Quebec leads way on difficult accommodation debate

As with medically assisted death, province leads the way

Certain aspects of Quebec’s Bill 62 provide opportunities for critics to again denounce Quebec’s political class for its myopic nationalism.

The uproar over the bill is also an example of how the province is often punished for being the incubator of important national conversations.

Faced with unrelenting pressure to legislate an end to the decade-old reasonable accommodation debate from the two major opposition parties and like-minded nationalists with disproportionate political capital, Liberals passed the law to “foster adherence to state religious neutrality” last week.

Premier Philippe Couillard leads a government outpacing Canada economically and breaking records, yet he chose to undermine it all by ramming through controversial legislation, including a ban on face coverings for those providing or receiving public services, with less than a year to go before the next election.

Quebecers outside the chattering class tell pollsters cultural accommodation issues are not in need of urgent resolution. Couillard could have shelved the niqab bill, given Muslim Quebecers a much-needed reprieve from political scrutiny and suffered few political consequences. Instead, Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée toughened the bill, and legal questions on its application remain.

The secularism plan also fails to address the impropriety of leaving the Christian crucifix above the heads of lawmakers.

The denunciation of regulations that would further marginalize the few Muslim women who choose to cover their faces in public is fair comment. But many critics also jumped on the opportunity to chastise Quebec legislators — and even Quebecers themselves — as racist. Those same plucky pundits and politicians seem too timid to even consider broaching a subject that has sparked debate and legislation across Europe and the Middle East.

The Canadian fixation with politeness and avoiding disagreement is less of a concern in Quebec, where vigorous political debates are more routine. Former Parti Québécois justice minister Véronique Hivon was practically described by some critics as a murderer for introducing the Dying with Dignity program. It was later adopted federally.

Quebecers are Canadian, but with a few twists; one being a proclivity for institutional feminism. It was a misguided, ethnocentric feminism that inspired the defunct PQ Charter of Values. It outlined culturally specific garments that would have been banned.

At first, it, too, seemed like a racist plan, but supporting documentation revealed more clumsiness, insensitivity and ignorance than malice. The legal argument against much of Bill 62 isn’t as easy, as it isn’t a sovereignist scheme designed to provoke a constitutional crisis. Much of the law outlines a framework for religious accommodation requests. While banning face coverings, it does not cite Muslim garb in particular, and offers the possibility for exemptions.

Some critics freely admit they are disinterested in providing any context surrounding the law, though it is the culmination of a decade of tense debate. It is less severe in scope than the PQ plan or laws regulating face coverings in several Muslim nations, but that, too, seems immaterial to those fixated with portraying Quebec as uniquely racist.

The relatively new phenomenon of western Muslim women (and a few Jewish members of the marginal Lev Tahor sect) wearing face coverings is one that has led to confusion in public life, and may again on occasion. Critics are correct in spotting elements of the law that seem counterproductive, but to posit that it is an exercise in racism is presumptuous.

The gift and curse of post-Quiet Revolution nationalism is that it empowers Quebecers to forge a distinct identity within Canada, but often at the behest of this society’s loudest, most ethnocentric forces.

This may not be the best time or method to legislate an end to the reasonable accommodation debate, but outlining how government responds to extreme religious practices is a thankless task timid Canadian legislators will probably have to get around to, eventually.

Luckily for them, Quebec has once again initiated the unpleasant groundwork.