Elected with a minority in September 2012, Quebec’s Parti Québécois (PQ) government was in trouble this past June when the national assembly adjourned for the summer. With no new referendum on the horizon and a shaky economy, Premier Pauline Marois needed an issue to revive party fortunes.

The PQ brain trust came up with a strategy to satisfy the PQ base, and maybe to draw enough votes to give Marois a majority in a snap Dec. 9 election. The PQ’s proposed Charter of Quebec Values, leaked to the media in dribs and drabs, was presented in September.

Although the proposed charter would keep the crucifix in the national assembly, the charter would ban the wearing of “conspicuous” religious signs by all public sector employees, from civil servants and teachers to nurses and daycare workers.

Critics — including former PQ premiers Jacques Parizeau, Lucien Bouchard and Bernard Landry — say the proposed charter targets Muslim women.

The proposed charter dominated the national assembly’s autumn session, but also revealed deep divisions. Popular with francophone voters, the proposal was strongly rejected by English Quebecers and other minorities. Liberal leader Philippe Couillard, for one, proclaimed the charter would be adopted only “over my dead body.”

But Couillard had other bodies to deal with, as Quebec’s anti-corruption police raided the Quebec Liberals’ headquarters, and Couillard himself was questioned about the party’s past financing practices. To get some traction, the Liberals hammered the PQ on its economic record. But the Liberal fiscal debate could not trump the emotional charter debate.

Marois has attracted a duo of powerful allies. In May, she named Pierre Karl Péladeau, who remains controlling shareholder of the Quebecor Inc. media empire, as chairman of Hydro-Québec. Péladeau attends meetings of the Marois cabinet’s committee of electrification of transport.

And the offices of the production company run by Péladeau’s wife, Julie Snyder, are on the same floor in the same Montreal building as the PQ’s headquarters. Snyder has organized Les Janettes, women who agree with the proposed charter’s ban on the Muslim hijab — in the name of equality of the sexes.

Amir Khadir, of the opposition Québec Solidaire, has suggested the emergence of the Péladeau/Snyder couple marks the “Berlusconization” of Quebec politics.

The origins of the proposed charter go back to 2006, when Quebecor’s Le Journal de Montréal newspaper and TVA television network ran stories casting Hassidic Jews and Muslims as threats to Quebec’s identity.

Then, in Quebec’s 2007 election, Mario Dumont’s Action démocratique du Québec campaigned against “unreasonable accommodations” of minorities and came close to upsetting the then-Liberal government.

Although about 50% of Quebecers agree with the proposed charter, only 34% support the PQ. And despite doubts that the Liberals have changed under Couillard, 38% of Quebecers would still vote Liberal.

By late October, Marois announced there would be no election in 2013. IE