There are currently 30,000 teachers in Quebec without a license.1, given the lack of staff. Their status is technically illegal. They are “tolerated”, so to speak, by special authorization.
But a woman come to class with a scarf, that, oh my, the law wouldn’t allow it.
Fatemeh Anvari, who was already the second substitute in a third year class, was therefore transferred to administrative tasks in her school in Chelsea. It will take care, you imagine, of the files of inclusion.
The teacher is appreciated. The parents took up their cause for her. But Law 21 is the law. Jagmeet Singh cannot teach high school chemistry in Quebec. A practicing Jew would also be banned from a class if he wore the kippah.
This is the law. And since it contains a non-charter provision, the courts cannot intervene to invalidate it in whole or in part.
Neither the Court of Appeal nor the Supreme Court will be able to do anything about it, unless they rewrite the Constitution, which allows this exemption – which would be scandalous. I would even add that the application exception for the English-language school board of Montreal, permitted by the judgment of the Superior Court, should disappear for the same reason of consistency.
But three things strike me in the sad exclusion – oh so legal – of Mr.me Anvari.
First, the uselessness of the law. Second, the victory of the Caquista political discourse. And third, but it’s a bit the same thing, the political awkwardness of the opposition.
It is useful to go back a little bit. Bill 21 is the politicized by-product of the Bouchard-Taylor commission on reasonable accommodation in Quebec. A commission which, after having toured the territory and the question, concluded that Quebec did not have a serious problem of living together. Intercultural relations are generally harmonious. It recommended, however, that religious symbols be banned for those exercising the “coercive” power of the state – police, prosecutors, judges.
The CAQ government went further and included public school teachers.
Even admitting that this policy was valid, we could ask ourselves: how many teachers are we talking about? From 5000, 500, 5?
The law has lived for two years. And this is the first reported case. She is a substitute teacher. We are going to say, bureaucratically speaking, what, 0.5?
Yes, other people already in post wore religious symbols. How many ? The government never established it. As he has never established that the wearing of a religious symbol for an individual was a form of proselytism or of attempted indoctrination or religious persuasion. Or that it posed a problem other than ideological or perception.
It’s curious, the people who are in direct contact with Mr.me Anvari come to her defense, are sad to see her removed from her job and are not tempted to convert to Islam …
Which leads me to the second point: the victory of the “secular” discourse, as they say in France.
The Law on the secularism of the State did not make Quebec more secular. He already was. Legally. Politically. Socially. That is to say, the state does not favor any religion, operates separately from any religious power, in short, is religiously “neutral”.
The genius of the Legault government, so to speak, is to have appropriated secularism, to have redefined it. There are now, in this new world, “pro-secularism” and others.
However, said Bouchard-Taylor, in an open society, the state is no less secular because a few employees display a religious symbol. We could even say that by indirectly targeting certain religions – and primarily Islam – this new secularism is the opposite of neutrality.
But whatever. What is interesting to observe is that with the support of conservative sovereignists, this French version of neo-secularism, or of catho-secularism, made a fortune in Quebec.
To be opposed to Law 21 is therefore now to be against “secularism”; and as the Legault government, helped by the sovereignist right, made it a national identity issue, to be against this definition of secularism is to be against “the Quebec nation”.
Politically, it is a masterstroke.
It is nonetheless a fallacy.
This extraordinary political success results in the political embarrassment of opponents and critics. Political or media. The cleavage is major.
It is now only lip service that the federal political parties are expressing their reservations, let alone their radical opposition to these measures.
It is true – and this is another stroke of the political masterpiece of the Caquist discourse – that the danger is great of finding oneself in the camp of the “Quebec bashers” outside Quebec as soon as this law is criticized. These “detesters” of Quebec are jubilant, too happy to denounce our alleged racism with, finally, as an official “proof”. Who wants to be in this hateful wagon?
We therefore see all these politicians, in Ottawa as in Quebec, advancing painfully like in a poorly lit henhouse, for fear of crushing an egg. We talk about the sadness of the situation. But we all can’t wait to change the subject.
This perfectly illustrates that a Parliament, whose job is to be elected, and therefore popular, will never be enough to protect the rights of minorities.
1. The official figures speak of 2000 to 4000, but The Journal of Montreal revealed this fall that 26,000 part-time teachers were to be added to this number.