Editorial: The full folly of the charter of values is now clear.

In the months before the current election was called, senior Parti Québécois figures dined out on Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard’s shifting positions on the government’s values charter, Bill 60.

Now, however, in the thick of the election campaign, it is the PQ that is vacillating in the charter debate, to the point where its arguments on the proposed legislation have descended into incoherence.

On Monday, the minister responsible for Montreal, and liaison with the anglophone community, Jean-François Lisée, met with The Gazette’s editorial board and said repeat- edly that no one would lose their job as a result of the charter provision that would ban the wearing of conspicuous religious symbols by public-sector employees. But the very next day PQ candidate Evèlyne Abitbol said precisely the contrary in a candidates’ debate.

The following day, Premier Pauline Marois, after some waffling about transition periods and discussions with public employees who insist on retaining their symbols, finally conceded that jobs would be lost. But then she added that the government would help such dismissed people to find other employment in the private sector.

This can’t be true, since the PQ has said the charter interdictions would apply to private firms doing business with the government, and Marois had earlier encouraged private businesses to fall in line with the charter provisions. And as Couillard noted, we are talk- ing here about teachers, nurses and daycare workers, who mostly work in the public sector: “Where are they going to send them, Ontario?”

Then, after months of denying that the government would use the notwithstanding clause to protect the charter, Marois conceded, “If we need it, we will use it.”

All indications are that the government would need to. Both the Quebec Human Rights Commission and the provincial bar association have declared that the discriminatory legislation is manifestly unconstitutional. The government has long maintained it has ironclad legal advice to the contrary, but it has never made those opinions public.

Nor has the government come up with any studies or other justificatory evidence in support of the repressive measures included in the charter. All Quebecers have been given are dire warnings about a looming fundamen- talist menace in the province that is the fruit of fearful imaginations, and such loopy scenarios as Janette Bertrand’s hypothetical rich fundamentalist McGill students appropriating her apartment building’s swimming pool.

There was inconsistency in the government’s charter arguments from the outset. It maintained the charter was necessary to assure the secularism of the state, when this has long been an entrenched fact. Ditto equality between men and women. It was argued the charter would unite Quebecers, when it has had the contrary effect, splitting public opinion down the middle and inciting displays of intolerance against women wearing head scarves.

It is not surprising that the PQ has failed to make a coherent case for the charter, since there was never a rational argument for it, other than as a wedge issue to secure its reelection and to advance the separatist cause.