Canadian Muslim Kathy Nalas says she won’t give up her headscarf or her job as a children’s speech pathologist in Quebec, amid reports that the provincial government aims to ban religious dress and symbols from places that receive public funding — a move that would essentially import controversial European legislation on religious dress to North America.

Quebecois hospital and school workers would reportedly need to “display their religious neutrality,” according to a report that was published Tuesday in Le Journal de Quebec and sparked a lively debate on pluralism across Canada.

According to the article, which cited unnamed sources, ministers from the Parti Quebecois (PQ) government would need to amend the province’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms in order to institute the ban, which would also allow private-sector employers to choose whether employees can wear religious dress.

A PQ spokesman told Al Jazeera that the report was baseless, and that the leftist, French-Canadian nationalist party’s specific plans to promote secularism would be revealed when legislation goes before the provincial parliament in September.

He noted that secularism has always been a part of the party’s platform, including in the September 2012 election, which won it a minority mandate in parliament — with its leader, Pauline Marois, at the head of government, while the party occupies only 54 of 125 seats in Quebec’s National Assembly.

Nalas, a Montreal native who considers herself a “Muslim feminist,” says the reported measure “goes against the feminist movement in Quebec.”

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