Quebec’s proposed constitution an ‘assimilationist policy’

Quebec’s proposed constitution has taken many by surprise, given the red flags it raises and the danger it presents to fundamental rights and freedoms, as well as the rule of law.

And it’s not just the content of Bill 1, the Quebec Constitution Act, 2025, which seeks to protect the province's common values, that has legal experts on edge. It’s also the process by which it was created. Or rather, the lack of process.

Major legal frameworks are typically developed over several years, with extensive public consultations and input from a diverse array of experts and civil society groups. Here, observers say the Quebec government is seeking feedback after the fact.

On December 2, the Quebec chapter of the International Commission of Jurists submitted a formal complaint about the bill to the United Nations.

“The blatant disregard for these international rights and standards requires the intervention of the United Nations Special Procedures to recognize the human rights violations and call on the authorities to withdraw Bill 1,” the group wrote in its submission.

Stéphane Beaulac, a constitutional expert and professor at Université de Montréal, heads the Quebec chapter of the ICJ. He says that many of the grievances concern human rights and fundamental freedoms.

“When we're dealing with those matters, it doesn't stay local,” he told host Alison Crawford on the latest episode of Verdicts and Voices. 

“It falls under the jurisdiction of international bodies of the UN Special Rapporteur, for instance, because it deals with potential infringements of minority rights, of Indigenous people's rights, so we want to bring it outside Canada to the attention of UN authorities.”

There are few fans of the bill in Canada’s legal field. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association describes the bill as illegitimate with authoritarian overtones, and the chief of the Assembly of First Nations for Quebec and Labrador says the proposal does not reflect a vision of coexistence between nations. The head of the Barreau du Québec has described the plan as part of a “drift towards authoritarianism.”

The Quebec chapter of the Canadian Bar Associaion, headed by Alexandre Forest, has called for the legislation to be withdrawn. He says the most shocking part of reading the bill was seeing what the process had been to create it. Important legislation, like a constitution, would typically undergo a broad consultation process before ever being tabled, but that hasn’t happened here.

“How can you actually say that you are submitting an extraordinary law, but you will go through the very normal process of any kind of law?” he says of the rushed process. 

The first debate within his organization was whether it should even participate in the consultations, as the concern was that doing so would lend legitimacy to the process.

“It was kind of new and shocking for us to just ask, are we actually helping here the potential enactment of a wrong law by participating in a process we are not in agreement with?”

Beyond the process, Beaulac says the bill's content raises red flags. 

“There are features that are potentially dangerous with regard to fundamental rights and freedom, and with regard to the promotion and protection of the rule of law,” he says.

Among its concerning provisions, the bill would attempt to normalize the use of the notwithstanding clause "without any requirement to contextualize or justify the provision” and enact “a total prohibition of manifestation of faith in public spaces.”

“I don't want to come across as alarmist, but sometimes people say, ‘oh, we're not as bad as what's happening down in the USA,’” Beaulac says. 

While he tends to agree, that doesn’t mean what’s unfolding in the province isn’t dangerous.

“It is a slippery slope.”

Forest notes that an alarming aspect of what’s proposed is the goal to prevent a third party from using tribunals to contest not only the constitution itself, but also laws that could be enacted with this special text. 

For instance, a union could be prevented from contesting laws created under this constitution. 

“Not only do you want to enact something in a rushed process, but you also want to prevent what will obviously be the contestation to come. It's really the part that I (find) scary,” he says. 

Beaulac says that Bill 1’s provision for protecting the “collective” rights of the Quebec nation is very much at odds with the Canadian constitution and Quebec’s own Charter of Rights. 

“At the heart of the very concept of human rights is individual rights, what is fundamental, so-called inherent, and inalienable to the human person. This does not mean that there are not some rights that are addressed in collective terms. There are collective rights associated with groups, like Indigenous people, like minority language groups, etc,” he says.

“When you dilute human rights by introducing a concept like collective right of the nation, you actually take away something that is inherent.”

Forest says the concept in the bill of protecting the common heritage of the Quebec nation is itself a vague goal.

“When you put weird, odd terms like this, or really broad terms like this into law, then you leave space to whatever government is in place to define these terms and then use them against the very people they are supposed to protect.”

Beaulac is more blunt. 

“Let's call it what it is. It is assimilationist policy that has taken place here,” he says.

“It’s really an attempt to monopolize what it means to be a Quebecer. There are provisions … that basically define what Quebecers are, what the Quebec nation is, and what language true, real Quebecers speak. This is all in flagrant violation of minority rights at the international level.”

Listen to the full episode to learn more about how Bill 1 may be incompatible with Indigenous sovereignty in Quebec, if anyone outside the provincial government supports the bill, and what Forest and Beaulac want to see from the public hearings, which start December 4.