Three years ago, during the controversy over the Parti Québécois “values” charter, a values vigilante had a photo posted online showing two women in face-covering niqabs escorting some preschool children across a street in Montreal.
Responding with untypical bureaucratic haste, the families department sent two inspectors the very next day to the daycare where the women worked as educators.
The inspectors found no infractions. Parents, most of them non-Muslims, said in interviews they were satisfied with the daycare and the educators.
And that is the known extent of the niqab “problem” in Quebec public services addressed by the present Liberal government’s so-called “religious neutrality” bill, public consultations on which are to begin Tuesday.
So-called, because Bill 62’s religious neutrality is selective. It would not remove the crucifix from its prominent position on the wall above the chair of the president, or speaker.
The crucifix was placed there in 1936 by Maurice Duplessis, the conservative premier of the day, for the specific purpose of symbolizing an alliance between the government and the Catholic church.
But the bill would not affect emblems and place names that are part of Quebec’s “cultural heritage, in particular its religious cultural heritage, that testify to its history.”
So that crucifix, along with the other Catholic symbols and names on public schools and hospitals and the map, would stay.
The niqab, however, would have to go, and so would the burka, another long Muslim veil that covers the face — that is, if any could be found anywhere in the provincial public sector.
Bill 62’s sponsor, Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée, says she is not aware of a single public employee, among the hundreds of thousands who would be covered by the bill, who wears a facial veil at work.
Even the educators at that daycare centre uncovered their faces when they were inside and alone with the children and their mothers.
It is estimated that, at most, only about 50 women in Quebec wear the niqab. And not many women who conceal their faces when they leave their homes are likely to seek outside jobs.
Apparently, though, even with hypothetical cases, one can’t be too careful. So the employees covered by the bill would be required to “exercise their functions with their face uncovered.” Anybody receiving services from those employees also, generally speaking, “must have their face uncovered.”
There is no practical need for a woman requesting a brochure at a local community-services centre to remove her facial veil. But the Liberals have created a new “principle” that public services must be given and received with face uncovered.
They did so to justify their response, not to a practical problem, but to a political one. When the former PQ minority government proposed its values charter, mainly for cynical electoral reasons, it forced the other parties to take positions.
The Liberals promised their bare-face bill, a lighter version of the PQ charter, which would have also prohibited public employees from wearing the Muslim head scarf known as the hijab, as well as other “conspicuous” religious symbols.
The Couillard government’s bill also contains a “framework” for handling accommodation requests in the public sector intended to limit if not discourage them.
Again, the practical need for such guidelines is not apparent, beyond the occasional news story. Most accommodation requests are handled quietly and successfully.
And the guidelines are so general that they may be of little practical help. More useful is the already-existing advisory service on accommodation requests provided by the province’s human-rights commission for both the private and public sectors.
But Bill 62 is a response to pressure to Do Something, to Make a Statement. In Quebec, that often results in legislation for its own sake.
And it would not even settle the religious-neutrality question, since both the main opposition parties say the bill doesn’t go far enough.
Twitter: DMacpGaz
