Past remarks promoting diversity in Quebec’s schools have come back to annoy Premier Pauline Marois as her government tries to pass legislation forbidding the display of overt religious symbols in the public service. But the premier says there’s no contradiction between what she says now and what she said then.

Opposition Liberals raised a 1998 policy on school integration that was signed by Marois when she was the provincial education minister. In it, she encourages the “visibility” of religious diversity “by school personnel.” She goes on to note in the 40-page document, which was co-signed by then-immigration minister Andre Boisclair, that the province’s “common values” include “openness to diversity in ethnocultural, linguistic and religious matters.”

“The credibility of the discussion over the openness of ethnocultural and religious diversity is supported in good part by the visibility of this diversity among school staff,” the document says. The document also states that “the mere wearing of the hijab cannot be prohibited in Quebec schools” because it does not break any laws or the Canadian or Quebec charters of rights.

Under the values charter proposed by Marois’ government, religious headwear such as hijabs would be banned in schools. The charter, which still has to be passed by the provincial legislature, would ban public sector employees from wearing any obvious religious objects or clothing.

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Quebec’s largest university is panning the province’s secular charter as a useless measure, adding to signs of a growing revolt against the Parti Québécois’s controversial bill.

The French-language University of Montreal is challenging the very basis of the government’s argument for its legislation. When the minister responsible for the charter, Bernard Drainville, introduced it in September, he said it was meant to address a “crisis” over religious accommodations that had festered for years and created tensions in Quebec.

The U of M searched its human-resources files going back 20 years and found no incidents whatsoever involving conflicts over religious accommodations. Whatever minor incidents occurred were quickly settled by applying the university’s internal rules, a spokesman said.

The university decided at a meeting of faculty, student representatives and administrators on Monday that the government’s legislation serves no purpose.

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