The 50 recommendations of an independent Committee to Quebec, including the extension of the prohibition of religious symbols of the province of subsidized nurseries and that demand that people discover their faces when receiving public services, are attracting criticism from some community leaders.
“We really have to ask some serious questions about the legitimacy of this report,” said Stephen Brown, president of the National Council of Canadian Muslims.
He said that the almost 300 -page report published on Tuesday that offers recommendations to strengthen the secularism in Quebec does not suggest that the government “proceed in the neutrality spectrum.”
“Neutrality is the absence of an opinion. In this case, what we are really seeing are the recommendations for the government to eliminate the rights of religious people and impose uniformity,” he said.
The committee is co -chaired by lawyers Guillaume Rousseau and Christian Fight. Each defended Quebec secularism law, bill 21, in court while representing groups that promote secularism in Quebec.
The report followed a five-month review announced in March by the Secularism Minister Jean-François Roberge and responds to the concerns, including an earlier report from the government that highlights the alleged toxic behavior and religious favoritism in a primary school in Montreal.
It is not clear how the Legault government plans to implement the recommendations, but a proposal is attracting particular attention: prohibit the use of religious symbols in subsidized nurseries.
‘We believe that our rights are raped’
The committee The employees have the right to work in secular institutions and children must protect themselves from religious pressures.
But the Montreal chapter of the Canadian Muslim Women’s Council is strongly criticizing the report. His president, Farida Mohamed, said she feels like a direct attack against Muslim women “because many of the care workers are actually Muslim women who are veiled.”
She said the Muslim community is being attacked and discriminated against, especially women.
“We believe that our rights are violated. The economic freedom of Muslim women is violated,” he said.
Anne Dionne is the second vice president of the Centrale des Syndes Du Québec (CSQ), which represents nursery, education and union federations of medical care.
She said it remains to be seen if any of these recommendations will be proposed as legislation, but there are already concerns about the impact on the nursery system when there is already personnel shortage.
She said that the first priority in day houses is the main learning and well -being of children, from zero to five years. There is already a secular education program, and educators must follow them parameters.
“And that is where we want to put our energy,” Dionne said. “And that is why we continue to say and continue to bring back, what will be the impact on the staff? Because we need staff. We need qualified personnel.”
She said children’s needs should be the first.
Expected constitutional challenges
Pearl Eliadis, human rights lawyer and associated professor at McGill University, said the recommendations represent a fundamental change proposed to Quebec’s legal and constitutional framework.
“And that includes something that has not been in the media very much, but the government is actually proposing a unilateral modification of the Canadian Constitution, the 1867 Constitution, as creating the foundations for building a structure that really overtholes the entire public and quasi-public religion in Quebec,” said Montreal’s in CBC Montreal’s in CBC Daybreak Wednesday.
Expanding the prohibition of religious to subsidized symbol Nursery It is a logical progression, Eliadis saying, But jurisprudence suggests that these legislative prohibitions would not survive without the clause despite.
She described this legislation as “clear violations” of the Canadian Constitution and the Charter of Quebec.
The Committee also recommends eliminating public financing from religious private schools and says that universities should be able to reject requests for prayer rooms for students.
Eliadis said that there is an incoherence in the financing of minority religious schools while maintaining a non -religious school system throughout the province, but financing allows Quebec for a certain control over the curriculum.
He warned that extracting funds could generate concerns about isolating these schools and potentially “more radicalization, which this same proposal seeks to end.”
Eliadis said that some of the committee’s recommendations make sense youas those in ensuring that medical services such as abortion are protected regardless of the objection of some groups.
“I think the report is the right to raise concerns about religious extremism in the United States,” he said, but, he added, the general framework is “so extreme” that it could be used to oppress religious minorities.
She said approximately 75 percent of the recommendations could Being subject to immediate constitutional challenges, but given the past, it is very likely that the government relies on the clause despite.
