Ottawa should show courage on Quebec’s Bill 62

The passage in Quebec last week of Bill 62, which forbids people in the province from providing or receiving public services with their faces covered (read: while wearing a niqab), was an offensive act of crass political pandering proffered on the most dubious grounds.

Those who supported it (and those who argued it doesn’t go far enough) should be ashamed of themselves. And those leaders outside of Quebec who remain silent in the face of this bigoted legislation are making a dangerous situation worse.

Bill 62 was put forward in the name of “religious neutrality,” yet it was passed in a legislature adorned with a crucifix. It does not target all religions equally, but just a tiny subsection of the province's relatively small Muslim minority. There is nothing neutral about it.

The law has also been sold as a way to ensure that public safety is preserved and that nothing impedes efficient communication or identification in the provision of public services. But surely these are not relevant issues when, for instance, a niqabi woman boards a city bus, now forbidden under the law.

The bill was even advocated on feminist grounds, as if the state telling a woman what she can wear is a liberating act.

But while Bill 62 serves no evident policy purpose it does create an enforcement nightmare. The union representing public transit workers in Montreal has already expressed concern about bus drivers being turned into the niqab police. Will they be asked to bar niqabi women from boarding or to demand they remove their veil? Librarians and doctors are unlikely to be any more enthusiastic.

The idea of ridding the public service of religious garb was floated by the Bouchard-Taylor commission on reasonable accommodation in 2008. However, in recent days, both of the commission’s co-chairs have condemned the new law. One of them, the philosopher Charles Taylor, called upon his considerable erudition in denouncing its incoherence: “It’s a dog’s breakfast,” he told CBC News.

As none of the many justifications offered by Quebec’s Liberal government makes any sense, it is impossible to see the ban as anything but a sop to Islamophobic voters, as we argued before the law was officially adopted. This is grossly hypocritical coming from Premier Philippe Couillard, who in the wake of last January’s murder of six Muslim men at a Quebec City mosque, blamed a decade of toxic debate about religious accommodation for stoking anti-Muslim sentiment in the province.

Couillard was right at the time. His ban accomplishes nothing but to inflame hate and spread division. Court challenges are almost certain to be quickly forthcoming, and a number of constitutional scholars have already suggested that the law is unlikely to survive. But the damage to our social fabric will not be easy to undo.

Given the stakes, silence from political leaders, including those outside of the province, is plainly unacceptable. It is tempting to see this as a Quebec problem, to be solved in Quebec. But Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne was right when she said that such a law has “no place in Canada.”

For federal leaders, who depend on support in Quebec, speaking out may come at a higher cost. This has been evident in their largely cautious public statements. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer has done his best to avoid the subject. NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh swiftly condemned the law, but suggested Ottawa has no tools or responsibility to act. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was even more cautious, waiting several days before offering a full-throated denunciation. ”I will always stand up for Canadians’ rights,” he said on Friday, without elaborating on how.

In fact, Ottawa does have tools to challenge the law — and it should consider using them in this case. This is not a time for caution or intergovernmental niceties, but for clarity and courage. However popular this law may be in Quebec, a defining and admirable feature of our country is that the majority cannot choose to deprive a minority of their rights.

(This editorial was published Oct. 20 in the Toronto Star and distributed by The Canadian Press.)

“Given the stakes, silence from political leaders, including those outside of the province, is plainly unacceptable.”