Fatima Houda-Pepin’s
Bill to fight religious fundamentalism goes further than PQ charter.
QUEBEC — Liberal Leader Philippe Couillard never wanted any real debate over the charter or values issue and did everything in his power to muzzle dissenters, Fatima Houda-Pepin said.
Meeting the media shortly after tabling her own version of a religious neutrality bill, Houda-Pepin unleashed a blistering string of charges, accusing Couillard of saying one thing one day, the opposite the next.
In the end, she was never permitted to present her proposed Bill 491 against religious fundamentalism to the caucus. In fact, no real debate took place.
And much to her surprise, Couillard popped up at a party caucus in Rivière-duLoup with his “over my dead body,” line when it comes to religious symbols.
“I was lied to,” Houda-Pepin said. “The problem with Mr. Couillard is that he’ll tell you something is white one day and black the next, and for him that is normal.”
At one point, Houda-Pepin came close to tears in describing the pressures the party placed on her to rally and shut up.
“I never thought I could be treated this way by the Liberal Party of Quebec,” she said as a hush fell over the news conference.
Houda-Pepin said she held her tongue as long as she could because she was a Liberal team player.
It was Houda-Pepin’s latest blast. After she left the Liberal caucus on Jan. 20, she accused Couillard’s chief of staff, Jean-Louis Dufresne, of trying to buy her silence in return for a cabinet job in a Liberal government.
Couillard and Dufresne have denied it all. There was no immediate reaction from Couillard on Wednesday, but Houda-Pepin’s bill — which she tabled in the morning — rapidly became a political football.
Trying to embarrass her former Liberal colleagues, Parti Québécois House leader Stéphane Bédard asked for a vote on the tabling of the bill — a rare thing.
The move forced the Liberals to publicly rise and support their former colleague, who quit the Liberal caucus because she found the Liberal position on the issue too soft.
And Houda-Pepin, the only Muslim woman in the National Assembly, said she will be meeting the PQ and Coalition Avenir Québec to present her ideas.
“Houda-Pepin was not listened to in the Liberal caucus,” Democratic Institutions Minister Bernard Drainville said. “She will be listened to in the PQ caucus.”
And Houda-Pepin’s bill goes even further than the PQ’s and openly states it fights religious fundamentalism.
Bill 491 would prohibit such authority figures as judges, prosecutors, police officers and correctional officers from wearing religious symbols.
And it specifically says that state personnel would be prohibited from wearing a chador, niqab or burka.
Public services would have to be delivered and received with an uncovered face.
It says no person may invoke religious convictions as reasons to refuse or comply with schooling programs or to exclude a child from school.
Segregation based on gender identity or religious affiliations would be prohibited in state bodies, as is polygamy.
Female genital mutilation for non-therapeutic purposes would not be allowed, the bill proposes, and any religious accommodations would have to be based on known criteria.
The bill also proposes the creation of a centre dedicated to research on fundamentalism.