Abstract
In 2019, the Quebec provincial government passed An Act respecting the Laicity of the State. While this piece of legislation is currently before the courts on multiple grounds of discrimination, this legislative exercise was singular from earlier iterations on the regulation of religion undertaken in the last decade in this province for two reasons. On the one hand, this act expanded secularism’s nomenclature, by introducing laicity to the dialogues on regulating religion. On the other, the act also embedded the ‘nation’ into a provincial human rights’ charter. Both reasons telegraph important transformations for religion in the public sphere. This paper analyzes how laicity and nationhood were mobilized during the legislative hearings before the provincial National Assembly by drawing on memoranda submitted by various social actors. It then examines how these concepts circulated and were translated into the context of ongoing legal contestations, namely Hak v. Quebec (Attorney General), now awaiting a decision by the Court of Appeal. Finally, this paper reflects on how An Act respecting the Laicity of the State’s renaming of ‘new’ and ‘old’, in the sense of Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, has ripple-down effects in the public sphere. More broadly, it considers the shifts engendered to understandings of time and space and ultimately, how this statute seeks to refashion narratives of identity in Quebec and Canada.
Presenters
Dia DabbyAssociate Professor, Sciences Juridiques, Université du Québec à Montréal, Quebec, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Governance of religion; Laicity; Secularism; Quebec; Canada; Legal/discourse analysis
