Don’t Forget

This past July, during the usually unremarkable annual meeting of provincial premiers, something noteworthy occurred. The leaders of Alberta and Manitoba took the premier of Quebec to task: the former over Quebec’s opposition to an oil pipeline, and the latter over Quebec’s new law banning police officers, teachers, judges, and other public employees from wearing religious symbols at work. François Legault was unmoved. To Jason Kenney, who even hinted at secession if Alberta did not get its way, Legault reiterated the “social unacceptability” of pipelines to Quebecers. To Brian Pallister, he declared that there are collective rights as well as individual ones, including the right of Quebecers to insist on a certain level of secularism and to declare, “This is the way we live in Quebec.”

Quebec has always been something of an enigma. At the moment, it is against pipelines, a stance typically perceived as progressive. At the same time, it limits head...