Veil ban destined for top court: expert

QUEBEC’S BILL 62

Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard says Bill 62 is mainly about security and identifying people properly during public services.

But Bakht said that’s a “thinly veiled argument” because the only people in society who regularly cover their faces in public are a minority of Muslim women.

Members of the national assembly voted 66-51 in favour of the legislation, with both major opposition parties voting against it because they wanted a stricter law.

“This law is light years away from true secularism,” said Nathalie Roy of the Coalition for Quebec’s Future, which wants all teachers, judges, Crown prosecutors, police and prison guards to be banned from wearing any conspicuous religious symbol.

Roy said her party would also include language to ban all bureaucrats from wearing “accessories of submission,” and would explicitly ban the Islamic chador, burka or niqab.

The Parti Québécois adopted its version of a secularism charter in 2013 similar to what Roy is proposing, but the party lost the 2014 election and it was never implemented.

Solange Lefebvre, a professor at Université de Montréal who researches culture and religion in society, said Quebec is influenced by French intellectual circles when it comes to secularism and religious neutrality.

“It’s very clear why they did this,” she said.

“It’s the French influence. Quebec is a territory where the majority of people are francophone and who are historically Catholic and this combination with the intellectual ideas in France make it so France has a (strong) influence in Quebec.”

France, which has had a law banning all face coverings in public places since 2010, is far stricter on the issue than Bill 62 aims to be.

Bakht said the law is an expression of the popular sentiment in Quebec in legislative form.