The Minister of Justice, Simon Jolin-Barrette, questions the use of public funds by the English Montreal School Board to challenge the State Secularism Act in the Supreme Court. In Ottawa, which intends to support groups opposed to the law, he issues a warning: “Mind your own business.”
“We have a consensual law in Quebec which was validated by three judges of the Quebec Court of Appeal, and the Quebec government will defend it to the end,” thundered the minister, Thursday morning, after learning that The English Montreal School Board (EMSB) would appeal the judgment of the Quebec Court of Appeal on “Bill 21”.
In the press scrum, a few moments before question period, the CAQ elected official said he was perplexed that the CSEM, a public organization, was continuing its fight in court. “There is always a question regarding the use of public funds, as is also the case with the challenge to Law 96 […] on the official language of the municipalities of Quebec,” he said.
“The question is also the sources of financing,” he added. Asked to clarify his thoughts on this subject, he indicated that “the federal government has certain programs which finance certain recourses”.
During its challenge to the law in 2020, the EMSB received funding from the Court Challenges Program (CCP), a federally funded program of the University of Ottawa. She ultimately decided not to use these funds.
“Mind your own business”
Mr. Jolin-Barrette deplores, however, that the federal government is interfering in the matter of the law on religious neutrality, by promising for example to support groups, such as the CSEM, which will appeal the decision of the court of second instance .
“I invite the federal government to mind its own business. This is a Quebec issue. This is a matter that was settled in the National Assembly of Quebec, and the government of [Justin] Trudeau should have more respect for Quebecers,” he insisted on Thursday.
The CAQ minister urges the federal government to respect “the choices of Quebec society.” “It is not the federal government that is going to impose on Quebecers how to live in matters of religion,” he said.
In February, the Quebec Court of Appeal rendered a judgment which upheld the law on religious neutrality in its entirety. The decision also reversed that of the Superior Court of Quebec, which ruled in 2021 that teachers in English-speaking school boards did not have the obligation to comply with the ban on the wearing of religious symbols in class.
The EMSB has officially announced its intentions to ask the Supreme Court of Canada for a review of this judgment. “Bill 21 goes against our values and our mission, and those of all Quebecers, expressed in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms,” said its president, Joe. Ortona, Wednesday.