The thousands of Quebecers who oppose Law 21 are taking comfort from a new poll that shows declining support for the discriminatory law, which the Quebec government enacted in 2019.
Law 21 prohibits police officers, prison guards, government lawyers, judges, and classroom teachers from wearing visible religious symbols, such as a Jewish kippah (or skullcap), a turban, or a Muslim hijab (or headscarf). There are many jobs in Quebec which would be off limits for NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh.
In December, a school board in western Quebec transferred a teacher from her Grade 3 classroom to a behind-the-scenes role because she wore a hijab.
Shortly after that, in January, the firm Leger Marketing conducted a poll on attitudes toward Law 21 for the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies. The poll found that support for the law in Quebec has dropped from 64 per cent to 55 per cent.
More importantly, the poll found a huge generation gap in attitudes toward Law 21. While older Quebecers still support it strongly, over 70 per cent of young people in the 18-to-24 age group do not support it.
An open defiance of basic human rights
The Quebec government knew full well in 2019 when it enacted Law 21 that it was in violation of several articles of the Canadian Constitution’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms – notably the clause which guarantees freedom of religion.
That’s why Premier François Legault and his colleagues took the precaution of invoking the Charter’s escape hatch, the notwithstanding clause.
But using the notwithstanding clause was not enough. Quebec has its own charter, La Charte des droits et libertés de la personne (the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms), enacted in 1975, six years before the Canadian charter.
Quebec’s Charte is legislation, not a constitutional provision. Nonetheless, it has legal precedence over all other Quebec legislation. And so, to shield Law 21 from challenges under Quebec’s own basic law, the Legault government modified – in effect weakened – its own Charte.
Quebecers are legitimately proud of their Charte, which is more far-reaching and extensive than its Canadian counterpart. Thanks to the Charte, Quebec was the first country, state or province anywhere in the world to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation.
As well, the Quebec Charte recognizes economic and social rights, a feature lacking in most human rights instruments, including the Canadian charter.
Until 2019, no Quebec government ever contemplated tinkering with its own landmark human rights legislation. But in 2019 the Legault government did just that, in the same legislative package with which it enacted Law 21.
It did not do so by adding honest and candid language stating that freedom of religion as recognized, heretofore, by the Charte does not extend to a teacher wearing a hijab.
What the Legault government did was insert into the Charte two references to what it calls the laïcité, or secular character, of the Quebec State. (There is no commonly accepted word in English for laïcité. In the official English-language version of the Charte the Quebec government uses “laicity,” an archaic, medieval word, once used to refer to the laity rather than the clergy, which does not appear in most contemporary dictionaries.)
In the preamble to the Quebec Charte, the Legault government added the phrase: “Whereas the Québec nation considers State laicity [la laïcité de l’État] to be of fundamental importance…”
And in the Charte’s Section One on fundamental freedoms, which originally had nine clauses, it added a clause 9.1, to wit:
“In exercising his fundamental freedoms and rights, a person shall maintain a proper regard for democratic values, State laicity, public order and the general well-being of the citizens of Québec. In this respect, the scope of the freedoms and rights, and limits to their exercise, may be fixed by law.”
As with laïcité, the word “State,” with an upper case, does not occur in the 1975 version of the Quebec Charte. Here, it has a special meaning for the current Quebec government.
To most of us, the state, or, if you will, our government, consists of: the parliament, the civil service, the courts, the military, the police, and the many boards and agencies that make up the multifaceted entity which enforces laws, taxes us, and provides us with a wide range of services.
That would be an empirical, functional, practical and tangible definition of the state.
But to the Quebec government – at least, the current one – the State (again, with an upper-case “S”) is not limited to its activities and functions. The State is rather a near-metaphysical entity, embodying and representing the essence and identity of the people.
This concept of the State goes back to the French Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic Empire, when the French State replaced the absolutist Bourbon monarchy – a monarchy which defined itself in Louis XIV’s famous dictum: “L’État c’est moi.”
When the State becomes a near sacred symbol of the collective national personality, and when that State must be, in some ineluctable, almost mystical way, secular, then the particular rights of some individuals can go out the window – in the interests of the greater good.
The current Quebec government claims it wants to fully detach the State from any element of religion. Perversely, it has deformed the concept of laïcité – of being secular or non-religious – into its own kind of religion.
