By Daniel Béland

November 8, 2025

The government of Quebec Premier François Legault recently tabled legislation that would codify a Quebec constitution. This move on the part of the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) has been controversial on a number of fronts, among them the perception that it is a political Hail-Mary pass by a government languishing in the polls a year before a scheduled election, and anxious to burnish its nationalist credentials against a resurgent Parti Québécois.

In other federal countries such as Australia and the United States, sub-federal units (i.e., states) each have their own stand-alone constitution. In Canada, only British Columbia has its own Constitution Act, a document in place since 1996.

This is not to say that the nine other provinces do not have a constitution, simply that they each lack their own stand-alone constitution act. Instead, their constitutions are comprised of a multitude of sources, which include both written and unwritten components — a constitutional status quo known as an “uncodified constitution”, comparable to what exists in the United Kingdom.

In Canada, on the one hand, written documents include provincial statutes that structure core political institutions and province-related sections of the federal Constitution Act, 1867. On the other hand, the unwritten nature of Canadian provincial constitutions as modelled after the British system is challenging, as it makes it difficult to compile a comprehensive inventory of the components of a provincial constitution.

Because of their fragmented and partly unwritten nature, compared to stand-alone, self-contained constitution acts, uncodified provincial constitutions are also typically unable to project a strong sense of shared identity carrying deep symbolic and political value.

In the context of modern Quebec nationalism, it is not surprising that the idea of adopting a provincial constitution act has long been debated in the only province left out of the agreement leading to the Constitution Act of 1982, which is also the only province with its own legal system of civil as opposed to common law.

At some point, both the Parti Québecois and the Liberal Party of Quebec have embraced the idea of creating a Quebec constitution but for different reasons: the former because such a document could be understood as a step towards independence, and the latter because it could allow the party to score points on defending Quebec’s distinct identity and character.

Yet, it is Legault’s CAQ government that has moved forward with its project for a provincial constitution act. Tabled last month, Bill 1 (Québec Constitution Act, 2025) is meant to become the supreme law of the province and its scope is much broader than British Columbia’s 1996 Constitution Act, which mostly gathered and clarified the rules of both executive power and legislative power in the province.

In comparison, the CAQ government’s proposed Québec Constitution Act is a much broader and controversial piece of legislation that is clearly about the political affirmation of the Québec nation and the autonomy of the province within Canada’s federal system.

Emphasizing “the collective rights of the Québec nation” in terms of language and culture, this proposed Constitution Act, which is framed in nationalist terms that mirror CAQ policy preferences, also stresses the importance of “State laicity, the model for integration into the Québec nation and the civil law tradition.”

Under pressure, the CAQ government did agree to seek public feedback on the bill, but the entire process remains tainted by the lack of prior consultations.

Bill 1 also features provisions on abortion rights, Indigenous rights, the fact that Quebec’s “integration model differs from Canadian multiculturalism”, and the need to strike a balance between collective (national) rights and individual rights. This last element is especially problematic because it could endanger not only individual rights but also the rights of Indigenous peoples.

Finally, the proposed Constitution Act states that Québec “has no attachment to the monarchical system” and that the office of the Lieutenant-Governor would be replaced by an Officer of Québec, who would be appointed by the premier rather than by the Governor General under the advice of the Prime Minister, as is the case now.

As former Senator André Pratte notes in The National Post, while there is nothing wrong with a province seeking to produce its own constitution act, what the CAQ government is trying to do is a “case study in how not to write a constitution.” This is so because, as Pratte rightly points out, “In normal circumstances, for such an exercise in nation-building, a government would seek the widest popular and political consensus possible.”

Yet, this is not what happened with the CAQ government, as “Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette had his office write the document in secret.”

Considering the absence of prior consultations, it is not surprising that all the opposition parties in the National Assembly have strongly objected to the top-down and partisan process through which the CAQ majority government is trying to push for the adoption of “its” constitution.

As my colleague McGill constitutional law professor Johanne Poirier rightly points out: “If the parties are divided, the citizens are going to be divided, and the last thing you want with a constitution is to divide people.”

Under pressure, the CAQ government did agree to seek public feedback on the bill, but the entire process remains tainted by the lack of prior consultations. That negative perception is compounded by the fact that the government is highly unpopular and trailing far behind in the polls, making the sudden introduction of Bill 1 seem like an electoral trick ahead of next fall’s provincial elections.

Yet, Bill 1 is not only problematic because the way in which an electorally desperate government drafted a provincial constitution act behind closed doors and without a clear electoral mandate from voters to do so.

If adopted, the proposed Constitution Act would reinforce the tendency in Québec under the CAQ rule to limit minority rights in the name of the nation and collective rights associated with it. This is clear in the widely criticized provision that prevents public funds from being used to challenge provincial laws, including problematic ones like Bill 21 on secularism and Bill 96 on language policy.

These two pieces of legislation have been “baked in” to the CAQ government’s proposed Constitution Act, which also legitimizes the use of the notwithstanding clause “without any requirement to contextualize or justify the provision.”

Overall, Bill 1 illustrates not only the narrow nature of the CAQ’s nationalist agenda, but also the broader, global trend towards an erosion of minority rights, including via the codification of constitutions posing as progress.

Daniel Béland is professor of political science and director of the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada at McGill University. He thanks Professor André Lecours from the University of Ottawa for his prompt feedback.