MONTREAL — The Parti Quebecois stayed clear of discussing referendums and instead attempted to position itself as the true enforcer of Quebec interests to kick-off a weekend meeting in Montreal on Saturday.

PQ Leader Pauline Marois said the separatist party will table a bill next week that will seek to affirm that Quebec is a secular society where French is the primary language and where people believe in equality between men and women.

The bill is unlikely to gain the support of the governing Liberals or to be adopted, but serves to continue an attack against Premier Jean Charest's government, which the PQ accuses of failing to defend Quebec language and cultural values.

"If we don't do it, no one will do it for us," Marois told some 500 party members at the opening of a two-day national council meeting in Montreal.

Members are discussing its positions on issues related to language, immigration and identity with an eye on developing a party platform to be unveiled during a convention in early 2011.

Marois said three decades after it was introduced, Bill 101, the province's language law, needs a second wind.

She said it's up to the PQ to defend the Quebec values and the French language because the governing Liberals have failed to do so.

The separatist party has floated the idea of the language charter applying to daycares and colleges, restricting access to English institutions. But party members have remained divided on the issue.

But protection of French language was on everyone's mind.

Party president Jonathan Valois said he'd had enough of not being able to do something as simple as "buy a bagel in French, to be served in French," in Montreal.

"That bothers me," he said.

The issue of the so-called reasonable accommodation of minorities into Quebec society was also debated Saturday.

Marois chastised the government for doing "nothing" with the Bouchard-Taylor commission's report -- even though the exercise was commissioned by the government itself to look at the issue.

The meeting wraps up Sunday.