CAQ continues nonsensical war on religious symbols
All’s well until individual cases are involved
Having won a thumping majority in the National Assembly, the Coalition Avenir Québec government now seems to be confronting a familiar conundrum on religious accommodations. A solid majority of Quebecers reliably tell pollsters they want civil servants not to wear religious symbols. The CAQ, like the Parti Québécois, is more than happy to oblige them in opposition, and on the campaign trail. Leader François Legault promised to use the notwithstanding clause to remove yarmulkes, turbans, hijabs and (presumably) crosses from certain classes of civil servants.
(He promised that as far back as April, incidentally. Efforts to link his position to Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s recent use of the notwithstanding clause could hardly have better illustrated the comprehension gap between Quebec and the Rest of Canada.)
The trouble is, only a minority of Quebecers tell those same pollsters they want civil servants to lose their jobs if they’re determined to wear those religious symbols. Once actual human beings start entering into the mix — Bouchera Chelbi, for example, who wears a hijab and has taught for the English Montreal School Board for a decade — then so does that giant pain in the a-- called basic human compassion.
In opposition and on the election trail, Legault swore blind he wouldn’t flinch — unlike the Liberals, for example, whose Bill 62 only targeted woman wearing niqabs and burkas. (It’s currently tied up in the courts, as any forthcoming CAQ legislation is sure to be.) Among other things, the party long vowed there would be no grandfathering-in of existing civil servants and their religious observances.
Now, though, there is suddenly flexibility. “Our position has always been to say, listen, there’s no grandfather clause,” CAQ MNA (and potential justice minister) Simon Jolin-Barrette said Tuesday. “That said, we’re ready to discuss it with the opposition parties. It’s important to pass a law that will establish laïcité, but we’ll certainly collaborate with the opposition.”
Teachers are seen as the most likely beneficiaries of such a concession, and perhaps it’s possible to craft a principled defence of that: it’s “positions of authority” that most preoccupy Quebec’s religious vice squad, and one supposes a teacher wields less power of the state than a judge, police officer or Crown attorney. Then again, if you decide on secularist principle that no agents of the state should indicate their religious beliefs, surely it would be odd to exempt the civil servants charged with inculcating state principles in the young.
Then again (again), if you decide the state must be so secular as to not tolerate religious expression by government actors, then you sure as hell would want to remove the crucifix mounted in the National Assembly, in 1936, by notable non-secularist premier Maurice Duplessis — whose fruitful political partnership with the Catholic Church is known in Quebec as “la grande noirceur,” the great darkness, preceding the Quiet Revolution.
Instead, to no one’s surprise, the CAQ says it has no plans to remove the crucifix. “It’s not within the framework of the (laïcité) discussions,” said Jolin-Barrette, noting the party’s traditional position that the crucifix is a symbol of Quebec’s heritage (“un objet patrimonial”).
He’s not wrong. It just happens to be a heritage, a patrimonialism, of which genuine secularism is the polar opposite. “In keeping with the notion of the separation of Church and State, we believe that the crucifix must be removed from the wall of the National Assembly, which, indeed, is the very place that symbolizes the constitutional state,” Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor argued in one of the more lucid moments of their landmark report on reasonable accommodations, which nationalists and purported secularists are happy to cite when it suits them.
So no, principle has very little to do with this. The reason teachers top the list of potential exemptions is obvious: They are the civil servants most likely to attract public sympathy. What kind of ghoulish parents would sooner deprive their child of a talented and beloved educator than tolerate her hijab or his turban? A grandfather clause would do no real good: denying someone a job because of their religion is morally equivalent to firing them; it just happens to soften the political backlash.
It was for the same reason, in reverse, that Philippe Couillard’s Liberal government chose women who wear niqabs and burkas as the sole targets of legislation ostensibly enshrining state secularism — because they’re they least popular kind of people who wear religious symbols, full stop. They hoped that would be enough. It wasn’t.
Quebec has been wrestling with this embarrassing non-issue for more than a decade, all for want of someone in a position of power with the backbone to make a case for letting people wear what they bloody well want. Failing that, a pragmatist could at least state the obvious: If the majority of Quebecers don’t want civil servants to lose their jobs for wearing religious symbols, then the majority of Quebecers don’t actually support the law the CAQ proposes.
What those Quebecers have is a preference that civil servants not wear religious symbols. That’s fine. We all have preferences. It’s just not the government’s job to make them all come true.