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In September the Parti Québécois government made public its bill for a «Charte des Valeurs québécoises», a «Charter of Québécois Values».

In the name of «secularism», it plans to ban the wearing of «ostentatious» religious symbols for public service workers: including judges, police, hospital and social services staff, school teachers, municipal employees, teachers and staff in day-care centers, etc. According to the PQ this would ensure the neutrality of the state vis-à- vis religion, but the minister who introduced the bill immediately made it clear that there was to be an exception for Catholic symbols (like the crucifix hanging front and center in Québec’s parliament, the National Assembly) because « religion has played a key role in the history of Québec» and of the need «to preserve this heritage»! Here we see the reactionary character of these «québécois values»...

Confronted with the disillusionment of their electorate since coming to government, the PQ nationalists have taken recourse in xenophobia to try to regain some popularity. The Public Service Union of Québec (the only legally recognized representative of Public Service employees) has approved the government; The charter was criticized by the petty-bourgeois Québec Solidaire and they issued an alternative plan which stipulates the prohibition of religious symbols only for «officials in authority» (judges , police, etc.); but they retained the point that to qualify to receive public services – with exceptions only in emergencies – one must be «bareheaded», in other words not be wearing the Islamic veil!

The democrats opposed the bill in the name of democracy and individual freedoms. The PQ announcement was followed almost immediately by a series of attacks against women wearing veils; it is important to note that immigrants from Arab countries have become one of the most important groups of workers of foreign origin, and the Muslim religion is now second in the province. The Charter is in fact directed against women who wear the symbols of the Muslim religion.

Beyond the short-term political calculations , the initiative of the PQ has a more important goal: to paralyze the struggle against the evils of capitalism through the division of the proletarians and by hoodwinking the proletarians of Quebec into believing that they share common values with their exploiters to be defended against foreign proletarians. But proletarians have nothing to defend in common with the capitalists, they must struggle against them if they do not want to stay slaves eternally!

Opposition to the draft charter of the PQ is not a democratic or humanitarian requirement, it is a requirement of the proletarian struggle: proletarians from all origins and traditions, unite against capitalism and its lackeys, secular or religious!

Since the PQ Charter is inspired by laws introduced in France, we publish above an article from Le Prolétaire written to combat a similar set of circumstances prevailing there.