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Quebec’s incoming provincial government, led by the nationalist Coalition Avenir Québec, has announced plans to outlaw the wearing of religious symbols by public workers.
Quebec’s incoming provincial government, led by the nationalist Coalition Avenir Québec, has announced plans to outlaw the wearing of religious symbols by public workers. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA
Quebec’s incoming provincial government, led by the nationalist Coalition Avenir Québec, has announced plans to outlaw the wearing of religious symbols by public workers. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

'It’s part of who I am': proposed Quebec law could push hijab-wearers out of jobs

This article is more than 5 years old

The incoming provincial government wants to outlaw wearing of religious symbols by government workers

As an elementary school teacher in Montreal, Maha Kassef should be in high demand: the city is in the midst of a teacher shortage, resulting in overflowing classrooms and classes without teachers.

Yet because she wears a hijab, Kassef, 35, might soon be out of a job. The incoming provincial government, led by the nationalist Coalition Avenir Québec party, has announced plans to outlaw the wearing of religious symbols by many public employees – including teachers.

The new government, which will officially be sworn in 18 October after a historic election victory this month, argues that “secularism law” is necessary to preserve Quebec’s culture and historic church-state divide.

The proposed law will have a transition period, during which the affected can move to “non-authority” positions. After this, those who keep wearing religious articles “will have made the choice to no longer have a job if they wish to continue wearing a religious symbol”, said CAQ elected representative Geneviève Guilbault.

A CAQ representative refused several interview requests, saying its government was “still in transition”.

For Kassef, who moved to Quebec from Kuwait when she was two, removing her hijab is out of the question.

“It’s part of who I am,” said Kassef. “If they tell me to remove it, I guess they’ll have to manage that many more little crazy people in the classroom on their own. The school system is already stressed. Do you think this will help kids have a quality education?”

CAQ leader François Legault barely mentioned the new law during the recent election campaign, focusing instead on reducing the number of immigrants Quebec would take in by 20% – a promise which won him the praise of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

He also proposed kicking out those remaining who fail French and values tests after three years of residency in the province.

Yet Legault is hardly the first politician to crack down on religious minorities in Quebec, where the debate over immigration and identity has simmered for well over a decade.

It is further complicated by French, the province’s dominant language, the survival of which remains an enduring preoccupation. Successive nationalist politicians have alleged that immigration will undermine the language and Québécois culture.But a 2016 report from the province’s French language authority noted use of French in the workplace among non-native speakers has actually increased over the last 20 years.

But over the past decade Quebec has struggled to reconcile its historical identity with the realities of a multicultural Canada.

A government commission in 2008 recommended that judges, police, prison guards and anyone else with coercive powers shouldn’t wear religious symbols “for the appearance of impartiality”.

Five years later, the separatist Parti Québécois attempted – and ultimately failed – to pass the so-called “Quebec values charter”, which would have banned all public servants from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols.

But the episode led to “an increase in intolerance, violence and racism, particularly against veiled Muslim women”, according to the province’s federation of women’s shelters. (Quebec’s Muslims number about 1.5% of Quebec’s 8.2 million people.)

Philosopher Charles Taylor, who cochaired the 2008 government commission, said the protracted debate over religious minorities has led to a “tearing” of Quebec society.

Taylor changed his stance on the wearing of religious garb following the 2017 shooting at a Quebec City mosque, in which a gunman killed six and injured 19 worshippers in a targeted attack on Muslims.

“It’s not a simple cause and effect, but these debates create a climate in which unhinged people will take up this issue,” Taylor says. “It’s not always shootings or violence of course – but it creates a terrible climate for these people.”

Kassef fears this climate will return to Quebec when the CAQ introduces its secularism law, which the CAQ has signaled as a priority. “Anytime this talk starts up, people who are on the racist side start coming out of the woodwork. It’s as if we’re normalizing these intolerant tendencies,” she said.

There are apparent limits to the CAQ’s secularism.

The party announced that it had no plans to remove a gold crucifix from Quebec’s National Assembly, placed there in 1936 to symbolize the connection between the state and the then-dominant Catholic church.

“I don’t see it as [the crucifix] a religious sign,” said the premier-designate François Legault. “I see that as part of history, being part of our values.”

This article was corrected on 18 October 2018. An earlier version said that all public employees would be affected by the ban, but this is not the case.

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