MONTREAL — Ignoring a union-sponsored demonstration here Nov. 29 that drew 50,000 people — unionists, students, community group members, doctors and others protesting a series of laws either adopted or proposed by the Coalition for the Future of Quebec (CAQ) government of Premier Francois Legault — the Quebec government has introduced another attack on democratic freedoms, Bill 9.
As hearings by the Quebec government were held, several unions, democratic rights groups and others denounced it. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association called it “another assault on religious freedoms, equality, and basic human dignity.”
The proposed law is the third brought in by the Legault government under the false pretext of “defending secularism.” Each imposes legal restrictions that would deepen divisions among working people along religious, language and immigration lines, in order to weaken our ability to organize to defend our class interests.
Law 21, the first of these laws, was passed in 2019, banning many public sector workers in government, education and health care from wearing any religious clothing or symbols at work, such as Muslim women wearing head scarves, Jewish men wearing kippahs (skull caps), or Sikhs wearing turbans. Thousands marched to protest the law.
Next, Law 94 extended the ban on wearing religious clothing to all school support staff and volunteers, including janitors, secretaries and cafeteria workers, as well as parents picking up their children from school.
The new Bill 9 would extend these discriminatory restrictions to day care centers, private schools, French-language classes and immigration proceedings. It could prevent parents wearing a head scarf or any other religious symbols from attending a parent-teacher meeting. It bans all group prayers in public places if they don’t have a government permit. That could include any outdoor religious services.
Asked if children in schools would still be allowed to have Christmas or Hanukkah parties, Jean-Francois Roberge, the minister responsible for “secularism,” said that would depend on whether they would involve “the transmission of faith or religious manifestations.”
The government also plans to phase out funding for most private religious schools over the next three years, while continuing to subsidize nonreligious private schools.
The government has attempted to ensure these attacks on the right to worship, which are supposedly guaranteed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, can’t be challenged in court by invoking the charter’s “notwithstanding clause.” That anti-democratic, anti-working-class clause says that “notwithstanding” all the rights included in the charter, they can be suspended by the federal or any provincial government in Canada with the stroke of a pen.
Quebec gov’t attacks challenged
Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a strong challenge to the law by dozens of groups, led by Canadian Civil Liberties Association, National Council of Canadian Muslims, the Autonomous Federation of Teachers (FAE), English Montreal School Board and the World Sikh Organization. Other interveners in the case include the Canadian Labour Congress, Public Service Alliance of Canada and the Quebec League of Rights and Freedom.
“Bill 21 is a discriminatory law that violates the fundamental rights and freedoms of Quebecers,” Canadian Civil Liberties Association leader Harini Sivalingam told the media. “To make things worse, when passing Bill 21, the government of Quebec used the notwithstanding clause to override important charter protections such as religious freedoms and equality rights.”
Melanie Hubert, president of the teachers union, explained that unions need to “defend the rights” of all workers in the schools, not only their “right to freedom of religion, but above all, the right to equality.”
The Canadian Labour Congress issued a statement saying that Canada’s unions “stand in solidarity with and fight for the human rights of all workers” affected by Bill 21. “Workers should not have to make the choice between working in the professions of their choice and practicing their faith.”
At the Nov. 29 Montreal demonstration, Nawal Chi, a unionist and school secretary in the Montreal school board, held a sign reading, “The woman wearing a headscarf is a human being capable of deciding what to put on her own body. No to Law 94 and to Law 21. My veil, my choice, my dignity, my freedom of dress.”
“I am a mom with three children,” Chi told the Militant. “This is about human values, not ‘Quebec’ values. No child has ever asked me at school why I wear a headscarf. They see me as someone who is there to protect them. I’m here so my union will defend me.”
“Attacks like this, on fundamental rights the working class needs aren’t taking place only in Quebec,” Joe Young, the Communist League candidate in the Quebec provincial elections, told the Militant. “They’re being spearheaded by the federal government in Ottawa. Since its illegal use of the Emergencies Act to crush the trucker-led Freedom Convoy in 2022, Ottawa has moved to rule illegal strikes called by every single union under its jurisdiction in the past year and a half.
“It’s part of an offensive by the bosses and their governments to block working-class and union resistance as the capitalist economic and social crisis facing working people deepens. This is especially true as the rulers’ rivalries and drive toward new and deadlier wars grow.
“Opposing the rulers’ attempts to divide us, as the CAQ’s laws aim to do, is essential to build the unity needed to defeat their attacks,” Young said.