This episode follows laïcité from news controversy to the center of Quebec politics. Beginning with the reasonable-accommodations stories of 2006 and the Hérouxville “code of conduct,” it examines the Bouchard-Taylor Commission’s finding that the province faced a “crisis of perception” rather than a real accommodation crisis.
It tracks the 2007 rise of Mario Dumont’s ADQ, the Parti Québécois’s Charter of Quebec Values, and the 2019 passage of Bill 21 under the CAQ, through to Bill 9 and the report behind it.
A single question runs throughout: has the place of religion displaced sovereignty as the issue that defines and divides Quebec? The episode closes on the Supreme Court appeal.
