‘No place’ for Bill 21, protesters say
At least 125 people gathered in Montreal on Sunday, and protests took place in three other Quebec cities, to denounce the provincial government’s new secularism law.
No federal politicians were present at the Montreal protest except Zahia El-Masri, a candidate for the NDP in the Ahuntsic-Cartierville riding. El-Masri said she, like leader Jagmeet Singh, is strongly opposed to Bill 21.
“I’m outraged. I’m here to say that there’s no place for a law like this in Quebec,” she said.
“Yes, we want a secular Quebec, but a secular Quebec that doesn’t infringe on human rights and women’s rights.”
Though the NDP opposes the law, it has no intention to intervene in the legal challenges against it.
Québec solidaire MNA Sol Zanetti also spoke at the protest.
“We have created major fractures in the feeling of belonging of Quebecers from diverse origins, and I’m convinced that this is not what the people who voted for the CAQ wanted,” Zanetti said.
Alex Tyrrell, leader of the Quebec Green Party (which is different from the Green Party of Canada), said he found the government and Bill 21 racist.
“If we look at who is targeted by the law, who wears religious symbols, it’s visible minorities, so it’s a racist law,” Tyrrell said.
Some protesters wore religious symbols, even though they don’t wear them every day, like Kimberley Manning, political science professor and head of the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University, who wore a cross to express opposition to the law.
Sara Varano, a CEGEP teacher, went further, wearing two crucifixes and a kippa almost every day since August.
In Quebec City, protesters gathered outside the Centre culturel islamique de Québec, where a shooting killed six people at a mosque in 2017.
Protests also took place in Sherbrooke and Gatineau.