Martine Ouellet, a former PQ Minister and new Bloc Quebecois leader, apparently wants to be better known in the worst possible way.

She achieved fame last week with an attack on NDP leadership aspirant Jagmeet Singh, which drew condemnation inside and outside Quebec.

The BQ, wiped out by the NDP in 2011, is casting about for a cause to fight for. They’ve decided on one: prejudice.

Ouellet was silent when social conservative Andrew Scheer was elected Conservative leader. But last week Ouellet denounced Singh—who holds the progressive values Ouellet claims to stand for—as someone “promoting” his religion. “His primary values are related to his religion,” she claimed based on no evidence at all.

In response, Singh praised Quebec’s affordable child care and tuition and his experience of “open-minded and open-hearted” Quebecers.

But more interesting was the reaction of the NDP’s Quebec MPs. Rather than ducking, they fired back.

Montreal MP Alexandre Boulerice, the NDP’s Quebec lieutenant, contested Ouellet’s views, calling Quebec “tolerant and inclusive.” Other MPs made similar comments.

But the most devastating condemnation came from Rimouski MP Guy Caron, a leadership competitor to Singh. Caron call Ouellet’s remarks “prejudiced” and challenged her understanding of secularism and Quebec history. And that, in Quebec politics, is the ultimate burn.

“I understand the debate on secularism in Quebec, and I know Ms. Ouellet is wrong,” wrote Caron. Secularism “has never meant our politicians can’t display their faith.” Caron then listed several PQ and BQ politicians who were priests. But they didn’t wear turbans.

As usual, Caron has done his research. Quebec’s Bouchard-Taylor report on secularism was clear that in a democracy the people are sovereign and their voting choices must not be limited or excluded.

And it’s not as if Ouellet speaks for the grand collective. A recent Leger poll shows the vast majority of Francophone Quebecers stating an opinion don’t care if a politician wears a turban.

Twisting secularism to justify prejudice is the BQ’s logical next step after a 2015 election campaign that deployed a mega-dose of Islamophobia. Once a social democratic party, the BQ now has sunk so low as to play in the anti-Muslim currents of far-right groups like Atalante and Soldiers of Odin.

But in the shadow of the January 29 murders of six Muslim Quebecers at their mosque by an alleged far-right gunman, progressive opinion isn’t just moving away from the BQ’s identity politics of the right. It’s moving to condemn it.

Within weeks of the murders, Charles Taylor publicly disavowed his own report, arguing social stigmatization had emboldened an “increase in incidents of aggression, especially towards Muslim women wearing the veil—from hate speech to assault in some cases.”

Provincially, the Parti Quebecois is losing ground to a new party, Quebec Solidaire. Earlier this year delegates to the QS conference rejected an electoral alliance with the PQ. One key speaker argued the PQ carries the “beast” of racism.

The shocking murders, the insurgent QS and the arrival of Singh is moving Quebec progressives in a new direction—one which confronts the BQ and blocks their claim to represent the province’s progressive voters.

Tom Parkin is a former NDP staffer and social democrat media commentator.