to the IWC’s materials on the Montreal Rise Up campaign.
Migrant rights are workers’ rights. An attack on the freedom and dignity of one group of workers today weakens the rights of all workers tomorrow.
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