Trying to legislate values is absurd
Wanted: a commissioner to oversee a new Régie des accommodements raisonnables du Québec (RARQ).
Must believe in the primacy of state neutrality. Background in human-rights law, constitutional law and administrative law required. Experience in conflict mediation strongly recommended. Understanding of religious rites, customs and dress an asset.
Don’t laugh. The RARQ may not exist in real life and a posting for such a job may seem farfetched, but we could be heading in that direction now that the Liberal government this week tabled the regulations for applying its controversial Bill 62.
The secularism law, which aims to provide guidelines for handling requests for religious accommodations in the public sector and requires all government services to be offered and delivered without a covered face, was adopted last October. But it took until now for the government to reveal how, exactly, it would be applied.
The guiding principles call for each situation to be adjudicated on a case-by-case basis, whether a person from a religious minority wants to ride public transit with a full face veil or be exempt from a school exam on a religious holiday. It thereby mandates school boards and hospitals, government ministries and longterm care homes, daycares and universities, police departments and municipalities, to appoint accommodations officers. (Yes, that is real a thing and postings for such jobs could be going out very soon.)
But if the accommodations officer at a particular institution issues a ruling the requesting individual finds unfair, the person can appeal to the Quebec Human Rights Commission. Let’s face it though: that body already has its hands full. So something along the lines of an RARQ might eventually be needed to manage all the appeals that could one day clog the system.
We sure do love bureaucracy in Quebec!
And this whole scheme, from the procedure for filing a request, to the production of institutional identity cards for those granted exemptions, seems like a bureaucrat’s dream.
However it’s a nightmare for common sense.
By its very nature, trying to legislate values, identity and dress is absurd — unless, like the opposition Parti Québécois and Coalition Avenir Québec, you support a one-size-fits all approach or don’t care if you stomp all over minority and Charter rights.
PLEASING NO ONE
But trying to please everyone, which Bill 62 clearly does, ends up pleasing no one. And the result is a law that will allow for a hodgepodge of interpretations. Even Liberal Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée acknowledged it could be applied differently depending on the school, hospital or daycare.
That’s as good as an admission that this law is unworkable. But so would any such law.
If there are any grounds for overarching government action, it might be in providing guidelines to institutions navigating practical requests like time off for religious feasts or place for a prayer space. But it’s the dresscode restrictions that generate all the furor. And though the state should have no place in the wardrobes of the nation, many Quebec political leaders are only too happy to tell people what not to wear — especially if it’s a young Muslim woman with dreams of being the first police officer in the province to wear the hijab.
The PQ and the CAQ have predictably raged that the law doesn’t go far enough, with both threatening more draconian measures if elected in October. The Liberals’ attempts to introduce secularism legislation, after campaigning on inclusivity and diversity in 2014, always seemed half-hearted. Bill 62, which takes aim at the tiny fraction of Muslim women who wear the niqab, always seemed to be an attempt to placate a segment of the electorate who is bothered by the garment, even if they rarely encounter it.
Bill 62 seems doomed one way or the other. If the opposition parties don’t get a chance to present something worse, the inconsistencies in its application could result in a court challenge. (A fight has already been launched by a niqab-wearing woman who argues the proscription on face coverings is discriminatory.)
The problem with the law stems from the fact it was designed to deal with hypotheticals rather than real issues. (And one has to wonder if the futility and frustration of piloting this hot mess is a big reason Vallée has decided not to run again for the Liberals?)
So why do we even have Bill 62, then? Primarily because there’s a public appetite for it. An Angus Reid poll found 87 per cent of Quebecers approve the law, which is primarily known for its crack down on the niqab. But just because something is popular, doesn’t make it right. Though 68 per cent of Canadians elsewhere in the country would support similar legislation, none have yet been tabled, attesting to the fact such laws are far from a necessity.
Québec Solidaire co-spokesperson Gabriel Nadeau Dubois may have said it best Thursday when he called the debate over the Bill 62 regulations in the National Assembly “a bad piece of summer theatre.” But QS is little better. It would endorse a Bill 62 lite, limiting the restrictions on face-coverings only to those dispensing public services. The left-leaning party still supports a full ban on any religious garb for judges, police officers or prison guards.
Until a Quebec political party has the courage to admit that maybe the best legislation on secularism is no legislation, we will be stuck in this perpetual farce.