Vol. 78/No. 1      January 6, 2014

If adopted, the charter would ban Quebec’s 700,000 government workers from wearing “ostentatious” religious symbols like the Muslim hijab, Sikh turban, or Jewish kippah.

“We oppose all forms of intolerance and exclusion, in particular of women, the most vulnerable to discrimination on the job market,” says Bel Agir on its website. “We support all efforts against racism, islamophobia, anti-Semitism and xenophobia in general.”

Stéphane Gendron, ex-mayor of the small Quebec town of Huntingdon, currently a journalist and radio host, described conditions faced by the growing population of immigrants from Northwest Africa called Maghrebians. In Montreal, Arabic is now the third language after French and English.

“The rate of unemployment among Maghrebians here is 30 percent,” said Gendron. Alluding to the recent killing of a taxi driver from Algeria, he said that “taxi drivers with university diplomas won’t get job interviews if their first name is Mohamed.” He ended his speech by saying that he recommends his children go to Ontario, “where they won’t have to face laws like the charter.”

“We came here to stay,” said the following speaker, Lamine Foura, also a journalist and radio host, originally from Algeria. “We’re Quebecois,” he said to applause. “There is an economic crisis here. Instead of confronting this, the Quebec government is confronting imaginary problems.”

The vast majority of participants at the rally were Muslim working people.

Several polls indicate that a majority of Quebecois support the charter. But a majority also oppose firing someone for wearing a hijab.

So far the only trade union federation that has taken a clear stand against the charter is the Independent Federation of Teachers (FAE), with 32,000 members, mostly at primary and secondary schools in the Montreal area.

Three other government unions support the charter. As soon as Interprofessional Federation of the Health of Quebec (FIQ), which organizes 62,000 mostly in health care, announced its support for the charter, two big FIQ locals at the two university hospitals in Montreal took an opposite stand. “I have members who wear religious signs, and I don’t want to undermine their rights,” Line Larocque, president of one of the two locals told La Presse. “That’s why we oppose the position taken by the FIQ,” said .

The Confederation of National Trade Unions (CSN), with 300,000 members, including two-thirds in the public sector, opposes the ban on religious signs for most public sector workers, but supports it in primary and secondary schools, and in day care centers, “out of concerns for children, a captive audience.”

Rayhan El Kares, a biology professor in a community college in Montreal, proposed that his union local, which is affiliated with the CSN, organize a discussion on the charter. The proposal was accepted. The discussion took place during a regular union meeting, with 21 members present. “I was the only Muslim,” El Kares told the Militant. “The discussion was hot. But in the end 19 professors voted for a resolution condemning the charter’s prohibition on wearing religious signs, two voted for the charter.”  
 
 
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