Lack of understanding of laïcité isn’t the issue

Arbitrary, incoherent measures that threaten Charter rights don’t merit support, Jack Jedwab says.

Lise Ravary (“What laïcité is and what it is not” Opinion, April 13) contends that when it comes to the place of religion in society, Quebec prefers laïcité and integration while Canada (that is, the rest of Canada) opts for liberal tolerance leading to multiculturalism.

In fact, Canada’s model of multiculturalism does not reject integration, nor does Quebec reject liberal tolerance.

Rather, the Canadian approach to diversity does not require the abandonment of one’s customs and traditions in order for someone to be integrated into society. Hence it does not label as non-integrated a public school teacher who wears a kippah, a prison guard with a turban and/or a police officer wearing a hijab.

Ravary is right that the concept of laïcité is misunderstood. She says it means “the separation of church and state, freedom of religion, the right to express one’s faith while respecting public order and institutions.” If laïcité is misunderstood, it’s because there is more than one way to define it. The French purport to have a monopoly over the model. But churchstate separation is also a founding principle of the United States, where “no law is to be made respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and state. That principle was enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Yet its application does not call for restrictions on the wearing of religious symbols by public officials, something that would be regarded as an important violation of freedom of religion.

In Quebec, measures that are either adopted or proposed in the name of laïcité are often arbitrary and lack coherence. Ravary would have us believe that the proposal from the BouchardTaylor Commission to ban the wearing of religious symbols by public employees wielding coercive authority (police officers, judges and prison guards) is inspired by the philosophy of “laïcité” (indeed Gérard Bouchard has referred to the proposal as “open laïcité”).

But the proposed ban has more to do with political posturing than with the application of the principle of laïcité. Its supporters have described it as a political compromise between those who want an outright ban on religious symbols for government employees and those who favour minimal or no restrictions on the wearing of religious symbols.

Surfing on the popularity of the idea, Coalition Avenir Québec has described the Bouchard-Taylor proposal as a middle ground between the PQ’s failed Charter of Values and the Liberals’ Bill 62. Only by discarding the opinions of Quebec minorities can the CAQ and other elected officials describe the ban on religious symbols for persons in authority as the object of a consensus among Quebecers.

Thankfully, respected philosopher Charles Taylor has since repudiated the proposed ban on religious symbols. Taylor evidently was persuaded at the time that the proposed ban would make other recommendations in the Bouchard-Taylor report more acceptable to Quebec’s majority. From the start, the proposed ban was more about political compromise and expediency than any principle of laïcité — open or otherwise.

Ravary is right when she says that many proponents of such restrictions on religious symbols are not racists, and labelling them as such does not make for a constructive discussion about the place of religion in society. But the Quebec and Canadian Charter of Rights most certainly regard such restrictions as discriminatory and, as such, they would be deemed contrary to integration.

If the model of laïcité that Ravary wants the readers of the Montreal Gazette to better comprehend presents a threat to the freedoms of religion and expression provisions of the Charter, then she shouldn’t count on getting much uptake.

Jack Jedwab is president and CEO of the Association for Canadian Studies. He is based in Montreal.