(Quebec) Quebec “will defend to the end” the Law on State Secularism that the English Montreal School Board (CSEM) is bringing before the Supreme Court. He asks Ottawa to “mind its own business,” while Justin Trudeau intends to intervene if the country’s highest court agrees to hear the case.
Unsurprisingly, on Wednesday evening, English-Montreal decided to bring before the Supreme Court the decision of the Court of Appeal rendered in February and confirming the validity of Bill 21.
Adopted in 2019, this law prohibits the wearing of religious symbols by teachers and state agents in positions of authority (police officers, judges, Crown prosecutors, for example). The National Assembly is currently studying a bill which aims to renew for another five years the exemption clause in the charters of rights shielding Law 21 against prosecution.
“We maintain our initial position according to which Bill 21 conflicts with our values and our mission and with those of all Quebecers as expressed in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms,” said the president. of the EMSB, Joe Ortona.
The ban on the wearing of religious symbols “prevents the EMSB from hiring teachers, including French teachers, in a context of teacher shortage. Most importantly, it sends a message of intolerance and exclusion to our students and their families.”
Justice Minister Simon Jolin-Barrette responded during a press scrum in parliament on Thursday. Law 21 is a “fundamental law”, and “we will always defend the secularism of the State. In Quebec, the State and religions are distinct,” he said.
He deplored that the EMSB has spent so far more than a million dollars to contest Bill 21. “There are questions to be asked when Quebecers’ public funds are used for laws that are validly adopted in the National Assembly,” he argued.
He also questions the “sources of funding”, recalling that “the federal government has certain programs which finance certain recourses”. A request from English-Montreal for funding from the Court Challenges Program (CCP) was accepted in 2020, but the school board then signaled that it would not touch the $125,000 in federal funds.
The EMSB maintains that it does not receive any federal funds. She says she draws from her “big surplus” to finance her appeal.
After the Court of Appeal’s decision in late February, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed that the federal government will intervene if the Supreme Court hears the case. “If and when the issue [se retrouvera] at the Supreme Court, we will intervene as the federal government to protect and support the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms,” he said. He is particularly against the preventive use of the exemption clause.
The Legault government asks him to abandon his intention. “I invite the federal government to mind its own business. This is a Quebec issue. This is a matter that was resolved at the National Assembly of Quebec,” argued Simon Jolin-Barrette, accusing Justin Trudeau of lacking “respect” towards Quebecers and the National Assembly. He continued with an oratory inspired by the words of Robert Bourassa after the failure of the Meech Lake agreement. “Quebec is and will be a society that is distinct, a society that will make its own choices,” he said.
“It is not the federal government that is going to impose on Quebecers how to live in matters of religion. We, in Quebec, made the historic choice to separate the State and religions. If the federal government wants to bring religion into the state, we will fundamentally object to that. »