Jean-Franois Lise says he would not have voted for charter

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

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

Lisesays a Secular Charter he did not fully believe in kept him up at night while serving in the cabinet offormer premier Pauline Marois.

"I wouldve gone to Pauline and said Pauline, as you know, Icannot vote for this, I'm going to have to vote against it," saidLise.

Even though Lise 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 offand if not we would fire them. Ithought that was unacceptable," he said.

The book goes on sale at the end of October.