https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2019/04/09/quebec-immigrants-minorities-bill-21_a_23708621/?fbclid=IwAR0K9LAfvDLI901eHpkQhJIvRI8ASAWf5IbipTxcw4ySYnQ080QxapAJFko MONTREAL — Immigrants and visible minorities are noticing how some of the most significant pieces of legislation introduced by the Coalition Avenir Quebec government since it took power last October have something in common: the bills disproportionately affect them. Quebec's Bill 21, which bans some public sector employees including teachers and police officers from wearing religious symbols, has drawn widespread criticism since Minister of Immigration, Diversity and Inclusiveness Simon Jolin-Barrette tabled it last month. The bill targets all religious symbols. But Haniyfa Scott, a teacher at Montreal's Carlyle Elementary School, says it is Muslim women who wear the hijab — as she does — who will feel it the most. "I'd like for the government to live a week in the shoes of all the people they are targeting," she said in an interview Monday.
No, there has been no 35th-anniversary re-enactment of the “Good Friday Massacre,”
the epic playoff free-for-all between the Quebec Nordiques and Montreal
Canadiens, when Quebec City was still in the NHL, and Montreal still
made the playoffs. Now it’s not hockey that is pitting Quebec’s
capital and its metropolis against each other, but Bill 21. That’s the
Legault government’s proposed anti-hijab-and-kippah legislation, which
would forbid some public employees, including teachers, from wearing
religious symbols while on duty. This week, Montreal city council unanimously adopted a bipartisan declaration of opposition to the bill.
And while it stopped short of threatening defiance of the legislation
or demanding an exemption from it, the declaration suggests that the
city’s enforcement of it might be less than zealous.
Political adversaries at Montreal City
Hall have joined forces in a rare show of unity against Quebec’s plan to
ban the wearing of religious symbols in certain public-service
functions.
Mayor Valérie Plante and
members of her administration joined opposition members Monday in
passing a unanimous resolution that says the municipal government is
already secular, and the city is already a model of cultural integration
and harmony and does not need a provincial dress code that will chip
away at individual liberty.
Opposition
leader Lionel Perez, who wears a kippa, choked back tears as he stated
his support for the motion and thanked Ms. Plante for joining his
proposal to oppose the province’s Bill 21.
MONTREAL — Quebec’s proposed legislation banning religious symbols
for some public servants drew more strong criticism Friday, with one of
the province’s leading intellectuals rebuking the Coalition Avenir
Quebec government’s approach. Gerard Bouchard, co-author of a 2008
report cited as inspiration for the government’s Bill 21, wrote in
Friday’s La Presse that it would be a serious mistake to prohibit
teachers from wearing religious symbols. He questioned whether Premier
Francois Legault had “yielded to demagogy” in banning symbols for those
in the education sector. Bouchard wrote that including teachers in
that category, as Bill 21 does, is an unacceptable suppression of a
fundamental right, and he called the government’s use of the
notwithstanding clause to block court challenges “a perilous path.”
Bill 21 proposes to reinforce state secularism, which is a good
thing, but it will do so by diminishing religious freedoms through the
notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter and by sidelining the
judiciary. And the bill does more, far more. It uses “values” as a
bulwark against virtually the entire Canadian Charter, the Quebec
Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and international human rights
obligations. The Supreme Court of Canada has said, and keeps
saying, that state neutrality protects individuals’ religious freedoms,
including non-beliefs, within reasonable limits. Bill 21 has it
backward. It will deploy individuals at the front lines in the battle to
impose state neutrality, violating an unwritten principle of the rule
of law that protects minorities in Canada.
QUEBEC — The way journalist Michel C. Auger sees it, with a provincial election looming, there is probably no better time to debunk some commonly held political myths about Quebec.
And while he says it’s true we have been largely spared the “fake news” phenomenon experienced south of the border, there are examples galore of entrenched ideas that may have been true at some point but not longer are.
Yet they linger in the public discourse. In fact, Auger notes in a new book, one of the problems with taking on the issue of myths — and there are many — is that over the years they have been drowned out with a kind of “everybody knows that” complacency.
