The rights of Quebeckers aren’t a political plaything

There is something foreboding about a provincial government that violates two of the fundamental human rights in Canada’s Constitution – freedom of conscience and religion, and freedom of expression – and then announces that it wants to write its own constitution. It portends a document that will divide people along politically drawn lines.

That is exactly what is happening in Quebec.

On Oct. 9, Premier François Legault announced out of the blue the tabling of a bill that will create a Quebec constitution. No one saw it coming. No one was consulted. But what it proposes is entirely predictable: a “law of laws” that puts the collective rights of the province’s secular French-speaking majority above all others.

Most constitutions are designed to protect the individual from the state, but Quebec’s proposed constitution does the opposite. It’s no soaring declaration of the inalienable rights of humanity.