Religious symbols: Groups denounce 'legalization of discrimination'
A few months shy of an education degree, Amrit Kaur says her dream of being a public school teacher in Quebec is slipping away.
A Sikh, the 28-year-old student wears a turban and would be barred from working in a public school under a bill, introduced Thursday, that would ban the wearing of religious symbols by some Quebec government employees, including new teachers.
The proposed law – immediately denounced by religious minorities, women’s groups and school boards – would not apply to current teachers.
“This is highly discriminatory, I’m really upset right now,” Kaur said in an interview minutes after Bill 21 was introduced.
“You always thought that maybe this could happen but it was a maybe. You always hoped, ‘OK, maybe teachers would be excluded.'”
She said Bill 21 “sends the message that Sikhs wearing a religious symbol or anybody wearing a religious symbol is a second-class citizen and can’t integrate into the fabric of Quebec.”
Teaching “in practice is already secular,” added Kaur, who is vice-president for Quebec and Atlantic Canada at the World Sikh Organization. “Teachers don’t enforce their personal beliefs. We don’t talk about religion. We just talk about what’s stipulated in the curriculum.”
The bill includes a clause stating public servants in positions of authority — such as judges, prosecutors, police officers, prison guards and elementary and high school teachers — will not be allowed to wear religious symbols while on the job.
Other jobs affected include school principals and vice-principals, peace officers and court agents including clerks and sheriffs, as well as the speaker and deputy-speakers of the National Assembly and commissioners and bailiffs at public agencies.
Here’s what some other groups had to say about the bill:
• The National Council of Canadian Muslims said: “We are now facing the blatant legalization of discrimination against minorities.”
In a press release, the group’s executive director, Ihsaan Gardee, said the legislation “is effectively a prohibition on wearing the hijab in the Quebec public service given the overwhelming number of people impacted will be Muslim women.
“Secularism is about the state protecting religious freedom for all Quebecers, and not coercing individual conformity to what the majority wants.”
• The Association of Muslims and Arabs for Laicity in Quebec said the bill is “undermining the very foundations of our democracy.”
“It is attacking what we are as Quebecers,” the group said. “In a democracy, the majority chooses those who govern us, but the rights of minorities remain protected against the attacks that the moods of the majority might want to inflict.”
• The Fédération des femmes du Québec, the province’s largest women’s group, said what Legault’s government “is proposing is a secularization of women’s oppression.”
It said the bill purports to be about secularism and gender equality but is in fact “an institutional passport to imprison Muslim women in a ghetto at the professional and social level.”
The organization rejected what it called the CAQ government’s “instrumentalization of gender equality in the drafting of this bill. We refuse that the Quebec state dictate to women what they should wear or not. We will oppose any attack on the fundamental freedoms of all women and the use of feminist struggle for discriminatory purposes.”
• The Quebec English School Boards Association described the bill as “a divisive and an unnecessary piece of legislation that can only lead to societal discrimination.”
The fact that the prohibition does not apply to current teachers does nothing to make it more acceptable, said QESBA president Dan Lamoureux
The CAQ government “is claiming there is a problem that clearly does not exist,” he added. “Quebec’s public schools have a proud record of inclusion, of celebrating the different ways to be Quebecers and Canadians.”
• The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy arm of Jewish federations across Canada, said Quebec’s Jewish community is “deeply opposed to these restrictions on freedom of religion.”
Bill 21 is “an infringement of personal freedoms” and “runs the risk of creating a very divisive debate and of sending a negative message to religious minorities about their place and standing in Quebec,” Rabbi Reuben Poupko, the centre’s Quebec co-chair, said in an interview.
“It exacerbates political, religious, community tensions. It certainly does not in any way add to social harmony, that’s for sure.”
He said “state secularism is the idea that the government doesn’t endorse religion or entangle itself with religion and should not be swayed by religion. But that is not in any way compromised by the wardrobe choices of individuals. A teacher wearing a hijab in a classroom does not compromise that.”
He said the CAQ government’s “use of the notwithstanding clause to compromise freedoms” is “a difficult if not a dangerous precedent.
Polls indicate most Quebecers favour the proposed law, “but democracy is not majoritarian rule,” Poupko said. “Democracy also entails the protection of rights. And we do not hand over rights to voting. Rights are enshrined in charters and constitutions.”
• B’nai Brith, a Jewish organization, said “suggesting that public or authoritative figures must hide aspects of their religious beliefs is at odds with Canadian values.”
Harvey Levine, the group’s Quebec regional director, called on the CAQ government “to avoid the slippery slope of diminishing fundamental rights and work instead to secure religious liberties for all Quebecers.
“The banning of religious symbols, and the possible firing of public employees who freely express their religious beliefs, is an assault on the fundamental rights and freedoms of Quebecers.”