Drimonis: Children's book club is latest target of CAQ's identity politics

Montreal Gazette

04-07-2025

Books and public libraries were my gateways to other worlds as a child. It's understandable, then, why I'm such a fan of the TD Summer Reading Club, a national program involving 2,200 public libraries, celebrating local authors and inspiring children to read. The club is free, all materials and book lists are bilingual across Canada, and since 2008 it's worked hard to provide original French content.
It was this club that Quebec Francization Minister Jean-François Roberge decided to criticize on social media for the simple reason that one of the many illustrations it uses to promote its cross-country activities features a girl in a hijab.
'Many Quebecers have expressed their discomfort with this poster for a book club held in a public library,' Roberge said on X last month, 'which depicts a young girl wearing a hijab. This type of poster does not promote the coexistence we want to promote in Quebec. The principles and foundations of the new law on integration into the Quebec nation must ultimately guide us to avoid this kind of blunder.'
How many Quebecers 'expressed their discomfort,' we'll never know, but what 'blunder' is Roberge alluding to exactly?
A little girl being interested in reading? Improving her French? Feeling like she belongs to a larger, inclusive Quebec? Making friends with other cultural communities?
Or does Roberge only see a hijab?
Some people's vision of vivre-ensemble appears limited to an 'ensemble' that only looks like them. In an effort to erase what the government considers undesirable from public spaces, the Coalition Avenir Québec is not above scapegoating children. I fail to see how that strengthens state secularism.
Mouvement laïque québécois and the secular feminist organization Pour les droits des femmes du Québec shared their discomfort, noting the illustration depicts a minor wearing the hijab, not an adult with full agency. Yet the same groups and various pundits made no such distinction last year when they denounced an illustration of a woman in a hijab at Montreal City Hall's entrance, demanding the city remove it. The hijab is what ultimately bothered them. Disappointingly, the city caved.
If organizers — receiving pressure to conform to the CAQ's limited vision of inclusion — simply pull the book club from Quebec, what would be accomplished other than depriving thousands of Quebec kids of a free reading program? Do Quebec's public libraries belong to all Quebecers or do they not? Only months ago, a Montreal public library told a writer trying to book a space to host his English book club that he couldn't, because Quebec's vague new language law was creating unnecessary confusion. Why are we making access to culture more difficult for some Quebecers?
With the Legault government slashing school budgets and last year's reports of problems accessing francization courses, and with literacy rates lagging, one would think a francization minister would not only welcome outside assistance, but praise it.
No such luck.
Identity politics above everything else. Once again, the CAQ has chosen to single out a religious minority in order to showboat secularism. It's performative at best.
While I don't support hijabs on children, neither do I believe that targeting those who wear them supports state secularism. It's just bullying.
The CAQ says the book club's illustration 'does not promote the coexistence we want to promote in Quebec.' What kind of coexistence is that?
The kind that marginalizes religious and cultural differences to such an extent that we can no longer even tolerate a mere illustration of a hijab for a free book club? The kind that selectively chooses to focus on some religious traditions while conveniently ignoring others?
All young Quebecers — without qualifiers — should feel welcome in our public spaces and cultural institutions. That's the kind of coexistence I can get behind.