Fate of Quebec’s Bill 21 will be decided by the courts, not voters

The Oct. 21 election had barely been called when the issue of Quebec’s contentious secularism legislation first surfaced.

Since then, the law that forbids police officers, prison guards, provincial judges and prosecutors as well as public school teachers to wear religious vestments or symbols at work has consumed more and more of the campaign conversation.

One could be forgiven to believe that the ultimate fate of the controversial Quebec law hangs in the balance of the Oct. 21 federal vote.

As it happens, it does not.

Regardless of who leads the next federal government, the fate of Bill 21 will be decided in the courts, and not in the House of Commons.

Two different challenges are already making their way through the Quebec court system. There are likely more in the pipeline.

The province’s Court of Appeal will soon rule on whether the application of the most contentious sections of Bill 21 should be suspended until its constitutionality has been validated.

It is a virtual certainty that at some point in time Bill 21 will end up on the top court docket. But assuming the top court is seized of the matter over the tenure of the next federal government, odds are that Ottawa — under any party and notwithstanding their current rhetoric — would jump into the fray.

Trudeau’s position, that he will not rule out joining a challenge against Bill 21, is only an outlier when compared to Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer and the NDP’s Jagmeet Singh’s handsoff stances.

In fact, the Liberal leader’s position reflects what has been standard practice not only for the federal government but also for its Quebec counterpart.

In the past, both levels of government have intervened — as a matter of course — in court challenges that have revolved around the extent of their respective constitutional jurisdictions or that of Charter rights.

On that basis, the Legault government is currently an intervener in support of British Columbia in the latter’s attempt to have its authority to limit the amount of fossil fuel that transits through the province affirmed, and in support of various Conservative premiers in the legal battle they have waged against the federal carbon tax.

Given all that, Scheer’s categorical assertion that a Conservative government would forever remain on the sidelines of a Bill 21 challenge has to be taken with a big grain of salt.

And Singh’s recent musings about the possible necessity for an NDP federal government to join the battle at the Supreme Court level are less a flip-flop than a belated attempt to realign his position with the responsibilities of any party in federal power.

It would be quite a precedent for a federal government of any political stripe to decline to stand its constitutional ground in the top court.

When it comes to Bill 21, the Bloc Québécois along with Legault are mostly tilting at windmills for political gain.

The law is popular and there is potential mileage to be had on Oct. 21 and beyond by looking to be standing up for Quebec’s autonomy. But to do so they are applying a double standard.

They would have the next prime minister renounce a legal option that no Quebec premier would ever forego.

And they would be the first to vehemently denounce the notion that the will of a provincial majority should be the last word on the rights of minorities if another province applied that rule to French-language rights.