Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard , Quebec, June 9, 2015. REUTERS/Paul Chiasson/PoolPOOL/Reuters
Some drafts are better left unpublished, some plans unfinished. For reasons known best to himself, Premier Philippe Couillard has decided to propose a watered-down version of the appalling Charter of Quebec Values, which rightly consigned the Parti Québécois to electoral humiliation a year ago.
Worse, it will serve as a companion piece to a far more pressing and worthwhile initiative – one it risks undercutting.
Various Western governments have grappled with the radicalization of disaffected youth. It's a challenge Quebec understands better than most. At last count, 30 or so young people from the province have decamped in hopes of joining jihad in Syria; two others murdered Canadian soldiers in separate attacks on home soil last year.
It's a very real problem, and the province is responsibly offering a broad range of measures to address it.
Some are largely symbolic but others, such as a plan to hire and train outreach workers on countering extremist recruiting pitches, are both novel and necessary.
And yet Quebec's provincial Liberals are also intent on tabling a bill that may further marginalize the very community that the anti-extremism legislation seeks to shield from radical elements.
Among other things it will require all public services to be delivered and received with "uncovered faces" – a de facto ban on niqabs and burkas.
Fully covering one's face will be outlawed in Quebec for: criminals in the act of committing an offence, rioters who threaten public order, and a small handful of Muslim women when they show up to the offices of their government.
As messages go, it's mystifying. Polls rather dismayingly suggest the Liberal position has broad public support. At least the Charter-lite will dispense with the more repellent aspects of the PQ version.
Mr. Couillard opposed the PQ's Charter as a candidate, a commendable act. He should have ended his reflection there.