Student video takes aim at charter
Psst, Madame Marois! If you can spare a few moments from your busy campaign schedule, some students at Westmount High School have something they’d like you to watch.
“Une leçon pour la première ministre Marois/A lesson for Premier Marois” is a five-minute video that takes aim at the Parti Québécois government’s secularism charter.
Posted on YouTube Tuesday morning, the video, produced by students and history teacher Robert Green, consists of a series of quotations from international and Canadian human-rights charters and Quebec’s education program, introduced in 1997 by none other than Pauline Marois, then education minister.
Green said the proposed secularism charter flies in the face of Quebec and Canadian human-rights laws and is “absolutely contrary to the values of a democratic society.”
Unveiled in September but not passed when the election was called, the charter would bar public-sector workers — including teachers — from wearing religious symbols like the Muslim hijab, Jewish kippah or Sikh turban.
“It’s contrary to Quebec’s own curriculum, which is promoting the notion that Quebec’s diversity is something to be valued,” Green said.
Quebec’s education program says schools bring together students of diverse origins and beliefs and provide an opportunity to learn to respect others and “reject all forms of exclusion.”
Section 3 of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms protects freedom of religion and expression and Section 10 guarantees the exercise of those fundamental freedoms without “distinction, exclusion or preference”.
Two of the students fea- tured in the video said they worry about how the secularism charters would affect teachers and students at the school.
“It’s important to me because we do have a very diverse community here at Westmount High School,” said Grade 11 student Ariana Da Cunha.
“It’s not fair to take away the right to religious expression,” she added.
Geography teacher Furheen Ahmed, who wears a hijab, took part in weekly 7 a.m. anti-charter protests in front of the school last fall.
“I really hope that it doesn’t pass because I don’t want to lose teachers,” Grade 10 student Jaylin Paris said.
Green said students and staff who took part in the protests came up with the idea of the video when it got too cold to demonstrate outside. “It has really been a group effort,” he said.
The PQ had intended to make the secularism charter a major election plank but sovereignty dominated the campaign after star candidate Pierre Karl Péladeau proclaimed his determination to make Quebec “a country.”
With the party dropping in the polls, Democratic Institutions minister Bernard Drainville warned last week that only a vote for the PQ could save the charter.
Asked about the video Tuesday, Marois denied the secularism charter is con- trary to the Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
She said that while she respects freedom of religion, “the government has to be neutral.”
“I don’t think we are against the Quebec Charter of Human Rights. We think our charter on values and secularism is a tool that is very important to define the rules which are important to adopt for living together in Quebec. I don’t think it goes against our Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” she said.
In October, Quebec’s human rights commission said the secularism charter violates “the spirit and the letter” of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the “courts would rip it to shreds” if it is passed.