Jean-François Lisée says he would not have voted for charter

The Parti Québécois minister who had the job of helping sell his party's charter to ban civil servants from wearing religious symbols says he would have voted against it.

It's just one of the revelations made by Rosemont MNA Jean-François Lisée in a new book, 18 Months Of Power: My Battles and My Passions, coming just as he mulls a bid for the PQ leadership.

Lisée says a Secular Charter he did not fully believe in kept him up at night while serving in the cabinet of former premier Pauline Marois.

"I would’ve gone to Pauline and said ‘Pauline, as you know, I cannot vote for this, I'm going to have to vote against it," said Lisée.

Even though Lisée publicly defended the Secular Charter, the former minister says he tried to persuade Marois to change the bill.

"It's the idea that we would transition so fast on the ability of civil servants or nurses to keep the religious symbols [and] that we would drive them to take them off and if not we would fire them. I thought that was unacceptable," he said.

The book goes on sale at the end of October.