CCLA: BILL 62 (NIQAB BAN) GUIDELINES CANNOT SAVE AN UNCONSTITUTIONAL LAW

https://ccla.org/bill-62-niqab-ban-guidelines-cannot-save-unconstitutional-law/

(Ottawa – May 11, 2018) The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM) and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), two prominent civil liberties & advocacy organizations, say recently issued guidelines for granting exemptions under Quebec’s Bill 62 “niqab ban” are inherently problematic and do nothing to save a law that is fundamentally unconstitutional.

Last October, the NCCM and CCLA filed a lawsuit seeking a stay on the application of Section 10 of the new law, which requires individuals to uncover their faces in order to receive basic public services, including healthcare, social assistance, and public transit. The Quebec Superior Court granted the stay in December pending the release of official guidelines for the requesting and granting of exemptions to the law on the basis of religious accommodation. The guidelines were released on Wednesday by the Quebec government.

“These guidelines do not fix a law that is, at its core, discriminatory and unconstitutional. Requiring Muslim women who wear the niqab to make an application for exemption every time they wish to access basic public services such as healthcare and transit places a further undue burden on them. In our view, these guidelines only reinforce the convoluted and flawed nature of Bill 62,” says NCCM Vice Chair Khalid Elgazzar ...

Quebec minister for women stands by belief that hijabs are oppressive

Isabelle Charest also refuted the idea that the CAQ's soon-to-be tabled secularism legislation targets Muslim women.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/quebec-minister-for-women-stands-by-belief-that-hijabs-are-oppressive

QUEBEC — With the opposition parties denouncing her remarks as divisive, Quebec’s minister for the status of women Wednesday refused to back down from her statement that she finds the hijab oppressive.
Instead she went further, saying all religious symbols can be a sign of oppression.
“I stand by what I said yesterday,” Isabelle Charest told reporters arriving for a morning meeting of the Coalition Avenir Québec caucus. “I don’t regret the way I answered the question.

29 JUN 18: CCLA & NCCM SUCCESSFULLY OBTAIN RENEWED STAY AGAINST QUEBEC’S BILL 62

https://ccla.org/ccla-nccm-successfully-obtain-renewed-stay-quebecs-bill-62/

(Ottawa – June 29, 2018) The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) and the National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), two prominent civil liberties & advocacy organizations, have successfully obtained a further stay of section 10 of Quebec’s religious neutrality law, commonly known as Bill 62.

Last December, the Quebec Superior Court granted the CCLA and NCCM an interim stay until July 1, 2018, pending the Quebec government’s release of official guidelines governing how the restriction on face coverings when giving or receiving public services would work in practice, including the process for granting exemptions for religious reasons.

Following the release of the official guidelines in May, the CCLA and NCCM returned to court last week to argue that the guidelines were inadequate for preventing serious and irreparable harm to Muslim women who choose to veil their faces on the basis of their sincerely-held religious beliefs.

The United States Is a Progressive Nation With a Democracy Problem

Voter suppression contributes to the myth that America is made up of centrists.

https://www.thenation.com/article/progressive-nation-voter-suppression/

Toward the end of Stacey Abrams’s powerful response to the State of the Union address, she turned to the reason she’s not currently the governor of Georgia: “Let’s be clear. Voter suppression is real. From making it harder to register and stay on the rolls to moving and closing polling places, to rejecting lawful ballots, we can no longer ignore these threats to democracy.” Between Abrams’s speech and the introduction of the voting-rights bill H.R. 1, the first piece of legislation proposed by the new Pelosi-led House, Democrats are systematically focusing on strengthening our democracy. They better, because America is in a strange political space: Progressive ideas are wildly popular, but nearly impossible to enact. To fix this, we need to reshape our electoral systems to allow everyone’s vote to count equally and finally kill the zombie myth of the center-right nation.

On issue after issue, American voters are firmly left-of-center, and in some cases ready to embrace our most progressive ideas. They want more gun control. They want increased abortion access. They want criminal-justice reform. Fifty-six percent of all Americans want nationalized single-payer health care, and nearly everyone wants the government to do more to bring down costs. Fifty-nine percent of registered voters support higher taxes on the wealthy. Fifty-four percent of Republicans and 70 percent of all Americans want to “soak the rich.” Even fifty-seven percent of people who identify as conservative Republicans support the main components of a Green New Deal. Seventy-two percent believe climate change is a threat. Everybody hates gerrymandering.