Michel C. Auger’s new book is available in French only for now.Les éditions La Presse
“The goal of this little book, written on the eve of an important — perhaps historic — election, is to see how some of these givens, too often repeated in election campaigns, stand up to reality,” Auger writes in the preface of the 200-page book, so far available only in French.
“It is thus not a scholarly work but one of a journalist whose job it is to check facts and not be satisfied with rumours or dubious sources.”
But why was such a book not written sooner?
“I guess that comes with the territory of Quebec politics; that we hang on to stuff a long time,” Auger said in an interview with the Montreal Gazette.
“A lot of the myths were in fact true at some point. They just are no longer true or have evolved in a way that they should be interpreted differently.
“I’m not pretentious enough to think I can influence the election. This is a modest contribution to public debate which, after 40 years of journalism, I think I can do.”
And Auger, a veteran columnist of several media outlets who now hosts the popular Radio-Canada public affairs show Midi-info, takes on the taboos as only he can — with facts, devastating precision and a touch of his well-oiled sense of sarcasm and humour.
In some ways Auger picks up where another popular book about the things which make Quebecers tick, 2016’s Cracking the Quebec Code, left off.
Take the language issue. To listen to the public debate some days you would think the Charter of the French Language had never been adopted 40 years ago or it was not the success it was, he writes.
Instead, feeding the idea French is in decline has become a kind of cottage industry in Quebec, he notes.
But if you dig deeper into the facts, you get a whole other story. For example, Auger notes the 2016 Canadian census reveals 94.5 per cent of Quebecers can speak French. The number has never been higher.
“People usually use the most alarming numbers to talk about this issue,” he writes. “But this 94.5 per cent tells us Bill 101 was a resounding success and affected just about everyone.”
“Bonjour-Hi” is essentially a slice of private conversation between a consumer and merchant, “nothing more,” he says.
In a big multicultural city like Montreal with a large non-francophone population, four universities, international head offices and an abundance of tourists, such an expression represents an “invaluable advantage” for basic communication.
There is no law on the books anywhere saying it cannot be used. Lisée himself is on the record as being in favour of bilingual ticket takers in downtown métro stations.
It also reflects the reality of Montreal, where citizens have been speaking English for 250 years and currently has the highest level of trilingual residents (21 per cent), Auger writes.
Auger is not done with his skewering, taking on the hot issue of immigration, which makes headlines day after day.
The current myth, spread largely by the Coalition Avenir Québec, is that the province absolutely must reduce the number of immigrants it accepts a year because it is unable to integrate and find work for the 50,000 who come here every year.
In fact, Auger says, if you calculate the number of immigrants who arrive and those who leave for any number of reasons, the real total increase is between 27,000 and 44,000, depending on the year.
There are more items on his list of exaggerations, including the the power of Quebec’s unions, and the idea [that] secularism is as [much a] part of Quebec’s modern identity as is social democracy.
Quebecers like to think they are greener than other Canadians, yet large gas-guzzling SUVs and truck sales outstrip those of compacts.
What about the idea that Quebec is the most corrupt province in Canada, as the magazine Maclean’s asserted?
Not so, argues Auger. Quebec is probably about as corrupt as any other province, except it tolerates it less, choosing to expose it at every level and create laws and agencies like UPAC to fight it. That creates the perception things are worse here.
Another zinger is the notion Quebecers are poor because they are overtaxed.
It’s true Quebecers are heavily taxed, but if you calculate the whole picture — including what the state gives back to citizens in terms of social benefits and services — the province is among the most progressive in the industrialized world.
Auger concedes his myths — some of which he has addressed in columns of the past — might be more pleasing to anglophones than francophones. But he says that’s part of the exercise.
He dedicates the book to his two sons and the new generation, who he says will one day be in charge of Quebec — perhaps sooner than they imagine.
“I don’t ask everyone to agree with me but let’s have a debate,” Auger said in the interview. “It would be nice if the election (in October) was more about ideas than people slipping up somewhere or putting on the wrong hat in front of the cameras.”
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Quebec’s top court has ruled that a judge was wrong to deny a hearing to a woman wearing a hijab, sending a message from the bench about religious freedoms as the province heads into renewed debate over limiting displays of faith.
