Quebec bans street prayers, extends religious symbols ban as opponents vow legal fight
Groups that oppose Bill 9, which strengthens and expands the Quebec government’s secularism law, vowed to use all legal means to continue their fight against it despite its adoption Thursday in the Quebec legislature.
The bill expands the scope of state secularism beyond the provisions of Bill 21, extending the ban on wearing religious symbols to employees of daycares, subsidized private schools and services related to immigration, for example. Also, those working in or visiting an educational institution, including daycares, universities and professional development centres must have their faces uncovered at all times, according to the new law.
Collective prayers will no longer be allowed in public outdoor spaces unless the municipality grants a special permit. And government funded institutions, including hospitals, private schools and daycares, that offer food catering to religious diets must expand their menus to include other foods as well.
“There is something broken in our society,” said Stephen Brown, chief executive officer of the National Council of Canadian Muslims, an advocacy organization representing Muslim communities in Canada.
“This is sending a very clear message to minority communities and faith communities in Quebec, but also around the country: your rights don’t mean anything. Right now, speaking to many Muslim Quebecers, they feel that their Charter rights … don’t mean anything more than the paper the Charter is written on.”
Brown said he is outraged a government that is currently polling at only 9 per cent support among Quebecers — the Coalition Avenir Québec — is “passing laws to take away the rights of citizens.”
And he said the CAQ’s secularism laws are erasing decades of progress on protecting minority rights.
“I am a black Canadian,” Brown said. “My family has been here (in Quebec ) for seven generations and this sounds to me exactly what they used to tell my family in the 1950s: ‘You can’t be a police officer or a teacher because people don’t like the way you look.’ That was enough. Literally, for minority rights in Canada, we are back to the 1950s.”
He noted his group has not had time to study the final version of Bill 9, and is awaiting the outcome of the Supreme Court challenge of Bill 21 before deciding how to proceed. But he said the NCCM will continue to fight the law if there is a legal means to do so.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) also strongly condemned the passage of the bill, calling it “another example of the Quebec government’s ongoing attack on freedom of religion, freedom of expression, protest rights, and equality.”
“By once again invoking the notwithstanding clauses of the Quebec and Canadian Charters of Rights and Freedoms, the Quebec government has expanded its use of extraordinary legislative powers to override fundamental rights and freedoms, setting a dangerous precedent for the erosion of constitutional protections for Quebecers.”
The CCLA says Bill 9 “doubles down on the harms of Bill 21” and disproportionately targets and marginalizes religious and racialized minorities, especially Muslim women.
“It is especially troubling that the Quebec National Assembly has passed this law extending the harms of Bill 21 while the Supreme Court of Canada is currently determining the constitutional validity of Bill 21,” said Harini Sivalingam, director of the Equality Program at the CCLA.
The organization says the bill infringes rights to freedom of religion, expression, and assembly and could penalize peaceful demonstrations near places of worship.
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Groups representing daycare workers had also vigorously opposed Bill 9, noting most parents in their network did not consider the wearing of religious symbols by daycare workers to be an issue.
“We are disappointed the government would go ahead with this bill that was not an issue we saw as a concern on the ground,” said Geneviève Blanchard, executive director of public and government affairs for the Association Québécoises des centres de la petite enfance, which represents the majority of government-subsidized daycare centres (CPEs) in the province, as well as the co-ordinating offices of subsidized in-home daycares.
She pointed to surveys taken by the Association des garderies privées du Québec that showed the majority of parents in that network were not concerned about workers wearing religious symbols.
“The priorities that our members have is really the quality of education and the qualifications of the employees, beyond the appearance of the person. … There were already guidelines in our network that forbade, for example, the teaching of religious practices, so there was no need for this.”
She said the daycare network is already facing a shortage of qualified workers, and deplored the fact the new law will force some fully trained and qualified workers to choose between their religious convictions and their jobs.
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