Quebec’s Bill 62 more troubling than any facial covering

At most, only a few thousand women in Quebec wear the niqab, the veil that covers facial features except for the eyes, and some estimates say the number is even lower — only a few hundred. Yet these women are considered such a threat to social cohesion that the National Assembly has passed a law that could prevent them from participating in many basic activities unless they expose their faces.

Bill 62 requires that the face be uncovered when a person is either delivering or receiving a Quebec government service. Depending on details yet to be developed, this would apply, for instance, to someone visiting a hospital, signing out a library book, boarding a bus or entering a government office to get a document. It would apply to a woman dropping her child at a subsidized day care, or attending university.

Many Canadians, including us, are troubled by the niqab. Bill 62, however, is much more troubling. It is aimed at Muslims and at women. That is not OK. Not in freedom-loving Canada.

You might be interested in knowing what key politicians are saying about it. “It’s a bill of consensus that rallies the great majority of Quebecers,” says Quebec Justice Minister and Gatineau MNA Stéphanie Vallée. Premier Philippe Couillard says the law isn’t merely about religion. “You speak to me, I speak to you, I see your face, you see mine. It’s part of communication,” he argues.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, meanwhile, offers weak criticism of this latest exercise in xenophobia. The federal government, he says vaguely, will defend people’s rights, then adds gingerly that it “will certainly be looking at how this will unfold, with full respect for the National Assembly that has the right to pass its own laws.”

The principle at stake isn’t complex: Provided a woman is wearing the veil of her own free will, her wardrobe choice is not the state’s business. In most other provinces, we get this; indeed, Ontario legislators have laudably decried Quebec’s bill. So why are so many feminist politicians comfortable with legislation forcing devout Muslim women into what, for them, must seem like the equivalent of public disrobing?

Simple: Couillard faces a provincial election within the year. Trudeau made his remarks while campaigning in Roberval, Que., where a federal byelection takes place next week. The federal Conservatives, with their own embarrassing electoral history on such issues, are ducking. Nationally, only the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh has clearly condemned the ban.

All these folks are aware of a recent Angus Reid poll that found a stunning 87 per cent of Quebecers support the legislation. They’re playing to the mob. As the American journalist H.L. Mencken once said (using Christian imagery): “If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner.”

Defenders of Bill 62 blather about religious neutrality, a nonsensical contradiction from a legislature that goes about its daily routine in a chamber adorned with a large crucifix. Others say the bill is a compromise given the years of acrimony Quebec has gone through over religious accommodation and given that other parties might do even worse things. Vallée has lamely suggested Bill 62 could apply to balaclavas or even large sunglasses. Uh-huh.

Quebecers’ attitudes may not change soon or easily. But national politicians, who boast of their feminism on so many other issues, can show leadership — rather than cloak themselves in a veil of cowardice.

A niqab ban is not OK. Not in freedom-loving Canada.