Hearings on the proposed Charter of Values continued Wednesday at the National Assembly with the man behind the 2007 Herouxville saga.

Among those testifying, was former Herouxville town councillor Andre Drouin, who helped ban religious face coverings and stonings in his Mauricie town.

Drouin said the past seven years have been quite an education, for him, and that Bill 60 is long overdue.

“I believe it's probably the first, well the best, thing that can happen to the province of Quebec now and I will dare at this – Canada will probably imitate us,” he said.

In 2007, the town of Herouxville famously passed a lifestyle code that including such points as banning religious face coverings and death by stoning.

Drouin said the Charter of Values will be very useful.

“We will have a tool to manage to some degree the problem we have with immigration,” he said, quickly adding that immigrants themselves aren't the problem – many newcomers, he said, simply don't understand the status quo.

“I've been around for seven years, meeting with thousands of immigrants and, on the contrary, they've been told, especially at the Canadian level, that (they can) come here and keep their culture. Well that's not the way we should do things,” he said.

Earlier Wednesday, Marc Laviolette, leader of the union Syndicalistes et progressistes pour un Québec libre, presented at the hearings, saying the charter needs to go even further.

“We think that children at school shouldn't have the right to have signs of their religious affiliation,” said Laviolette.

Parents of students in elementary and high schools, he said, would be sent teachers' notes telling them no crosses or kippas would be allowed at school.

“If school is neutral the children have to be neutral, also, in school, so they have an open mind of what is taught in these schools,” he said, adding that a ban for children could be applied after Bill 60 is passed.