Respecting the laicity of the State: Judging a book by its cover
If Quebec is your home in 2019, then you’ve heard of the CAQ’s controversial Bill 21, formally titled An Act respecting the laicity of the State. Laïcité, c’est quoi?
What will happen when the bill becomes law? Probably the most significant effect will be that teachers and school principals in the public system, police (except federally regulated officers such as the RCMP and CBSA), most provincial and municipal judges, lawyers, clerks, and notaries, and a few other categories of “public servants” (all the way up to the top) will find that they cannot be hired by the govt if they will not remove religious symbols from their bodies while on the job. Not surprisingly, Bill 21 quickly became an imbroglio for Quebec Premier François Legault.
As an unabashedly secular, relatively new anglophone immigrant (j’apprends le français) who now calls Quebec home, I find Bill 21 a tough nut to crack. Anglophone and allophone communities are minority groups in the province, so unsurprisingly they head resistance against the bill in areas like Western Quebec. As noted in the mass media, Montreal will bear the brunt of Bill 21. However, the issue does not neatly break down along nativist, linguistic, or even religious lines. We’ve heard from immigrants not only in the suburbs of Montreal, but also within the city, who favor Bill 21.
The Turban Scare of 1988–90
Speaking as an American who hitchhiked back and forth across Canada for a couple of summers in the 1990s, I’ve met a more diverse cross-section of Canadians than perhaps most Canadian-born citizens have had the pleasure of meeting. And one aspect of hitchhiking is that you instantly become a captive audience; you hear opposing views on just about anything, like it or not. One fellow who gave me a lift (somewhere in the Prairie Provinces — I think it was Alberta) went on an extensive rant about how insane it was that an RCMP officer was allowed to wear a turban. He was probably referring to Baltej Singh Dhillon, a Sikh who applied to join the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after volunteering as an interpreter with them. I found my driver’s incredulity kinda laughable, but suppressed chuckling in order to preserve my ride to the next town.
Dhillon’s application proved too much of a cultural shock for many Canadians, with over 90,000 signing petitions in an attempt to prevent turbans being allowed on the heads of Mounties. This figure of close to 100k is stunning when we consider that even GeoCities was not yet on the Internet in 1989, much less MySpace, Facebook and Twitter. Anti-turban pins and satirical calendars around the issue became all the rage in places like Alberta (in fairness to Alberta, protests against Dhillon’s headgear were a national phenomenon). After the federal government ruled in favor of a Mountie dress code that would allow Dhillon into the RCMP, he predictably received anonymous death threats. Is it not amazing how something so innocuous as headgear can get stuck in the craw of so many people?
Outcry in Montreal (and across Canada)
A list of complaints against Bill 21 includes the following:
This form of secularism involves gross violations of individual liberty”
— Leonid Sirota in the highly-regarded Canadian law blog Double Aspect
Fundamentally this law discriminates and creates two classes of citizens for a problem that does not exist and doesn’t reflect Quebec values of openness and and fundamental freedoms”
— Lionel Perez, Côte-des-Neiges—Notre-Dame-de-Grace borough mayor
…to many of those who wear it, the veil [Muslim headscarf] reflects a respect for tradition, personal modesty, a sense of fashion and even pure convenience”
— Robert Calderisi in The Globe and Mail
It’s important to see the CAQ’s rhetoric as both Islamophobic and misogynist because far too often, attacks on Muslim women appear under the guise of women’s liberation. But liberation is directly in conflict with closing sectors of the economy to women because they wear a headscarf.”
— Nora Loreto in the National Observer (Canada)
People have been fighting over hats for centuries… Government clothing bans are ludicrous, even before they are cruel…”
— self-proclaimed non-religionist Heather Mallick in the Toronto Star
Much of the support for Bill 21 came from frustrated Quebec separatists who have channeled their lack of success in attaining independence into campaigns against religion, immigration, and minority groups”
— in Hamodia, “The Newspaper of Torah Jewry”
In Saudi Arabia, men want to cover women so only they can look at them; in Québec, men want to uncover them, so that they can look at them”
— Yasmin Jiwani on “sexularism” in The Conversation (Canada)
By renouncing our international commitments, we’re undermining our international credibility… States cannot by and large force people to dress or not dress in a particular way”
— France-Isabelle Langlois, director of Amnesty International for French-speaking Canada
My son wears the [Jewish kippah] and no one should tell him what to do or how to be… Don’t tell us how to act, what to do, what to wear. I don’t care if a Muslim woman wears a hijab on her head, I care about what’s inside it.”
