CANADA’S NATIONAL PARTY LEADERS HAVE DIMINISHED NOT JUST THEMSELVES BY REFUSING TO TAKE ON QUEBEC’S RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS LAW, BUT OUR CREDIBILITY IN WORLD FIGHT FOR MINORITY RIGHTS.
From a civil libertarian standpoint, the federal party leaders’ positions on Bill 21, Quebec’s new restrictions on certain civil servants’ attire, are all pretty appalling. The Liberals and Justin Trudeau could lay dubious claim to the most stringent opposition — they have “left the door open” to intervening in court challenges — but only if they did so quietly. Instead they boast of it just like it’s something for the self-styled “party of the Charter" to be proud of. Trudeau criticizing turban-wearing NDP leader Jagmeet Singh for his position during the English-language leaders’ debate was one of the more jaw-dropping moments in a campaign that has wanted for many things, but never chutzpah.
But then, Singh’s position — “door closed” until it reaches the Supreme Court, at which an NDP government would “look at” intervention” — makes him impossible to defend, especially since he derides the idea of earlier intervention as “political interference.” One wonders how would he describe a bunch of politicians telling teachers and police officers what to wear.
Mind you, today’s Liberals and New Democrats hadn’t much claim to be stalwart defenders of religious rights to begin with. The fiasco over summer jobs funding suggests many of them don’t quite understand that they actually still exist — that the government of the day has a responsibility not to discriminate even against religious beliefs it finds odious. Trudeau’s MPS, led by Labour Minister Patty Hajdu, often seemed completely baffled by the controversy. Singh brought the hammer down on veteran NDP MP David Christopherson for supporting a Conservative motion condemning the policy, then was forced to back down.
Trudeau eliminated the traditional allowance for MPS to vote their consciences on issues like abortion. (He’ll still proudly campaign with “personally pro-life” PEI MP Lawrence Macaulay, though.) For more than a decade, many proudly progressive Canadians trafficked in dark insinuations about Stephen Harper’s supposed hidden agenda on abortion — a product, many argued, of his Evangelical faith. Now it’s Scheer’s Catholic faith supposedly underpinning the same hidden agenda (whereas Trudeau’s is a non-issue). These Liberal and NDP constituents would never in a million years tolerate such innuendo against people of other minority faiths, but that’s the point: Their conception of Charter rights is highly conditional, never doctrinaire.
That’s certainly true of modern Conservatives as well. When it comes to national security, for example, the authoritarian wing of the party long ago locked the libertarian wing in the brig. But on religious freedom specifically, they have the most admirable record. They have more than one campaign plank about it. They would “ban values tests” in the dispersal of government grants, and would reopen the Office of Religious Freedom — “to protect freedom of religion and belief and promote the Canadian values of tolerance and pluralism internationally.”
The party has certainly strayed, especially when backed into a corner: Under Stephen Harper it shamelessly exploited angst over women wearing niqabs and burkas at citizenship ceremonies, in courtrooms and at polling stations. But it was, for example, Brian Mulroney’s Tories who brought in changes allowing Mounties to wear turbans. It was Jason Kenney, now Premier of Alberta, who tirelessly brought ethnic and religious minorities into a Conservative tent where it made perfect sense they be at home — and by and large, they still do. Twice during a Tuesday morning press conference, Andrew Scheer said he was the leader who would always stand up for Canadians’ rights and freedoms.
It would have made better sense had we not been standing in the port of Quebec City, a 20-minute walk from the National Assembly. The Conservatives’ policy on Bill 21 is one of zero condemnation, zero intervention, just a promise (as if it were necessary) not to enact similar legislation federally.
I put it to Scheer that it couldn’t be both: He can’t audition to be the rights-defending PM if he’s not going to stand up for the Canadians affected by Bill 21. “This is a decision that was taken by the Assemblée Nationale, the elected members of Quebec, and we’re not going to intervene in this case,” he responded — or rather, didn’t.
Such an appeal to provincial jurisdiction, meanwhile, would look more credible if Scheer weren’t promising to start campaigning for religious minority rights in other countries entirely. Of course Bill 21 doesn’t rank on a global scale of assaults on minority rights: No one is trapped on a mountaintop; no one is being tortured. But in cynically fine-tuning their positions on Bill 21 for maximum electoral advantage, all of Canada’s major party leaders have diminished not just themselves, but any credibility Canada might have internationally in promoting religious freedoms or any other minority rights. In many parts of the world, after all, it is an unbelievably difficult project. A bunch of people who turtled because it was a bit difficult and they needed votes in Quebec aren’t going to make especially compelling advocates.