The judgment by the Quebec Court of Appeal on Wednesday ends a legal saga for Rania El-Alloul, who was told by a provincial court judge three years ago that her Muslim headscarf violated the rules of courtroom decorum.
The three justices from Quebec’s highest court unanimously found that the judge was off the mark − and nothing in the rules forbids a woman from wearing a hijab in a courtroom if the practice stems from sincere religious belief ...
QUEBEC — Public organizations across the province will have to designate accommodations officers who will handle requests for religious accommodations under the province’s new state neutrality act ...
Ultimately, if the person seeking an accommodation, such as a day off for religious reasons or to wear a turban or hijab while working as a police officer, [is denied] they are fully entitled to appeal it to the Quebec Human Rights Commission ...
Under questioning [the justice minister] agreed the guidelines means a school board in Gaspé could have different rules from one in Montreal ...
• The request must result from the application of Section 10 of the Quebec Charter of Rights and freedoms [q.v.]• The request must be serious, in other words based on a sincere belief that is part of the applicant’s faith or religious belief.• The request must be consistent with the right to equality of women and men and the right of every person to be treated without discrimination based on race, colour, sex, gender identity, pregnancy, sexual orientation, civil status, age, religion, political convictions, language, ethnic or national origin, social condition and handicap.• The accommodation requested must be consistent with the principle of state neutrality.• The accommodation must be reasonable in that it does not impose undue hardship with regard to the rights of others, public health and safety.• The person making the request must have cooperated in seeking a solution that meets the criterion of reasonableness.
http://lawtimesnews.com/201503304570/commentary/speaker-s-corner El-Alloul, a naturalized Canadianwho proudly wore her hijab before another
judge at her citizenship ceremony years ago, has stated that what happened
before Marengo made her “feel afraid” and that she no longer “feels
Canadian.” ... That the proximate justification for denying access related to El-Alloul’s
religiously ordained article of clothing was ironic in more ways than one. The
coat of arms of the Court of Quebec actually bears a Tudor crown clearly adorned
with two Christian crucifixes, and the Quebec flag offers a more than
conspicuous display of the same religious symbol for anyone who cares to see
it ... Finally, it would be hard to argue, particularly in view of the equality rights
codified in s. 15, that allowing El-Alloul to petition a court of law for the
early return of her impounded vehicle while wearing her hijab would harm any
other person’s rights in a manner inconsistent with the Charter ...
Let us dispense with the obvious off the top. As the duly elected
premier of Quebec, in possession of a majority of the seats in the
provincial legislature, François Legault has the indisputable authority
to pass legislation banning the display of religious symbols by persons
employed in certain “positions of authority” in the public service:
judges, prosecutors, police officers, prison guards, teachers,
principals, and so on.
His Coalition Avenir Québec having
campaigned on the promise, what is more, he has a mandate. It will no
doubt prove to be popular. And since Bill 21 includes a provision
invoking the constitution’s notwithstanding clause, exempting it from
judicial review under the Charter of Rights (a similar provision exempts
it from the province’s own Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms), it is
most likely legal, as well.
The CAQ’s success in breaking this deadlock was helped along, of course, by the decline of the sovereigntist movement. Two years ago, a poll found that 82 per cent of Quebeckers, and about three-quarters of the province’s francophones, said Quebec should stay in Canada.
The Quebec government’s bill to ban the
wearing of religious symbols for some state employees is drawing
wide-ranging opposition, from teachers donning symbolic hijabs in the
street to an eminent philosopher who co-authored a report that inspired
the legislation.
But Premier
Francois Legault stood firm Wednesday, saying people who would be
excluded from public sector jobs because of the law can find other work.
Earlier
in the day, about 150 teachers, students and community members linked
hands outside a Montreal-area high school, forming a human chain to
protest Bill 21 ...
Export Development Canada has hired outside legal counsel to
review some of its dealings with SNC-Lavalin. The review comes after a
company insider told CBC News the engineering giant secured billions in
loans from the Crown agency over the years, some of which he alleges was
intended to pay bribes.
If true, it could mean taxpayers have unwittingly backed illegal payments. Export Development Canada is a federal agency that provides financing and insurance to Canadian businesses operating abroad.
