Raquel Fletcher

Are Quebecers less tolerant than other Canadians? Ongoing debate about secularism and religious symbols has led many observers to ask that very question. Premier François Legault denied that racism or Islamophobia exists in Quebec, even after a gunman opened fire in a Quebec City mosque in 2017, killing six people and wounding 19 others. The Quebec government has now established a religious symbols ban for some public employees. The increasingly diverse new reality is sometimes embraced and sometimes met with hostility from alt-right groups and emboldened anti-immigrant sentiment. One of the biggest questions Quebecers will have to face is: What does this new reality mean for the Quebec identity? And who gets to consider themselves a Quebecer?

The author, a young journalist who moved to Quebec City from Saskatchewan, has some critical questions for the adopted province she loves.