Secularism and the Foundations of Pluralism: The Crisis of Reasonable Accommodation in Québec

In recent decades Québec, like many other Western states, has been a site of debate regarding the limits of pluralism and freedom of religion.  In Québec, these debates emerged within the context of a restructuring of the nature of nation and citizenship. Since the early 1990s, the Québec state has undertaken a project of the construction of a citoyenneté québécoise, seen as the culmination of a transformation of the boundaries of the Québec nation that began with the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s, marked by the shift from an ethnic to a civic conception of the nation.  The de-ethnicisation and secularisation of national identity in Québec is presented as an expansion of the boundaries of the nation and an opening towards otherness.

Yet, contemporary Québec has also been described as the site of a ‘crisis’ related to the measures adopted to promote this conception of such a nation.  Of particular focus have been the practices of ‘reasonable accommodation’ for religious practices.  Opposition to such measures are made on the basis of two arguments.  The first suggests the need to narrow the scope of pluralism in order to protect universal values, and secularism itself. As such, it posits the paradoxical need to limit pluralism in order to protect pluralism. In doing so, it appeals to the need to protect the universal (as host body) from the particular (as contaminant). The second argues the need to protect ‘national values’ from the dilutive and assimilatory forces of relativism and multiculturalism.  As such, it demands protection of the particular (as host body) from the universal (as contaminant). 

The proposed paper examines the manner in which these two seemingly oppositional arguments can be present within a common discourse that problematizes the presence of certain religious subjects and practices within the public sphere in Québec.