— Anonymous in Hampstead, an affluent on-island suburb of Montreal
Est-ce que Bill 21 = Catho-laïcité in Quebec?
Despite not yet having a generous understanding of Quebec’s history, I couldn’t help but learn of Catholicism’s stranglehold on the province since the 17th century, when France’s King Louis XIII forbade settlement in New France by anyone other than Roman Catholics. The legacy of a king’s wish became so embedded in Quebec that baptismal certificates were routinely considered birth certificates until late in the 20th century. Regardless of the rapid secularization that occurred in Quebec during the Quiet Revolution (1960–66), should secularization advance in the form of Bill 21? More importantly, is this bill honestly about secularization across the board? Some accuse the CAQ of “catho-laïcité”, or a selective secularism.
We know from the 2011 National Household Survey Religion in Quebec that 3 out of 4 Quebecers identified themselves as Roman Catholics less than a decade ago. The next largest religious group was not a religion at all: irreligion accounted for 12% of Quebecers. Among non-Christian sects, Muslims were only 3% of the province’s population, which should drive home the point about just how acutely insane it is for a Quebecer to fear Islamic influence and Sharia, especially since Quebec can be a dangerous place for Muslims. Resentment against the “reasonable accommodation” of religious minorities in Quebec is only furthered by the national tragedy of orange demagoguery from south of the border seeping up to Canada.
Based on a Leger poll commissioned by the CAQ, Legault tells us that 2 out of 3 Quebecers support the premise behind Bill 21. But what happens when a Quebec City hospital takes down a crucifix hanging by its elevators? A threat of violence and a petition signed by more than 13,000. So much for actual state secularity when you can simply yell the word “heritage”; this real world incident indeed validates the concept of “catho-laïcité”.
by Anthony Bonaparte @napoleontoons
Can the Right be trusted?
Having recently abandoned a nation stuck under the thumb of an abominable right-wing demagogue, I’m deeply suspicious of a “centre-right to right-wing nationalist” political party in my new home of Quebec. While François Legault certainly does not exhibit either the incendiary lunacy of the Trump family or the explicit white nationalist thuggishness of the Le Pen family, we nonetheless must question his true underlying thought process in Bill 21 and Bill 9 (for more about the CAQ’s actions on immigration, see my post about their controversial Bill 9). I’m all for a godless state, but is that the real intent of Bill 21?
The USA has seen victim-mentality consternation among some Southerners about the removal of Confederate statues from public squares. Those who defended the statues were so dull as to believe that future generations will forget all about the war if Confederate statues are removed. (You can decide whether they are disingenuous or whether they can’t abide the history books in libraries or stores shelved explicitly to inform them about history).
So what does the Confederacy have to do with Bill 21? François Legault tried to convince his fellow Quebecers that the crucifix hanging in the provincial legislature was simply “A part of our history.” Imagine someone telling you a crucifix does not thrust Christianity in your face. Is that not the logic of those who want you to believe that statues of the Confederate States Army do not glorify those who fought to retain slaves?
Yea or Nay on Bill 21?
I’d be inclined to support Bill 21 if we could be certain the CAQ would see to it that every crucifix and cross were removed from government buildings such as hospitals and public schools. A secular state is fine in theory, but legislation that appears to target relatively powerless minority groups is not an acceptable state of affairs. If you oppose Bill 21, you are in good company.
What in general does Legault’s CAQ think of immigration? You can find my brief analysis of the Coalition Avenir Québec’s stance on reducing immigration elsewhere on this site.
— Victor