NDP’s religious rights paradox

One wonders what Jack Layton would make of his party nowadays — of the trajectory it has taken since his untimely passing and of the battle to replace his successor, who seemed like such a good idea at the time. The party’s new support in Quebec had been by design: The 2005 Sherbrooke Declaration essentially argued Quebecers should be free to secede from Canada with a simple 50 per cent-plus-onevote, and in the meantime offered them a seat at the table in a social-democratic government in Ottawa.

Alas, hitching your wagon to Quebec nationalists only works so long as the horse doesn’t spook. In recent years, Quebec’s politics have become more and more seized with “religious accommodations” in general, with Islam specifically, and with niqabs very specifically indeed. Such is the state of play that the Liberal government’s Bill 62 is considered moderate: It would ban providing and receiving public services with one’s face covered. Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée won’t even say whether women in niqabs would be allowed to ride the bus.

This is something you might expect the left-most candidate to lead the leftmost party in the House of Commons to oppose unambiguously. Niki Ashton’s campaign promises to end “the oppression of racialized communities,” tackle “Islamophobia, anti-black racism, and violence toward Indigenous peoples” and address “intersecting oppressions” as well.

But no. In a statement to Huffington Post this week, Ashton said “there is no justification where (sic) a government should tell a woman, or anyone, what they should wear and what they shouldn’t wear.” “That being said …” Those three words lit a match, and the tire fire is still burning. (Ashton was not available for an interview, according to her campaign.)

“There is a consensus in (sic) Quebec’s political leaders emerging on secularism,” the statement continued, “and the Canadian government should respect the will of Quebecers on this matter.” It must also “respect” the “widely different … place” religion has “held in Quebec since the Quiet Revolution.”

This is a standard defence: it’s not about Islam per se; it’s about a general mistrust of all religion that Quebecers came by honestly under the Pope’s boot heel. It’s hopelessly transparent rubbish. The crucifix hanging over the speaker’s chair in the National Assembly is the most obvious giveaway, but there’s another whopper near to hand: Bill 62 places no restrictions on providing or receiving public services while wearing any religious garment or symbol other than the niqab. How very odd.

Ashton has been gamely defending herself on Twitter, to no avail. Asked whether she was “opposed to any provincial legislation that … outlaws religious or cultural clothing in any workplace,” she dodged: “I’m opposed to any legislation that does not uphold the Chart of Rights and Freedoms” — because, gosh, without a court ruling, who’s to say whether barring certain women from public transit constitutes discrimination?

By mid-Friday afternoon she found herself apologizing for calling Quebec a “multicultural” society — a term many of the province’s elites disdain, arguing their society is “intercultural” — and “clarifying” her stance while never resolving the central paradox: she deplores what Bill 62 would do, but respects Quebec’s supposed right to implement it.

Ashton’s leadership rival Guy Caron espoused the same basic paradox: “If secularism is actually used as a screen for racism or Islamophobia that will be condemned but” — well, let’s just stop there. That’s obviously exactly what’s happening, and Caron isn’t condemning it. (Caron’s campaign, too, said he was unavailable.)

But it’s more striking coming from Ashton. She’s the choice of the socialist caucus. She has a far-left, intersectional feminist, Leap Manifesto-friendly platform that crusty old pundits will write off as utterly unelectable. Yet she can’t bring herself to unambiguously condemn rank discrimination? Honestly, so what if Bill 62 were a result of the Quiet bloody Revolution? Keeping women off buses is still keeping women off buses.

Many New Democrats believe Thomas Mulcair’s opposition to a ban on niqabs at citizenship ceremonies cost them the 2015 election — a comforting myth, perhaps, but a myth nonetheless. The party started on a downward polling trend at the end of August, and was in third place before the Federal Court nixed the ban. If niqabs were a ballot question for any significant number of Quebecers, it wouldn’t have been Justin Trudeau, who unambiguously condemned the ban, who walked away from the 2015 election as the biggest winner.

Indeed, it’s rather ironic that centrists seem to be the ones easily getting it right on this utterly basic question of civil liberties. “I don’t trust politicians to dictate the rights of minorities,” middleof-the-road NDP leadership candidate Charlie Angus said this week. Well, exactly. I have no idea what Ashton is doing on the wrong side of this, and she doesn’t seem to either.