1. The 24th of June, St. John the Baptist Day, is the National Holiday.
Since St. John is the patron saint of French Canada (not only of Quebec), the day takes on an "ethnic church" dimension. So much for 'secularism'. These days the holiday's all about bonfires and getting drunk.
As the years went by and the sovereignty movement gained momentum, the celebration morphed into a sovereignist celebration as well. There isn't an Anglo-Quebecker older than 40 who doesn't remember the sickening television images of drunken revellers desecrating and burning Canadian flags, amid shouts of 'Vive la Quebeclibre [sic]'
from Bonjour Quebec:
This holiday originates from the tradition, prevalent in several countries, of celebrating the summer solstice by lighting bonfires and performing popular dances. June 24 was officially designated "Québec's National Holiday" in 1977. Shows and bonfires will take place in several municipalities. Since 1984, the Mouvement national du Québec (MNQ) has been the national coordinator of this event.
This assumes that Quebec as a whole is a nation and/or a nation-state, rather than what is it: a province.
The government has been two-faced, claiming that the holiday is for everyone and then sub-contracting the organization of the event to radical groups. If the government wants to signal that it really means that the 24th is a holiday for everyone, they must remove sovereignist groups as the exclusive organizer of the event.
In short, if you want a holiday that is inclusive, don't hire ethnocentrics to run the show, it's as simple as that.
The SSJB is what it is and everyone knows it. As long as the government employs them to run the show, sanctimonious protestations by Ministers decrying the decisions they take, is cynical and unfair.
On every level, it is politics at it's worst.
Allthe society has to do, is call it Quebec Day, and I'm all for it. Because in spite of myself, I am a Quebecer too.
Which belief systems does Quebec believe will
endanger the community to such an extent that it warrants invoking the
notwithstanding clause, Laura Morlock asks.
There have been four consecutive proposals by Quebec political
parties to ban religious symbols in public, but the Coalition Avenir
government's invocation of the notwithstanding clause sets Bill 21
apart, allowing the bill to override Charter rights of religious freedom
and expression for five years. It is also broader in its scope,
affecting more careers and services than previous legislative attempts,
including any jobs the government deems to represent public authority,
including Crown prosecutors, judges, teachers and even wildlife
conservation officers.
Premier Francois Legault and Immigration, Diversity and
Inclusiveness Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette claim the bill is necessary
to protect Quebec culture and to enshrine secularism within public life.
The bill's preamble also notes that Quebec places importance on the
equality of women and men, a pointed reference to the hijab and niqab
worn by some Muslim women, which Isabelle Charest, Quebec's minister for
the status of women, has twice stated are symbols of "oppression."
Bill 21's definition of "religious symbols" is, unsurprisingly,
narrow. It relies on a simplistic understanding of religion rooted in
Quebec's Christian past — but religion, and religious systems, are
complex. Some emphasize belief systems, while others do not. Some have
written sacred texts, and others have none. Some have one deity,
multiple gods, or even none. Understanding that "religion" is far more
nuanced than systems that look like Christianity brings out some of the
problems with banning "all" religious symbols. For instance,
Jolin-Barrette said Rastafarian dreadlocks are not included in the
prohibition. Why not? Is Rastafarianism not a "real" religion to the
CAQ?
'Legault has pointed to a supposed exodus of immigrants from Quebec as another reason to invest more heavily in integration programs. But the Institut's study, using data from Statistics Canada, indicates that more than 84 per cent of immigrants who came to Quebec in 2010 were still living in the province in 2015, while the retention rate in Ontario was 90.7 per cent.'
And as resistance to Bill 21 continued, with a human chain
formed around Westmount High School on Wednesday morning, Legault
refused to rule out resorting to closure to force Bill 21 into law
before the legislature shuts for summer recess June 14.
“There are
other jobs available,” Legault told reporters when asked what he has to
say to young people now studying to become elementary or high school
teachers ...
Many of the Journal de Montréal’s columnists have been falling over
each other to denounce Doug Ford. Ontario’s 26th premier, you’ll recall,
announced a couple weeks ago that he was cutting the province’s
French-language services commissioner and shelving plans to build a
francophone university. While the move came in for sharp criticism
in pretty much all Quebec newspapers, the flurry of spit-inflected
invective in the Frontenac Street tabloid was on a level all its own.