The ironic thing is that there was a time in Quebec, many decades ago, when the movement to promote laïcité was not about squelching and persecuting diversity. Quite the opposite, it was about fully embracing the increasingly diverse nature of Quebec society.
It took decades to get a non-denominational school system
Here’s a tiny bit of history.
In 1977, the first Parti Québécois government, headed by René Lévesque, enacted the Charter of the French Language, which many still refer to as Bill 101 (which, to be correct, should be Law 101).
One of the French Language Charter’s key provisions was to strictly limit who could attend English-language schools. That right was limited to the offspring of Quebecers who had themselves attended English schools in Quebec.
A court challenge later forced the Quebec government to change the English education provision to parents who had attended English school anywhere in Canada (and not just in Quebec).
Immigrants to Quebec from all other countries still had to send their kids to French schools.
But here’s the rub.
For the two decades following 1977, every single public French school in Quebec was officially either Catholic or Protestant. There was no such thing in Quebec (and in some other provinces, such as Newfoundland and Labrador) as a neutral, non-denominational school.
The result was that children from Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Confucian, and non-believing families all had to attend Christian, religiously defined schools. If those schools were French, they were most likely Roman Catholic schools.
Some Quebecers thought this was an intolerable situation. They wanted to change the education system so that it was fully inclusive of all and they started a small, largely ignored, Mouvement Laïque.
That movement’s goal was to complete the work of the 1960s Quiet Revolution, when Quebec notionally threw off the shackles of the Catholic church – starting with education.
The Mouvement Laïque focused on some schools in Montreal where almost the entire student population consisted of immigrants from Southeast Asia, North Africa and elsewhere in the developing world.
At that time, the Quebec government allowed parents to sign a form seeking an exemption for their children from religious instruction. My wife and I did so for our kids. It was a bit of a humiliating experience. But the majority of recent immigrants were loath to call attention to themselves by signing any form. They wanted to get along by going along in their new home.
The result was catechism classes filled with Buddhist, Muslim and other non-Christian children. There, specialized teachers taught their classes to dutifully recite, in question-and-answer form, the principles and dogmas of a rigid and conservative form of Roman Catholicism. It was definitely not Liberation theology.
One leader of the Mouvement Laïque asked, rhetorically: “Est-ce que c’a été le but du loi 101 de franciser les immigrants ou de les évangéliser?” Roughly translated: Was the purpose of Law 101 to teach French to immigrants or to turn them into Christians?
For many years, the proponents of this inclusive kind of laïcité were lonely voices in the wilderness.
Most old-stock Quebecers are not that interested in religion these days, and weren’t back then. The empty churches of Quebec have attested to that for many decades. But for decades those same people didn’t mind if their kids received a bit of old-school religious indoctrination in school. After all, they had survived catechism class. Their kids would too.
In 1997, when the Quebec government finally got around to replacing the archaic religious school boards with linguistic ones, it was as much for economic motives as for reasons of fairness and equity.
Running multiple, parallel school systems, based both on language and religion, simply cost too much money. And even then, Quebec’s leaders barely mentioned the issue of assuring the laïcité of l’État Québécois.
These days, sadly, the inheritors of the Mouvement Laïque are fully in favour of Law 21. They have bought into the idea that if a society is to be truly secular all of its members must be visibly secular in exactly the same way.
Once, laïtcitè meant being opposed to forcing Roman Catholicism onto families who practiced other religions. Now, it means brazenly discriminating against people who express their own faith in a visible way.
But there is hope in the attitudes of Quebec’s younger generation.
The youth want a state (or State, if you will) that expends its energy on combatting climate change and achieving social justice – not tilting at religious-vestment windmills.
The young see the Legault government’s obsession with controlling what some people wear as pandering to the fear many, especially older people, have of any kind of difference.
If the recent Leger poll is to be believed, it seems the vast majority of young Quebecers want their government to find the courage to appeal to citizens’ higher angels, not their dark and paranoid delusions.
Support rabble today!
We’re so glad you stopped by! Thanks for consuming rabble content this year.
rabble.ca is 100% reader and donor funded, so as an avid reader of our content, we hope you will consider gifting rabble with a donation during our summer fundraiser today.
Whether it be a one-time donation or a small monthly contribution, your support is critical to keep rabble writers producing the work you’ve come to rely on as a part of a healthy media diet.
Become a rabble rouser — donate to rabble.ca today.
Nick Seebruch, editor
