One of the candidates (the one who will probably, alas, win) in Quebec’s Sept. 5th election has announced that she will have passed a charter of secularism. Under it all public employees will be banned from wearing any religious symbols. No head scarves, no yarmulkes, no dangles with religious symbols. Except, needless to say, crucifixes. They are not religious symbols, she claims, but symbols of the Quebec heritage.
This is a blatant appeal to her base, small town and rural French Canadians, many of whom are not actually religious, but are frightened of the “other” and do have that religious heritage.