“Doug
Ford’s vicious offensive” was nothing short of a “war on francophones,”
decried Denise Bombardier. “Hypocrisy,” bellowed Joseph Facal. “An
attack by the Orangemen,” roared Mathieu Bock-Côté, using a term for
members of the anti-Catholic fraternal league birthed in Northern
Ireland more than two centuries ago.
Richard Martineau denounced
the “hate” of English Canada toward francophones, then suggested
French-speakers in Ontario should move to Quebec where they can live
comfortably among the majority ...
MONTREAL — The Quebec government scrambled Tuesday to explain how its
proposed secularism law would be enforced as a growing number of
organizations said they are prepared to disobey it.
One cabinet
minister said the police could be called in and another said injunctions
could be sought, while Premier Francois Legault said he prefers not to
specify what measures would be used.
Public Security Minister
Genevieve Guilbault said citizens will need to respect the law and
suggested the authorities could get involved. “People will notify the
police. It’s like any other law,” she said, declining to elaborate.
“The Reference requires us to consider whether Quebec has a right to unilateral secession. Those who support the existence of such a right found their case primarily on the principle of democracy. Democracy, however, means more than simple majority rule.”
This was a unanimous Supreme Court of Canada in 1998’s reference decision on Quebec secession. The Court went on to declare that only “a clear majority on a clear question” could compel the federal government and the other provinces to engage in negotiations with Quebec on the matter.
It is true the Court did not specify what would actually count as a “clear majority” (55 percent? 60? 67?). That, the justices said, was a matter for the political actors to decide. What is crystal clear, for anyone with the scarcest smidgen of reading comprehension, is that a “clear majority” is something more than 50 percent plus one. The highest court in the land has made an explicit distinction between “simple majority” and “clear majority.”
Thursday was a sad and shameful day. In a move rooted in traumas of
the past and unjustified fears in the present, the Legault government
introduced legislation that is toxic to Quebec’s future.
Bill 21,
“An act respecting the laicity of the state,” bans the wearing of
“religious symbols” by certain public officials. Its application is
broader and its terms harsher than expected.
While it ostensibly
applies to adherents of all religions, the practical impact will be on
observant Muslims, Jews and Sikhs for whom wearing hijabs, kippahs or
turbans is not just religious expression, but religious practice. And
these are not easily tucked behind a shirt, as a cross or crucifix might
be. The government’s disturbing recourse to the notwithstanding clause
to override the guarantees in the Canadian and Quebec rights charters
testifies to the fact that fundamental rights are being abrogated, as
does the insertion of laicity into the Quebec charter as something for
which a proper regard must be maintained in exercising other rights ...
QUEBEC — With his ministers saying the police or the courts will be
responsible for applying Quebec’s secularism bill, Premier François
Legault stayed vague — saying only that the government will take the
necessary means for the law to be respected.
Following reports of possible acts of civil disobedience emerging following the tabling last week of Bill 21,
Public Security MInister Geneviève Guilbault sparked a controversy
Tuesday when she said police would ultimately be responsible for
enforcing the legislation.
That means, in theory, they could be
sent into a school board to force it to apply the law which states newly
hired teachers cannot wear religious symbols ...
In order to believe Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s version of his
dispute with his former attorney general, you have to accept that an
astonishing series of missteps, misunderstandings and lost opportunities
were entirely innocent.
You have to believe that when Jody
Wilson-Raybould told Trudeau in September that she had made up her mind
and would not interfere with the decision to proceed with a prosecution
against SNC-Lavalin, he either didn’t grasp what she was saying, or
didn’t accept how serious she was.
You have to trust that none of
the numerous complaints she made over the ensuing weeks, warning that
the pressure being exerted was inappropriate and had to stop, made it
through to Trudeau ...
The newly elected government of Québec has indicated that it intends to ban civil servants
in positions of authority (including police officers and judges) from
wearing religious dress or symbols such as the turban or hijab.