Given that so many Americans support these positions, what would it take to actually make progress on any of them? As Senator Cory Booker joins Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Kirsten Gillibrand as credible candidates formally running for president and with Senator Bernie Sanders and former Vice President Joe Biden likely close behind, we are beginning to see Democrats not just organizing around policies but advocating ways to make sure these policies can become law. H.R. 1, The For the People Act, would expand access to the polls, prevent voter purges, and ensure paper backups for electronic voting. That’s an important start, but if we really want to enact a progressive vision that an overwhelming majority of Americans support, we’re going to have to attack larger misconceptions and structural issues as well.

The CAQ wants to create two tiers of Quebeckers

These efforts reflect the wider debate of defining laïcité, which is distinct from secularism – partly due to the different philosophies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke. According to Rousseau, the individual gains freedom through the state, which has the right to regulate the public sphere of religion. Locke, on the other hand, placed freedom of conscience as the cornerstone of individual rights, which guarantees freedom from the state. These opposing views have permeated societies with French and British roots.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-caq-wants-to-create-two-tiers-of-quebeckers/?fbclid=IwAR12zGcYCfEkvKJWVBrkNsnhHT3da0hlDBbfP_HaGwipvGh6CHK7Yh43Dkk

Religious profiling? Quebec plays blame game over school survey

Finger-pointing intensifies over questionnaire sent out to school principals last fall.

https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/quebec-government-surveyed-schools-about-religious-symbols

Quebec’s Education Ministry sent a detailed questionnaire to school principals across the province last fall seeking information about religious symbols and requests for reasonable accommodation.
The questionnaire, drawn up in June 2018 while the Liberals were in power, was sent out two months before the later request by ministry officials — now working under a Coalition Avenir Québec government — sparked their own controversy by phoning school boards asking for information about staff who wear religious symbols.
The revelation sparked a war of words between the current Minister of Education, Jean-François Roberge, and the previous minister, Sébastien Proulx, who called separate news conferences to blame each other for dabbling in the issue and letting fly accusations of religious profiling.

Allison Hanes: Why is Quebec debating values again?

'It is precisely because Quebecers are a French-speaking minority within Canada and North America that it shouldn’t be picking on other minorities; precisely because Quebec rightly wants to uphold equality of the sexes that it shouldn’t be telling Muslim women in particular what not to wear; precisely because Quebec is a modern, secular state that it doesn’t need to outlaw individual expressions of faith; precisely because Quebec is a distinct society with a proud history, culture and identity that it doesn’t need to squelch the identities of others.'

https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/allison-hanes-why-is-quebec-debating-values-again?fbclid=IwAR2eaneD3efSMS_TaTqR2CXTsRwLpKt9lrUN6rZ8KB8gKDg8qsq6mmngGjQ

Lise Ravary: Toward a culture of public accountability in Quebec

People everywhere are fed up with the lack of accountability in government. Not least in Quebec, where the no-fault mentality rules.

https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/columnists/lise-ravary-toward-a-culture-of-public-accountability-in-quebec
People everywhere are fed up with the lack of accountability in government. It seems no one is ever held responsible for anything. Not least in Quebec, where the beloved no-fault mentality rules. When things go wrong, civil service managers like to say that finding culprits is not important, what’s key is to understand what happened to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
As if there were no link between a poor decision and the person or people responsible for it.
I’m not saying a witch hunt should be launched every time someone errs on the job, but when people die or are injured, when essential services are not available in times of crisis — for example, people stuck in their cars overnight in a storm on Highway 13 — government employees and private contractors should be called to account.

