National leadership needed on niqab ban

At most, a few thousand women in Quebec wear the niqab, the veil that covers facial features except for the eyes. Some estimates say the number is even lower, 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 the face be uncovered when a person is 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, and that is not OK. Not in freedomloving Canada.

Provided a woman is wearing the veil of her own free will, her wardrobe choice is not the state’s business. Ontario legislators have laudably decried Quebec’s bill. So why are so many Quebec politicians comfortable with legislation forcing devout Muslim women into what, for them, must seem like the equivalent of public disrobing?

Simple: Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard faces a provincial election within the year. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who has been weak in his criticism of the bill, was 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 87 per cent of Quebecers support the legislation. They’re playing to the mob.

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. Gatineau MNA Stéphanie Vallée has lamely suggested Bill 62 could apply to balaclavas or even large sunglasses.

Quebecers’ attitudes may not change soon or easily, but national politicians can show leadership – rather than cloak themselves in a veil of cowardice.