CULTURE AND HERITAGE are important, but they should not be used to justify human-rights violations

is a Montrealbased humanrights lawyer. She teaches law at McGill University and is a member of McGill’s Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism. She is currently working in eastern Africa. There

are two sentences that, together, signal danger in any society. The first is “Our country is for us” and the second is “Our own culture and heritage come first.” I have heard them used to justify xenophobic attacks against South Asians (migrant workers in Greece) and “corrective” rape (lesbians in South Africa). Culture and heritage are important, but governments must not use them to justify human-rights violations.

Quebec is once again threatening to enact laws that appeal to heritage and “values” but that will disconnect “values” from rights.

I say “once again” because the controversy over Quebec’s proposed “charter of values” cannot be laid entirely at the feet of the current government. It is the third in a trilogy of ill-considered efforts from both the Parti Québécois and the Liberals that have relied on the murky doctrine of “interculturalism.” Not many Quebecers — at least outside the chattering classes — have even heard of interculturalism, but it’s a de-rigueur idea among politicians in Quebec City. It asserts that the majority culture has “ad-hoc precedence” over other cultures, to borrow a phrase from Gérard Bouchard (of the BouchardTaylor Commission on reasonable accommodation). The problem is that this “adhoc precedence” makes it easier to subordinate rights to the majority culture.

Pauline Marois tried to give the idea legislative ballast in her 2009 private-member’s bill “An Act to assert the fundamental values of the Quebec nation.” The bill — never passed — would have required that human rights be interpreted based on Quebec heritage. In 2010, the Liberal government tabled Bill 94, “An Act to establish guidelines governing accommodation requests within the Administration and certain institutions.” It proposed guidelines for accommodation of members of cultural minorities — but these guidelines would have been the least progressive in all of Canada. Thankfully, Bill 94 stalled too.

The worst of both bills is now before us in the PQ’s new proposed Charter of Quebec Values.

I have worked for much of my professional life to ensure that religious freedom does not turn into religious imposition. Women, gays and lesbians, and religious minorities have been victims of majority-rule and harmful religious and cultural practices in much of the world. But this charter does not address such problems — and it goes much further than it needs to. Newcomers and members of minorities in Quebec should have just as much right to hold onto their cultures as anyone else does, within reasonable limits.

And let’s be clear about these “reasonable limits.” Reasonable accommodation gives people — including people of faith — access to public social services and employment without discrimination. It must be offered generously and inclusively.

The new Quebec proposal would exclude entire swaths of people from religious minorities from employment in the public service because of symbols of their faith. The victims include the very women we are supposedly so keen to integrate into our society. How is this gender equality, exactly?

The “neutrality” of the state means that the state is neutral vis-à-vis its citizens — not the other way around. Rights belong to people, not to ideologies or states. A truly successful neutral state is committed to human rights and the rule of law. It is one where people, regardless of what they wear on their heads or around their necks, discharge their duties with commitment, integrity and professionalism.

This Charter of Quebec Values is also bad news at the international level. Where I am working right now in east Africa, women in rural areas are subjected to genital cutting (female genital mutilation) in the name of heritage, culture and values. Muslims, but also Christians and animists, perpetrate this atrocity on girls for purely cultural reasons. When rights arguments are discarded in the name of culture and heritage, we all lose a powerful tool against harmful practices.

Wearing a head scarf, a kippah or a turban is not a harmful practice like female genital mutilation. There is no legal basis to prohibit it. Limits on rights must be demonstrably justifiable.

It would be the height of irony if Quebec, such a strong supporter of women’s equality, were to adopt a policy that allows “values” to trump rights. Other countries look to Canada to set an example. Instead, this charter would hand ammunition to religious extremists, strengthen their arguments using heritage and culture and shoring up their own rights violations.

At lunch here one recent day, a colleague asked me if I knew that Quebec was planning to ban observant Muslim women from the public service. This is a country where many public servants are women working in senior positions and wearing the head scarf.

If we get to pick and choose what rights we decide to violate in the name of social cohesion and heritage, who are we to tell anyone else to do otherwise?