CAQ targets an imaginary problem
Has there ever been a hijab-wearing teacher who was proselytizing?
Here’s the gist of the spiel wafting from the Coalition Avenir Québec government: Religious types, left unchecked by 15 years of wanton multiculturalism at the hands of the Quebec Liberal Party, are imposing their will and practices on Quebec’s institutions. These religious minorities are poised to flood Quebec’s expansive civil service with kippahs, hijabs and the like, altering it in particular and society in general. These practices are taking over and must be stopped. Secularism itself is at stake.
The party, which began life as an economic nationalist alternative to Liberals in 2012, has instead made the issue of religious clothing a priority in 2018. The plan to crack down on it within classrooms, police stations and courtrooms was the among the first pronouncements of the new government, uttered before it was even sworn in, and reiterated multiple times since.
“We need to assure that we have very clear indications that Quebec society is secular. We need a law so that we can finally turn the page on all of this,” as Immigration, Diversity and Inclusion Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette told Radio-Canada recently.
This was distressing to hear. Quebec has many pressing problems, including a high dropout rate, overburdened hospitals and a chronic labour shortage. Half of the province’s roads are in bad or very bad condition, according to a 2018 government report. Many of Quebec’s publicly funded old-age homes are so cash- and staff-strapped that their residents are limited to one bath a week.
Given these dire straits, there must be a reason why the government is expending so much energy on the issue of religious accoutrements. A sudden uptick in the number of religiously dressed civil servants perhaps, perhaps, or a boost in the number of veiled teachers looking for work. The sudden onslaught of religiosity would show through in a dramatic increase in the demands on the part of religious minorities to accommodate their beliefs.
So I checked.
First, I called the Fédération autonome de l’enseignement, which represents roughly 38,000 teachers across the province. The organization doesn’t keep statistics on how many teachers wear religious symbols, only that the number is “incredibly small,” said FAE spokesperson Marie-Josée Nantel. The number of hijab-wearing teachers is even smaller.
Nor has there ever been a complaint lodged against an FAE-represented teacher for proselytizing or otherwise favouring one religion or another. “Teachers have a professional code of conduct, whether they wear a veil or not,” said Nantel.
Next, I got in touch with the Société de l’assurance automobile du Québec. The SAAQ is one of the largest government bureaucracies, one with which every driver in the province must necessarily interact at least once a year. The public insurance corporation had 5.6 million interactions with the public in 2017, equivalent to nearly 70 per cent of Quebec’s population.
The SAAQ had all of four accommodation requests in 2017, according to SAAQ spokesperson Sophie Roy — a number that includes requests made for non-religious reasons. Religious headgear is allowed on driver’s licence photos so long as the face is fully visible, there was no need for accommodations on that front. The few requests mostly were for same-sex driving-test examiners. This infinitesimal number has gone unchanged since at least 2012, when I last did this exercise.
Of course, putting facts and numbers to the government’s secularism gambit is an exercise in futility, because the issue doesn’t emanate from the brain, but the gut. Specifically, Quebecers have long been preoccupied with a feeling, prevalent despite being largely unsubstantiated by facts, that they are losing their culture and language. This preoccupation is readily exploitable, and it takes a special kind of cynicism to do so for political gain.
The day after winning the election, CAQ leader François Legault promised a government focused on the economy, education and health. Yet by taking aim at the alleged overindulgences of Quebec’s religious minorities, he is wasting his energy pummelling a straw man.