The Star’s view

Religious symbols ban deserves stronger response,

The federal election campaign is only hours old and the party leaders want us to know they have bold solutions to the problems that ail us, that they’ll stop at nothing to make sure we have clear choices on Oct. 21.

Except, it seems, when it comes to one of the most important moral and social questions we can think of: whether all Canadians, regardless of where they live, should have their fundamental rights respected.

We speak, of course, of Bill 21, the frankly discriminatory Quebec law that prohibits provincial employees in many “positions of authority,” from teachers to police officers to judges and prosecutors, from wearing religious symbols or headgear at work.

There’s no question the law violates the rights of minorities, especially observant Muslims, Sikhs and orthodox Jews. The government of Premier François Legault effectively admitted that when it invoked the notwithstanding clause of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to insulate the law from court challenges.

This is a gross violation of Canadian values and Quebec values, as well, if it comes to that, carried out in the name of appeasing the groundless fears of many francophone Quebecers that their province’s essential nature is somehow being eroded by the presence of more minorities.

In a better world, federal leaders would not hold back from fighting this disgraceful law. Rights, after all, are rights, no matter your address. If they are openly violated in the second biggest province, it’s a stain on the entire country.

But politics being politics, we are not surprised to see all the leaders ducking and diving, carefully tailoring their words to avoid damaging their party’s electoral chances in the parts of Quebec where the law is very popular.

All the leaders, aside from Yves-François Blanchet of the Bloc Québécois, oppose Bill 21 as discriminatory and unnecessary, as they should.

But all, with variations among them, mostly of tone, have been careful to make clear they respect the fact that this is a Quebec law and it’s up to Quebecers to deal with it. Even Jagmeet Singh of the NDP, whose turban would disqualify him from teaching school in Quebec under Bill 21, pulls his punches.

This is understandable, given the electoral calculations at play.

Quebec has 78 federal seats and no party wants to risk being rejected as anti-Quebec. And some parties must reckon with the fact that they have people in their ranks, including candidates, who are sympathetic to the bill. No leader wants to face an internal revolt.

For the Liberals, who as champions of the charter should be most vocal against Bill 21, the arithmetic is clear.

They’re counting on picking up more seats in Quebec to counter losses elsewhere and don’t want to alienate nationalist voters.

At the same time, the parties know that heavy-handed action from Ottawa (such as federal disallowance of the bill) would likely cause Quebecers to rally around the right of their National Assembly to decide in such matters — right or wrong. That would be an excellent way to breath new life into the Bloc.

Still, the leaders could and should be doing more than just tut-tutting about Bill 21. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau noted in his campaign kick-off that there is already a judicial challenge to the law underway in Quebec, and it would be “counterproductive” for Ottawa to get involved “at this time.”

He and the others could go further. As Jack Jedwab of the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies has suggested, all federal parties could support that challenge. If all did the same, voters couldn’t blame any one more than the others. And polls show that joining a court challenge would be seen as legitimate by most Quebecers.

The alternative is to carry on with a federal campaign that treats a major violation of human rights as a mere electoral inconvenience.

In a better world, federal leaders would not hold back from fighting this disgraceful Bill 21