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Discussion of the Parti Québécois’ “Charter of Quebec Values” has until now been conducted rather on the same lines as discussion of a third referendum: as a theoretical possibility, but not an immediate likelihood.

The thing was so outlandish, so crude, so ugly in its implications and so obvious in its motives — to this day we have yet to be given a shred of evidence of its necessity — that the consensus was that it was unlikely ever to be put into effect.

Quebecers would not stand for this, we told ourselves. It was a throwback to an earlier time, catering to old insecurities, unrepresentative of the Quebec of today. Oh, perhaps it might fly in a few rural backwaters, but never in cosmopolitan Montreal.

At any rate, the opposition parties would block it in the legislature. Some watered-down version might pass, an affirmation of the secular character of the Quebec state blah blah blah, but the core of it, the ban on religious garments in the public service — effectively, a ban on religious minorities in the public service — could not possibly become law.

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