The new government views the wearing of religious dress by civil
servants not as an act of personal religious or cultural expression but
instead as a political act — an act of the state — that is incompatible
with the requirement that the state remain neutral in matters of
religion.
Denial of recourse to domestic courts leads to civil disobedience and
has a negative impact on social harmony, Jack Jedwab says.
https://montrealgazette.com/opinion/opinion-debate-made-more-divisive-by-use-of-notwithstanding-clause Upholding the principles of diversity and inclusion in Quebec and
elsewhere in Canada requires the defence of the freedoms that are
enshrined in the Quebec and Canadian charters of rights. Paradoxically,
in Quebec, it’s the Ministry of Immigration, Diversity and Inclusion
that is failing to uphold minority rights with its presentation of Bill 21, which bans the wearing of religious signs by designated persons in positions of government authority. A
yet further paradox sees our minister responsible for inclusion adding a
notwithstanding clause in Bill 21 to curtail legitimate recourse to the
courts on the part of those directly affected by the legislation and/or
others that are concerned over further possible infringements on
freedom of religion as well as other charter rights. Although the
minister insists that there is no rights violation in Bill 21, no legal
opinion has been offered to that effect. It seems entirely reasonable
for Quebecers to conclude that the presence of the notwithstanding
clause in the bill is an admission on the part of the government that
the ban does indeed infringe on freedom of religion. Even though
it is made available to legislators, the notwithstanding clause should
only be used in the event of an urgent threat to social harmony. To date
no one has offered any meaningful evidence of any such threat emanating
from teachers wearing hijabs, kippahs or crosses. And given the lack of
police, judges and prison officials wearing religious signs, the
legislation would, at best, address an imagined threat.
While a majority of both groups said they held positive views of immigrants, francophones were more likely to respond in the affirmative when asked whether immigrants should give up their customs and traditions, or if the influx of non-Christian immigrants posed a threat to society ...
In the latest survey, titled Multiculturalism versus Interculturalism: Myth vs. Reality, the survey found that 63 per cent of francophones held a positive view of immigrants, as compared to 74 per cent of anglophones. Asked whether immigrants should be “encouraged to give up their customs and traditions and become more like the majority,” francophones were more likely to either strongly or somewhat agree (65 per cent) as compared to anglophones (47 per cent) ...
At the same time, francophones were more likely (58 per cent) than anglophones (40 per cent) to feel that “our society is threatened by the influx of non-Christian immigrants to Canada.”
The mayor of Montreal calls it "very concerning." Religious
groups say it's discriminatory. And civil liberties groups have vowed to
fight.
But what legal options do these groups have in the face of the Coalition Avenir Québec government's secularism bill, and what will the government do once it's passed, if people don't comply with it?
The federal Conservatives say they would
not stand in the way of the Quebec government if it moves to bar some
provincial employees from wearing religious symbols at work.
In
an interview, Conservative MP Gérard Deltell said his party accepts the
incoming Coalition Avenir Québec government’s right to introduce
legislation on the matter, would not oppose the possible use of the
notwithstanding clause to make it Charter compliant and would not join a
legal challenge of the legislation.
The
Conservative position differs from that of the Liberals and NDP. Prime
Minister Justin Trudeau does not believe the Quebec government should be
legislating on the issue of religious symbols and opposes in this case
the possible use of the notwithstanding clause. The federal NDP also
objects to attempts to override the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in
this case.
For the better part of two decades, an emotional debate has
raged in Quebec about the compatibility of religious symbols with the
province's modern secular identity. Premier François Legault seems to think his government can settle the matter in the next few months. On
Thursday, his became the fourth consecutive government to draft
comprehensive legislation attempting to regulate what accommodations
should be made for religious minorities .
Last week, news broke that the Parti Québécois had quietly tried to block prominent lawyer Tamara Thermitus’s candidacy for the presidency of Quebec’s human rights commission. Unnamed sources suggested that despite her impeccable credentials, her job with the federal government was a liability and, worse, she was suspected of harbouring multiculturalist beliefs.
This bit of backstory should raise more than eyebrows.