Liberals opt for traditional position against ban on religious symbols

https://montrealgazette.com/news/quebec/liberals-opt-for-traditional-position-against-ban-on-religious-symbols?fbclid=IwAR0MwxZJGn7NPQlsUcuwlm6C7uGc9QRBUsseLHAaaZaQp4XvyI9R-fGP3Ls

QUEBEC — The Quebec Liberals have decided to stick with their traditional position against a ban on religious symbols for state employees.
Emerging from a two-day party caucus of the party’s 29 MNAs, interim leader Pierre Arcand said after a short internal discussion on what position to take when the Coalition Avenir Québec tables its bill banning symbols, the consensus was to not change policies.
“The Liberal Party is the party of individual freedoms,” Arcand told reporters at a news conference.  “Freedom of religion is entrenched in the Charter of Human Rights and Feedoms so we will never endorse the policy of the CAQ.”

«Si on parle français au Québec, c’est grâce au Canada»: le passage de Jean Chrétien à «Tout le monde en parle» fait réagir

https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2018/10/22/si-on-parle-francais-au-quebec-cest-grace-au-canada-le-passage-de-jean-chretien-a-tout-le-monde-en-parle-fait-reagir

L’ancien premier ministre du Canada Jean Chrétien a soulevé les passions lors de son passage à Tout le monde en parle, dimanche, alors qu’il a affirmé entre autres que si on parlait encore français au Québec, c’était grâce au Canada.
«Si on a gardé notre langue, c’est parce que nous, canadiens-français de l’époque, on a décidé de rester avec la couronne britannique, qui nous offrait des meilleures garanties pour notre religion et de notre culture», a-t-il déclaré à Serge Fiori qui lui demandait pourquoi il ne reconnaissait pas le Québec comme un pays.
Le politicien a également tenté de relativiser son rôle lors de la nuit des longs couteaux de 1981, affirmant avoir été réveillé «sur le tard».

Quebecers among Canadians most likely to believe racism is decreasing | CBC News

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebecers-among-canadians-most-likely-to-believe-racism-is-decreasing-1.4887461

Demographer Jack Jedwab, the president of the Association for Canadian Studies, suggests simply talking about racism is a touchy issue in Quebec.
"In Quebec, we saw considerable resistance to the very idea of having a consultation about systemic racism," Jedwab said, out of concern that it might give rise to "Quebec bashing." 
The consultation was scuttled by the previous Liberal government after considerable outcry from critics and the opposition.

Quebec National Assembly ban on kirpans survives appeal to Supreme Court

The Sikh plaintiffs did not want to surrender their kirpans prior to presenting a brief to a legislative committee.

   https://montrealgazette.com/news/local-news/quebec-national-assembly-ban-on-kirpans-survives-appeal-to-supreme-court?fbclid=IwAR2jyz0Jri263Ve46yHOtdvhs5iG8o7oXE8DzbnbFkEPN2iL-ktQILwxkso

No kirpans will be permitted inside Quebec’s National Assembly.
The Supreme Court of Canada refused on Thursday to hear an appeal from a man and woman — both of them Sikhs — who were refused access to the province’s legislature because they refused to surrender the ceremonial dagger that has already been legally recognized as part of their religious observance.
The Supreme Court’s decision essentially upholds two lower court rulings that found the National Assembly acted within its parliamentary privilege in denying entry to the pair, privilege which is not subject to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Oxford City Council adopts APPG definition of Islamophobia

https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/17392310.oxford-city-council-adopts-appg-definition-of-islamophobia/

 The motion, which was passed unanimously by the full council, was proposed by Councillor Lubna Arshad of Cowley Marsh and seconded by Councillor Jamila Azad of Oxford Labour.

It is now the third council in the UK to adopt the APPG definition which states:

"Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness."

No Dogs or Anglophones: Poll Exposes Sad Truth about Race Attitudes in Quebec

No Dogs or Anglophones: Poll Exposes Sad Truth about Race Attitudes in Quebec

"Elsewhere, 90 per cent of Quebecers said they’d be at ease with a doctor wearing a cross, while only 65 per cent of them said they’d be equally at ease with a doctor wearing a kippa.
The disparity could be owed to confusion about what a kippa actually is, said SOM Research Vice-President Éric Lacroix.
Considering that the kippa, a skullcap worn by Orthodox Jewish men, is actually the least visible of the headwear mentioned in the poll, Lacroix said it’s possible some respondents confused it with “kirpan.”: Link