The party is most famous for advocating that Quebec become an independent party. But that has lost appeal in recent years, and the party is now looking for other ways to define its staunch Quebec nationalism.
It has done that by saying it is the party of secularism. Under its proposal, public servants would be banned from wearing turbans, kippahs and head-scarves, not to mention burqas, in the workplace under a Parti Québecois (PQ) government. But the crucifix would still be allowed in the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic province, as long as it’s not too ostentatious.
The current Liberal Party government has proposed banning the burqa and other full-body veils from government offices. But the PQ is going much further.
The PQ is hoping to form the next government after the September 4 provincial election. It sought to expand on its plan to protect Quebec values during a campaign rally last Tuesday.
“We don’t have to apologize for whom we are,” said PQ leader Pauline Marois. She said a so-called “charter of secularism” would be adopted as soon as the PQ comes to power. “We are one of the most tolerant and open people on the planet, but we want our values, such as equality between the sexes, respected by everyone.”
At first, the charter appeared to ban just the Islamic headscarf. “Pretty scarves that women sometimes wear in their hair” would be acceptable, said PQ official Eric Gamache. It wasn’t clear how the law would distinguish between a “pretty scarf” and a “religious scarf.” If the scarf is banned for Muslims but not Christians, it would run afoul of religious discrimination laws.
After being pushed on what exactly would be allowed, Gamache admitted the list wasn’t quite drawn up yet, but a Sikh turban would not make the grade, while a Jewish kippah probably would, since it’s not that “ostentatious.”
A short time later, he advised that, in fact, even the kippah, the skullcap worn by Jewish men also known as a yarmulke, would be forbidden.
“The crucifix could be allowed, as long as it was discreet,” he said, without defining discreet. “But if it’s too big….”
Such a rule would never pass legal muster in Canada, said McGill University law professor François Crépeau, because it violates both the Quebec and Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
“Freedom of expression includes expressing your religion as long as it doesn’t infringe on the rights of others” or matters of public interest, he said. “I’ve never seen a kippah, turban or any clothing to do with religion infringing on other’s rights.”
Pearl Eliadis, a human rights lawyer who teaches at McGill, said the proposed Quebec charter of secularism is nothing more than a populist vote-getting tactic.
“It was a bald-faced bid to occupy the nationalistic territory abandoned by the right-wing Action démocratique du Québec” party, which is now a minor party, she said. “It creates hierarchies of rights, primacy for Quebec heritage, and a solemn assertion of the separation of state and religion. This last is proposed for a National Assembly [the name of the provincial legislature] that has unanimously decided to retain the cross, and in a province where several municipalities start their meetings with a Christian prayer.”
In the shadow of a Roman Catholic Church, Marois introduced Djemila Benhabib, the PQ candidate for the National Assembly for the city of Trois-Rivières—an immigrant from Algeria who sees the headscarf as a symbol of the oppression of women. Benhabib would also like to see the crucifix dismissed from the National Assembly, contrary to what her party leader wants.
“For us, women’s rights aren’t negotiable,” said Benhabib, who has written widely against Islam. “We want equality for all women and all men, no matter what their origin.”
Such rights are already enshrined in the national Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Eliadis said. But many critics of the full-body veil in the West assert that women are forced by men to wear as a form of submission to men. Marois is now expanding that interpretation to cover the headscarf as well.
If “forced” to wear the veil, women are protected in Quebec under the Criminal Code, noted Crépeau, and if they choose to wear a headscarf, it’s a matter of freedom of religious expression.
He said no right to secularism exists in Canada, so he called it outrageous to claim that if people proclaim their religion too vigorously, they are infringing on Quebecers’ secularism.
Many voters in the Trois Rivieres region—95 per cent of whom were born in Quebec—say they don’t identify with Benhabib and won’t vote for her. But Marois defends the party’s choice, despite the risk of losing the riding, as Canadians call an electoral constituency, which is now held by the Liberals.