The provincial government of the Canadian province of Quebec tabled its controversial secular values charter, Bill 60, on Thursday.

The bill would force government employees to remove conspicuous religious symbols such as headscarves, yarmulkes, turbans, and larger-than-average crucifixes if they want to keep their jobs.

Premier Pauline Marois, the leader of the Parti Quebecois, told the legislative assembly on Wednesday: “We have a position. We are going to share it with members of this assembly tomorrow, when the minister responsible for democratic institutions will present the charter bill,” Lifesitenews reports.

The measure has been severely criticised by a range of voices, including leading human rights activists, for displaying intolerance to religion and to minorities.

Renowned philosopher Charles Taylor described the proposed legislation as “monstrous” and “a terrible move, a gratuitous move of exclusion”.

In a measure of how seriously the Quebec government is taking the bill, Premier Marois declared that, if it was defeated, it would trigger an election.

The measure, previously called the Quebec Charter of Values, is now, in English, the “Charter affirming the values of State secularism and religious neutrality and of equality between women and men, and providing a framework for accommodation requests.”

The minister responsible for the bill, Bernard Drainville, said the new title was the work of government lawyers who have a penchant for long names that include the major details of bills in their titles.  

He also said that the main proposals in the bill were the same as before, despite the new terminology.

“There’s no new phrasing,” Drainville told reporters. “It’s the name of the bill. You need to give bills a name. Jurists have been working on it. Jurists like giving bills long names that try to summarize everything in the bill — that’s the real reason.”

The minority PQ government would need the support of one of the two main opposition parties in order to pass the bill into law.

However, while foregoing a vote of nonconfidence in the PQ government, the opposition appears to be aligned against the bill.