September 9, 2013: Proposed Quebec charter an assault on fundamental freedoms

By Michael Regenstreif

Ours is a multicultural society in which it is completely acceptable to wear such items of religious expression as the Jewish kippah, the Muslim hijab or the Sikh turban.

However, the right to wear such items by employees in the public and publicly funded sectors in Quebec will soon be curtailed, if the province’s Parti Québécois (PQ) minority government gets its way. The government has announced it will introduce a charter of Quebec values this fall, and some of the provisions of the charter, leaked late last month, indicate an outright rejection of the Canadian brand of multiculturalism that allows such freedom of religious expression.

This comes after several years of divisive debate over the issue of what constitutes reasonable accommodation for immigrants and religious minorities in Quebec. A debate that heated up in 2007 when Hérouxville – a village of 1,300 whose population is virtually 100 per cent Québécois de souche with no immigrants or Jews, Muslims or Sikhs – passed a code of conduct for immigrants and religious minorities.

This debate over reasonable accommodation is relatively new. Leaving aside the rancorous debates over linguistic policies, successive Quebec governments in the years since the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s – including previous Parti Québécois governments – have never before made an issue of religious practice. In fact, on such issues as funding for faith-based private schools – such as the Jewish school system in Montreal – Quebec has been one of the most progressive of provinces.

I know several Jewish doctors in Montreal who wear kippahs in the course of their day-to-day lives, including while they work at hospitals like the Montreal General or the Montreal Children’s. But, soon, should this charter of Quebec values pass, it will be illegal for them to do so. It will be illegal for a Moslem woman to wear a hijab while teaching in a public school or for a Sikh police officer to wear his turban while on duty.

It’s been suggested that the charter may include a provision whereby a culturally specific public institution like the Jewish General Hospital could apply for an exemption from certain charter regulations, but it is unclear if that means all religious expression would be permitted there or, as a historically Jewish institution still largely supported by the generosity of the Jewish community, that kippahs would be OK, but not hijabs or turbans.

It’s also not clear that the proposed charter will pass. The PQ forms a minority government and the Liberals have indicated they will oppose it. That leaves the third party, the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), which holds the balance of power in the National Assembly, and which seems to favour a charter that doesn’t go quite as far as the PQ would.

MP Irwin Cotler, whose legal expertise is beyond reproach, has pointed out the proposed charter is an assault on fundamental freedoms guaranteed in both the Quebec and Canadian charters of rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and there has been widespread condemnation from many organizations, including the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, and even from the government of Ontario.

But the PQ doesn’t care and is playing to the 65 per cent of Quebec francophones who, according to polling data, supports the proposals. The CAQ, too, is reading those same polls.

The federal government has recently been making much of its efforts to promote religious freedom around the world. Is it also ready to do so at home?