Quebec — Why Is It Happening?

 

 

                      By Kenneth Bagnell

            No word has as many varied meanings as does “secular”. Its most menacing interpretation lurks in a proposed policy now on display in Quebec. It is widely and properly known as Quebec’s Secular Charter. As I implied in an earlier blog, the current PQ government has taken dead aim at faith groups: Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, and any others who dare indicate their faith by wearing, in public, symbols of their religious tradition. Never mind the historical fact that some of these groups, including Christians and Jews, have been in the province and practiced their faith customs for centuries. To the current government, the so-called Charter of Quebec Values, proposed first in September, and more recently made more sinister, will prevent or forbid countless thousands of citizens from daring to reveal in the workplace that they practice their faith.

    Take for example, a Catholic woman working in a public daycare wearing a crucifix around her neck. She must take it off. Or a Jewish defense lawyer rising in his courtroom wearing his kippa. This law would make him leave it home. And what of the observant Sikh academic who lectures wearing the hijab. As for the deeply meaningful Star of David it will be excluded from display in many buildings. There’s more but that’s enough to justify the growing view that the PQ government has launched a full blown assault on people of faith. (Never mind the curious contradiction that in our senior federal government we accept MPs, in the House of Commons wearing, if they wish, faith symbols like the turban. That’s one reason why I must ask again:  what’s the problem?

    In large part, say skeptics, Quebec Premier Pauline Marois and her Party Quebecois have literally concocted Bill 60’s Charter of Values in part to distract voters from other more complex and thereby thorny issues. A mistake. Why? Because since Bill 60 was announced in early autumn more recent polls show a competing body of opinion in Quebec and the nation: people from across our linguistic and religious cultures are now coming together to resist it. An analysis of national public opinion, done by the highly credible Ipsos-Reid polling firm reports that over 70 percent of the national population and over 60 percent of the citizenry of Quebec disagree with the Premier’s secularizing strategy.

    They know their province will be the better if its rejects such narrow and self-centred policy. Consider but one example inherent in a comment by Quebec’s Dr. Comlan Amouzou — president of an organization of physicians who have migrated to practice in his province -– whose views apply to every province: “With globalization,” he told The Montreal Gazette, “countries around the world are trying to attract the best physicians, and in Quebec, instead of integrating foreign trained physicians, the government is doing the opposite.”  He refers, not just to the ominous secular charter now being envisioned, but a nefarious prejudice practice that already exists: denying doctors from certain countries a license to practice even after their credentials have been reviewed and ratified by medically qualified bodies. As recently as 2010, Quebec’s Human Rights Commission concluded an exhaustive investigation of this biased attitude by revealing that in Quebec, doctors who come from abroad, say from India or England, face mean-spirited “systematic discrimination”. But here’s the less known fact: doctors from France are accepted. In fact such doctors are actually and actively recruited, even helped financially to settle in a Quebec practice. (How generous of Quebec –if you`re from France.) Add to this discriminatory attitude, the envisioned secular charter, banning the hijab, the kippa and other faith garments, and the province will deny itself hundreds of physicians it sorely needs. (To his credit, the current Minister of Health, a former Dean of Medicine at a Quebec university, argued that only universities not politicians are qualified to decide the validity of a medical doctor’s credentials. He was bypassed. 

     It’s a touch painful to point out that this ingrained bias seems to be most prevalent among the francophone community. Obviously, subtle or flagrant prejudice exists here or there in all cultures, but no province other than Quebec is poised to condone a policy that is so transparently prejudicial. It’s natural therefore to wonder if, in subtle ways, this bias is for whatever reason, culturally rooted in the Quebec French society. Consider therefore a report, made in early November, by one of the most credible and even handed media organizations, National Public Radio (NPR.)  

It opened its commentary on Quebec’s proposed charter by pointing out that, in its words, “a similar debate played out in France nearly a decade ago and has now travelled across the Atlantic to the French speaking Canadian province.”  It noted that the Quebec government’s proposal parallels that of France: “The attempt to pass the legislation follows France’s 2004 ban on religious symbols in public schools…. That measure was criticized around the world with Human Rights Watch saying it violated religious freedom.” Naturally there’s hope that the percentage of Quebec citizens opposing the charter will grow to such numbers that Ms. Marois and her colleagues will shelve a proposal so vividly aimed at people open about their faith and  practice. Perhaps Quebec citizens might take seriously one of their own, a man now emerging in our federal government as one of its most effective parliamentarians: Thomas Mulcair, Leader of the NDP. “I am a Quebecer,” he said recently, “and I know Quebec values are values of inclusion and openness. Pauline Marois knows this is never going to pass.”  All Canadians should hope he’s right and she will do the right thing and shelve this divisive charter. 

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