It is well known that multiculturalism is verboten among Quebec’s political and chattering classes, regardless of partisan affiliation. However, to have multicult-phobia actually move a political party to reject a qualified candidate (who also happens to be a black woman) should tell us something about how pernicious the current ideology is ...
“It’s not xenophobia,” we are assured, about the Coalition Avenir
Québec government’s “laicity” bill targeting minority religious symbols.
Premier François Legault said it’s necessary to protect “our identity.” And a poll
conducted just before the bill was presented suggests he was right when
he claimed the support of the “vast majority” of the people.
So, if fear of “outsiders” doesn’t explain the anti-hijab bill, what does?
The English-speaking community has no intention of dropping its battle to protect the existing anglophone school board system.
The Quebec Community Groups Network (QCGN) — which includes almost 60 English-language community organizations across Quebec — said in a statement Friday it “has absolutely no intention” of heeding Premier François Legault’s advice to give up because they will lose in court.
Seven groups including Amnesty International and Quebec’s main
women’s federation attacked the secularism bill as discriminatory. https://montrealgazette.com/news/religious-symbols-civil-liberties-muslim-groups-vow-to-fight-bill-21 Groups opposed to the Legault government’s proposed law on state secularism
wasted no time Friday skewering the plan as “racist”, saying it
presumes that only a heterosexual white male can be impartial and lays
the groundwork for veiled Muslim women to suffer “daily violence” if it
is adopted. Bill 21 would ban the wearing of religious symbols by
some Quebec government employees, including police officers, prison
guards and elementary and high-school teachers. Safa Chebbi, of the Table de concertation contre le racisme systémique, described the proposed law as clearly racist.
The head of a rights advocacy centre on racial discrimination is sounding the alarm about what he calls a lack of diversity in Quebec’s Human Rights Commission.
Fo Niemi, the executive director of the Center for Research-Action on Race Relations, said Tuesday he was concerned about the resignation of the last commissioner whose mother tongue is English.
Niemi said he recently learned of the actions of Richard Janda, who sent a letter of resignation to the National Assembly several weeks ago. He was the third commissioner to resign so far this year, Niemi said. The letter has not been made public, and Janda has so far declined to comment on the reasons for his departure. However, that leaves the commission with three vacant seats, out of five, for matters relating to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the two remaining are both white francophones, according to Niemi.
Well, here it is then. Here’s the grand compromise that Quebec
Premier François Legault hopes will put to bed the province’s
decade-plus debate over what religious people should be allowed to wear,
and in what circumstances. Bill 21,
tabled Thursday in the National Assembly, bans religious symbols from
civil servants in positions of authority including police officers,
bankruptcy registrars, government-appointed arbitrators, Crown
prosecutors and other lawyers arguing government cases, members of
myriad boards and agencies and also, crucially — and which was not
recommended by the Bouchard-Taylor Commission — elementary and secondary
teachers, vice-principals and principals. It absolutely will not put the debate to bed. There
is no reason to believe the people who pushed for the strictest
possible regulations won’t continue to push. Notably, teachers in
publicly subsidized private schools, public daycare workers and
before-and-after-school caregivers are exempt. Bill 21 is actually more generous to niqab-wearing women than the
previous Liberal government’s Bill 62: Bill 62 required an uncovered
face to receive government services, period; Bill 21 only does so when
it’s necessary for identification or security. It is a safe bet that
such nuances will not filter down to the sorts of people who take photos
of women in niqabs shepherding toddlers around town, or riding the bus,
or otherwise living their lives, and pitch them into the racist frenzy
of social media. That’s going to get some media coverage.
What association would the courts make between the existing school board and the government’s proposed service centre? The determination of Education Minister Jean-François Roberge to replace the former with the latter, coupled with the unavailability of the notwithstanding clause in matters of minority education rights, means we may soon find out. The third-way politics of Premier François Legault and his stated desire to unite Quebecers after decades of division might yet give him pause, assuming that anglophones, too, are part of the plan for “national” reconciliation. There is precedent. The Couillard government climbed down from the ledge after the entreaties of the Quebec English School Boards Association, the anglophone lobby in education matters. But the Quebec Liberals are heavily doped on the anglophone vote. The Coalition Avenir Québec formed a strong majority government without it ...
