ROUNDTABLE:
QUEBEC'S CHARTER OF VALUES AND THE
CHALLENGE OF DIVERSITY
John A Hall (McGill)
Christine Ross (McGill)
James Kennedy (UoE)
8 APRIL,13:00-1500
PROJECT ROOM 1.06, 50 GEORGE SQUARE
As a sub-state nation within Canada, Quebec has struggled
with diversity in recent years. In the late noughties Quebec
experienced the ‘ reasonable accommodation crisis’, a
debate that centred on the degree to which Quebec society
should accommodate various cultural practices of its immigrant
populations. The Taylor-Bouchard Commission
sought to address these concerns within Quebec’s existing
practice of interculturalism. However, the issues of accommodation
once more came to the fore in 2014 with the Parti
Québécois’ (PQ) proposed a ‘Charter of Values’, a proposal
that was strident in its secularism.
This roundtable seeks to place the Charter of Values in context,
establishing its origins in the strategic thinking of the
PQ, and distinguishing the Charter from Quebec’s established
policy of interculturalism, as well as English-speaking
Canada’s multiculturalism. The panel comprises the
renowned sociologist John A Hall (McGill), historian Christine
Ross (McGill) and Director of the University of
Edinburgh’s Centre of Canadian Studies, James Kennedy.