By Kate Murphy
At 10:30 pm, June 16th, a new bill was passed into Quebec law. This bill, Bill 21, pushes for a dangerously secularist Quebec by outlawing civil servants from wearing religious symbols. Out of fear of being oppressed, Quebec is, in fact, oppressing its people; unfairly targeting certain groups, and paving the way for a worryingly homogeneous civil service. This fear, while almost justified by Quebec’s history, is pushing the province in a dangerous direction, one that is leading back towards the oppression that they have fought so hard to be free of.
Bill 21, compared to its predecessors, is quite aggressive and restrictive, as well as includes multiple clauses that make it much more difficult to overturn. The bill introduced by Simon Jilin Barrette, Quebec’s Minister of Immigration, Diversity, and Inclusivity, lays out ways in which Quebec can uphold laicity in its society. Laicity is derived from the French word meaning secularity. “To that end, the bill provides that the laicity of the State is based on four principles: the separation of State and religions, the religious neutrality of the State, the equality of all citizens, and freedom of conscience and freedom of religion.” claims the bill, laying out the justification for its controversial rules. Said rules state that any public workers in positions of authority are not to wear any religious symbols. This includes teachers, lawyers, peace officers and many others. Religious symbols refer to crucifixes, hijabs, turbans etc.. However, the bill does include a grandfather clause that exempts select workers from the rule as long as they hold the same job. The aggression of Bill 21 is possibly most obvious in its usage of the notwithstanding clause so that it can violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms without being overturned. The bill and its multiple defensive clauses make it aggressive and dangerously difficult to repeal.
Bill 21 is only the most recent, and successful, in a long line of similar bills, illustrating Quebec’s views on not only the separation of the church from the state but their views on religious freedoms. The modern debate surrounding secularism in Quebec began in 2006 when the supreme court overthrew a Quebec judge’s decision allowing a Montréal school board to bar a student from wearing a ceremonial Kirpan dagger to school. When faced with this, Quebec’s Liberal government assembled a commission to look into matters of a religious nature. Two years later, in 2008, the commission released a report on how immigrants should, and could, integrate into Quebec culture and how religions should be accommodated while preserving secularism. The report recommended things such as removing the legislature’s crucifix and barring civil servants from wearing religious symbols, a value that is upheld in Bill 21. Since the 2008 report, multiple Quebec governments have tried to pass similar bills, including Parti Quebecois’ 2013 Charter of Values. However, it was never passed due to public outrage as it was seen as discriminatory towards Muslim women who wore hijabs and burkas. Parti Quebecois’ Liberal successors also introduced a bill barring anyone receiving or delivering public services, such as boarding a bus, from having their faces covered. It was initial passed, despite further controversy about it targeting Muslim women, but was suspended in 2017 when concerns were raised surrounding how it would be executed. While its predecessors have been numerous but often short-lived, that does not mean that Bill 21 should be disregarded, it is the most successful step Quebec has made towards enshrining secularism in law.
The strides toward secularism that Quebec continues to try to make, stem from a long history of oppressive Roman Catholicism and the eventual fall of the church in Quebec. Every aspect of life in Quebec used to be controlled by the church, and in the early 20th century this influence reached its peak. The church controlled schools and hospitals. It ran social action groups and assumed leadership of Quebec’s temperance movement. The church even ran unions for workers and farmers. It also did all that it could to ensure that its influence would not weaken. The church even established Catholic newspapers and theatres to combat non-Catholic media. However, this all changed in the 1960s in what is referred to as the Quiet Revolution. The flood gates were first opened by Jean Lesage’s Liberal government. The province took over the school and hospital systems and affectively barred the church from having influence over any major institution. Within ten years, the church’s influence had shrunk to practically nothing. The Quebec people have been doing all that they can to not be under the oppressive power of the church again. this fear of the church's influence has led to the current outlook on religion held in Quebec today.
The catholic history of Quebec has pushed them to not only write secularism into law but to integrate it into their culture itself. Coinciding with the Quiet Revolution, Pierre Trudeau came into office. He championed multiculturalism in Canada, the idea that many different cultures can coexist and even enrich each other in one nation. However, these ideas never took hold in Quebec. They were wary of adopting this way of thinking for two reasons: first, that it would take away from their hard-fought individuality from the rest of Canada, and second, that it could give an opportunity for the church to gain influence again. this fear of oppression returning was the basis for Quebec’s current outlook on secularism. Instead of adopting multiculturalism, they instead opted for interculturalism, in which multiple cultures can coexist, but they all revolve around one core culture or set of values. In this case, that value is secularism. All the fear of past oppression giving way to the rejection of multiculturalism is a very defensive stance on Quebec’s part, one that has become part of their culture.
By passing Bill 21, Quebec is solidifying something that has been ingrained in its culture for years: anything and everything will be done to avoid regressing to the control of the church. However, the way that this has been executed swings the pendulum too far. Rather than avoid oppression, Bill 21 simply oppresses a different group, ironically recalling the past that they are trying so hard not to repeat.
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