It was 2019, and Bouchera Chelbi was afraid of being fired. Rumours were rippling through the Montreal public elementary school where she taught English as a second language. Quebec’s new right-of-centre ruling party, the Coalition Avenir Québec, or CAQ, had recently won its first term in office, and one of Premier François Legault’s key election promises was to pass legislation banning certain public employees from wearing religious symbols, like the Jewish kippah, Sikh turban, Christian cross or Muslim hijab. In the 11 years she’d been teaching in Quebec, she’d never heard a comment in school about her hijab. But suddenly, as the CAQ readied a bill banning her from wearing it at work, her colleagues were both angry on her behalf and a little bemused. “I don’t get it,” one told her. “What’s the point of this law?”

There were two, from the government’s perspective: first, it allowed the CAQ to position itself as a defender of Québécois identity without leaning into separatism, which was increasingly unpopular in Quebec. Secondly, it let the party take decisive action on a long-simmering public debate. On the surface, the bill was a reincarnation of a 2013 effort by the Parti Québécois, known informally, and infamously, as the Charte des valeurs—the Quebec Charter of Values. It would have banned government employees from wearing most religious symbols. (That bill died when the province’s Liberal Party won the 2014 provincial election.) But the new legislation drew on a much longer history. For decades, Quebec has been on a spiritual quest for a public life devoid of spirituality.

Since Quebecers threw off the stifling hold of the Catholic Church during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, secularism—or, in French, la laïcité—has become a core state value. Banning hijabs and other religious garb might seem extreme to Canadians outside Quebec, but globally, the practice is not unique. Bill 21 takes its cue from legislation in France, Belgium, Austria and Denmark. Countries with Muslim majorities, including Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, have also limited citizens’ rights to wear religious clothing in public spaces, ostensibly to enhance social integration.

In the spring of 2019, the government held six days of consultations on the bill, during which dozens of people and organizations testified. Chelbi was among them. In a flowered blue headscarf, she sat in the stately Red Room of Quebec City’s National Assembly opposite a provincial commission. Also present were Gregory Bordan, a Jewish lawyer who wore a kippah, and Taran Singh, a representative for the province’s Sikh community. All three were members of the Coalition Inclusion Québec, or CIQ, a citizens’ group that had formed to oppose the bill.

Chelbi told the commission that the proposed law made her feel like a criminal. One member of the commission asked why she couldn’t just remove her headscarf during work hours. She said that would be like practising veganism at dinner but eating meat at lunch.

In June, Bill 21 passed, prohibiting public employees in positions of authority—police officers, judges, prosecutors and teachers, among others—from wearing religious symbols. Protests in Montreal drew enormous crowds rallying in opposition. I attended the protests as well. But the majority of Quebecers, particularly outside its largest city, supported the measure—some 64 per cent, according to polling at the time. There’s no way to know how many people are directly affected by the legislation, but in a sense it touches nearly all Quebecers. With good fortune, most of us will never come before a judge. But most will send their children to a public school, or attend one.

In the end, it turned out Chelbi’s position was safe. A grandfather clause allowed employees who already wore religious symbols to keep their jobs. But there was a big caveat: she could not receive a promotion, and she couldn’t switch school boards, which meant she could never move. She had hoped to become a principal; now, her career was stalled.

The bill was a magnet for lawsuits. Chelbi helped mount a legal challenge as part of the CIQ and, the following year, the Superior Court of Quebec heard its case. It was accompanied by others from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association as well as a host of Jewish, Sikh, Christian and Muslim individuals. Amnesty International and the Canadian Human Rights Commission also joined as intervenors. One organization stood out for its unique stance: the English Montreal School Board, or EMSB. It argued that because English speakers in Quebec have protected language rights under the Charter, the EMSB is guaranteed the right to govern its schools as it sees fit. Board chair Joe Ortona told me that it is a secular institution, with one important caveat: “We just don’t have the same definition of secularism as the government.” In effect, he and the EMSB, which represents 35,000 students in 73 schools, believe that an exposure to multiculturalism is fundamental to anglophone education in Quebec.

Lined up on the other side, defending the bill along with the provincial government, were a cluster of civil society organizations dedicated to upholding la laïcité. They included a feminist group, Pour les droits des femmes du Québec, and an atheist group, Libres penseurs athées. Foremost among them was the Mouvement laïque québécois, or MLQ, which has played a decisive role in advancing secularism in Quebec over the years, both in and out of court. For MLQ president Daniel Baril, Bill 21 is an important step toward fulfilling Quebec’s destiny as a secular, liberal-minded state, united by common values. To some supporters of Bill 21, pluralism and multiculturalism in the Canadian mode—two official languages, but no official culture—is almost nihilistic.

The battle has worked its way through the courts for the past six years. Sometime in the next few months, it will go to the Supreme Court of Canada. There, the Quebec government and its supporters will square off once more against their opponents, which this time will include not only individuals and organizations, but the federal government. When Bill 21 passed in 2019, Justin Trudeau expressed the Liberals’ distaste for it, though the feds didn’t interfere in Quebec’s lower-court challenges. Today, the provincial government insists that Ottawa should continue to stay out of it.

Fundamentally, the two sides are arguing for radically differing ideas of what secularism means—and of what Quebec society ought to look like in the years to come. It’s possible to frame Quebec’s roiling culture wars as the tale of two irreconcilable visions of liberalism. In one version, people who are free to make their own choices will make those that improve their lives, whatever that means to them. In the version espoused by Bill 21’s proponents, the state prioritizes communal values. Quebec has long had a more socialist flavour than the rest of Canada, and is more comfortable creating a framework that nudges citizens toward the government’s collective goals—sometimes gently, sometimes forcefully.

Daniel Baril grew up in the 1950s and ’60s in the tiny town of Black Lake, about 100 kilometres southwest of Quebec City. At the time, the province was at the tail end of la Grande Noirceur—the........

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