Roger-Luc Chayer
I was recently asked to talk about my vision of laïcité « à la française » because I had the chance to live in this country a while ago and I have dual nationality. First of all, I must say that there is a strange paradox between these two French-speaking nations because, on one side of the Atlantic, France is a presidential republic and, facing west, Quebec is a constitutional monarchy. Having lived in France for 10 years and a good part of my life in Quebec, even if our political systems differ, the democratic reflexes are very similar. France has this constant need to look like a monarchy, giving great importance to caste, hierarchy, while in Quebec, we behave like a republic, always seeking to legislate so as to reduce the differences between people.
The debate on secularism in France is very polarized and surprising. I have always believed that this question had been settled for a long time, and that the Republic was precisely the guarantor of secularism in the public sphere. This debate, we had in Quebec in the sixties and culminated in a quiet revolution, without violence, but determined, which resulted in the complete separation of Church and State. Schools, hospitals and all public services could no longer exist outside the creation of government-run ministries. It must be known that the history of modern Quebec was strongly influenced by the presence and political acts of the Catholic Church from the beginning of New France and even after the Conquest. Indeed, it was the Church who came to colonize New France from the beginning, who stood up to the hordes of Amerindians, sometimes peaceful and often hostile (rightly, history will prove it) and who, after the defeat and the Conquest, carved a special place in Lower Canada by negotiating and obtaining from the English occupier, the submission of the French people to the king from England in exchange for maintaining our language, our educational institutions and our civil code. During the French Revolution, the rules were changed and the Republican State quickly separated the divine powers incarnated by the bishops and the republican power, incarnated by the people, by the civil code, followed by the Napoleon code. France has been an example of secularism in all spheres of society with a school system that excludes all religious manifestations, access to secular higher education, health care and a global civil life that does not allow any religion or belief to to have a decision-making presence at any level. This secularism, which is very much in tune with the Republic, is, in my opinion, what makes it possible to better protect the democratic expression of the people. The current debate on secularism in France is particularly surprising because of the firmness of sometimes backward ideas or beliefs that some groups try to introduce, worse, to impose. The fact of wanting to talk about the right to abortion from a moral perspective is not bad in itself, for example, but to question the fundamental principles of the Republic to introduce exceptions based on beliefs is extremely worrying. in my opinion. From the moment that there is a religious exception, there is no more republic. Laïcité à la française is the theory of absolute neutrality that has proved itself in the world and in history. France, in her secular intention, does not forbid the practice of any religion whatsoever, on the contrary, she is the guarantor of the freedom of belief so dear to certain communities.