A Quebec legislation that critics say unjustly targets Muslim, Jewish and Sikh folks shall be challenged at Canada’s Supreme Court docket, reigniting a sweeping debate over the province’s model of secularism.
The legislation, identified in Quebec as Invoice 21, bars civil servants like lecturers, prosecutors and law enforcement officials from sporting, whereas at work, the clothes or equipment related to their religion, akin to skullcaps, turbans, head scarves and crosses.
Freedom of expression and faith are enshrined in Canada’s structure. However governments in any respect ranges, together with federal, can put aside sure rights in favor of their very own coverage goals, by way of the not often used “however clause.” The clause was adopted in 1981 as one thing of an override button after provincial leaders expressed concern that they must cede authority to the courts to interpret some rights.
Quebec’s secular insurance policies are stricter than these of different Canadian provinces, the place for a few years the Roman Catholic Church exerted an affect over schooling, well being care and public welfare. A Liberal authorities gained in Quebec in 1960 with a promise to replicate the altering wants of Quebec society. That ushered in a interval of transformation remembered because the “quiet revolution,” through which the state moved towards secularization. Quebec enacted its ban on spiritual symbols in 2019 utilizing the however clause, with support from residents.
“We’ll battle to the top to defend our values and who we’re,” Premier François Legault said Thursday on X.
Critics say the ban on spiritual symbols is a response to a rise in Muslim immigrants. A study printed within the Canadian Evaluate of Sociology in 2018 discovered a larger prevalence of Islamophobia in Quebec than in different Canadian provinces.
There have been authorized challenges by spiritual teams, college boards and people who’ve argued that the legislation violates their basic freedoms.
Final yr, three judges from Quebec’s Court docket of Enchantment unanimously upheld the legislation in a case involving the English Montreal College Board, which argued that the legislation additionally had the impact of selling gender discrimination, predominantly in opposition to feminine lecturers.
It’s uncommon for the Supreme Court docket to tackle circumstances when a decrease courtroom of enchantment has come to a unanimous resolution, mentioned Pearl Eliadis, a legislation professor at McGill College.
The Supreme Court docket doesn’t give causes for taking over particular circumstances, so it’s unclear which points — the however clause, gender discrimination, freedom of expression — the courtroom will adjudicate.
Rulings from the Supreme Court docket within the final twenty years have underscored that Canada is essentially a secularist society. Canada’s authorized custom likens the structure to a living tree, Professor Eliadis mentioned, in a position to evolve to fulfill society’s altering wants.
Professor Eliadis mentioned she thought the case was about “the best way through which secularism is being deployed to suppress the rights of non secular minorities.”
[Published in 2020: A Quebec Ban on Religious Symbols Upends Lives]
Harini Sivalingam, a director on the Canadian Civil Liberties Affiliation, one of many organizations that challenged the legislation in courtroom, mentioned at a information convention on Thursday that the legislation disproportionately affected minority populations, together with Muslim, Sikh and Jewish communities.
Arif Virani, the federal justice minister, informed reporters at Parliament Hill on Thursday that the federal government deliberate to argue its viewpoint as a result of the difficulty was of nationwide significance. The Liberal Occasion’s unsure future in management, nevertheless, might hamper that effort.
In response to Mr. Virani’s feedback, Simon Jolin-Barrette, Quebec’s justice minister, mentioned in a press release that the province would “battle to the top” to guard its secular values, including that the federal authorities was displaying an absence of respect for Quebec’s autonomy by weighing in on the case.
Professor Eliadis mentioned that whereas one of many primary tenets of Quebec’s secularism was the concept the state must be a impartial actor, she thought the legislation had imposed the federal government’s viewpoint of what nonreligion must seem like within the public service.
“Now the state is now not actually impartial,” she mentioned.
Vjosa Isai is a reporter and researcher for The New York Occasions in Toronto.
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