To decide on Bill 21, the three judges of the Quebec Court of Appeal took fifteen months. This says a lot about the legal and political complexity of the case.
• Read also: The Law on State Secularism upheld by the Court of Appeal
Surprisingly for many, the Court confirmed the constitutional validity of the Law on State Secularism. Ditto for the use of the notwithstanding clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Court even refuses to exempt English-speaking school boards from Bill 21. In short, for François Legault, the victory is unequivocal. In free fall in the polls, he really needed it.
Faced with the rise of the Parti Québécois, a negative judgment from the Court of Appeal would have shown it powerless in the face of what is called in the country the “government of judges”.
For Quebec society, this is a relief. For or against Law 21, reopening this Pandora’s box would have polarized it again. François Legault hoped that his law would help him “turn the page” on the subject.
For now, his wish has been granted. It is nevertheless possible that the case will one day proceed to the Supreme Court. In which case, the federal government of the day would argue for imposing limits on the use of the notwithstanding clause.
A victory for Quebec and the other provinces
Because it is indeed in pan-Canadian terms that the Court of Appeal confirms the legitimacy of the notwithstanding clause. In doing so, it escapes the temptation to abuse its own power by inventing non-existent guidelines in the Canadian Charter of Rights on the use of the notwithstanding clause.
Result: unless we proceed to the Supreme Court and overturn the decision of the Court of Appeal, the sovereignty of parliaments in Canada is confirmed.
Moreover, it was the Western provinces which, in 1981 and for this same reason, demanded from Pierre Elliott Trudeau the addition of a derogation clause in the new Canadian charter of rights. A charter adopted, ironically, without the consent of Quebec.
That said, on the merits of things, Law 21, even if it achieves consensus here without of course achieving unanimity, seeks to resolve a problem that is, so to speak, non-existent.
A non-existent problem
Unlike Law 101 which, for well-documented reasons, aimed to strengthen the use of French over English, the wearing of religious symbols by a small minority of employees in certain functions did not in any way threaten the pillars of the temple. of Quebec identity.
However, from the saga of reasonable accommodations to the defunct PQ charter of values via the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, the legitimate debate on secularism has often been reduced to this single question.
There was, however, no “social crisis” caused by it. As proof, Law 21 imposes secularism with very variable geometry. In schools, it only applies to management and teachers from the public network hired after March 2019, and not to subsidized private schools.
Claiming that teachers are authority figures, it nevertheless assumes that wearing a religious symbol in class would expose children to a real risk of proselytism or religious indoctrination.
Which has never been documented. As proof, if the wearing of a religious symbol by a few teachers really risked indoctrinating students, why not have the law extended to subsidized private schools?
On the other hand, it is true that Law 21, much less radical than the defunct charter of values, has a consensus. It is also true that this debate belongs to all Quebecers, for or against this law. It is therefore to be hoped that this page will finally be turned. But who knows?