In a rare move, Canada’s highest court devoted four full days this week to hearing arguments about Quebec’s controversial ban on public servants wearing religious symbols at work.
In court, lawyers mainly debated Quebec’s use of the constitution’s notwithstanding clause to enact Bill 21, its so-called secularism law.
But public criticism has focused more on how the law limits jobs for Muslim women and others who wear visible religious symbols.
“[The law] does not foster state neutrality towards religion,” Harini Sivalingam from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association said in a press release before the hearing started.
“Instead, it excludes people, especially Muslim women, from working in the public sector in Quebec. Stripping people of their right to work because of their faith has no place in a democracy.”
But experts say Quebec’s religious symbols ban reflects broader differences between French and English cultures — both within Canada and abroad — about how governments and religion should interact.
‘The big picture’
In much of Canada, Quebec’s secularism law has been met with harsh criticism and consternation.
In 2019, when Quebec passed Bill 21, the Canada Human Rights Commission said it “runs counter to the fundamental principles of equality, dignity and respect.”
“It recklessly entrenches and legitimizes religious and racial intolerance — opening the door for others to do the same,” said Marie-Claude Landry, then-chief commissioner of the commission.
These reactions reflect fundamental differences between how English Canadians and French Canadians understand the separation of religion and state, says Jean-Christophe Jasmin, Quebec director at the Christian think tank Cardus.
One of the main ideas behind Quebec’s religious symbols ban is laicity, known as laïcité in French.
Broadly speaking, laicity refers to the way governments interact with religion, Jasmin says, although many understand it to mean state secularism.
Laicity is most often associated with France, which passed a law in 1905 separating the government from the Roman Catholic Church.
France has banned public servants from wearing religious symbols at work for decades.
It has also banned students from wearing religious symbols at public schools, and even banned parents from wearing religious symbols while accompanying their children on school outings. It has banned Muslim robes — the abaya for women and the qami for men — in schools, and banned face coverings in public places.
France is not alone in banning the wearing of religious symbols.
Austria, Belgium, Switzerland and Denmark also have bans on wearing religious symbols in some public spaces, particularly face coverings or headscarves worn by Muslim women. Denmark’s ban has been in place since 2018, but last year it announced plans to extend that ban to schools and universities.
“In North America, with a strong accent on individual freedoms, it might seem radical to ban a burqa in a university or CEGEP setting, but in the continental Europe, some countries go much further,” said Jasmin.
“Quebec laicity is not as weird when you look at the big picture in continental Europe.”
In French culture, the separation of religion and state is meant to keep religion from controlling the government, or to keep people from using religion for political purposes, Jasmin says. It stems from a history, in many French cultures, of the Catholic Church previously being very involved in government.
But in English cultures, this separation is understood as protecting religions, particularly religious minorities, from undue government influence.
“The fulcrum of the disagreement is that both francophones and anglophones consider church-state relationships from a different angle, with different worries,” he said.
“Canada could actually be the only place where both of these worries are balanced.”
A targeted group?
In recent decades, laws banning the wearing of certain religious symbols have been seen by many as a direct attack on Muslims, particularly Muslim women.
“Laicity has become more and more a way to regulate the presence of minority religions, and in particular Islam,” said Amelie Barras, a professor at York University in Toronto who is part of a team studying secularism laws worldwide.
Muslim students, especially girls, are particularly targeted by France’s most recent bans on wearing religious symbols at schools, she says.
These laws are less likely to affect Jewish students in France, who usually attend private schools. Christians, meanwhile, can easily cover cross necklaces with their clothes. Muslim face coverings, by contrast, cannot be hidden.
Internationally, laws about laicity change over time to respond to current cultural concerns, Barras says.
When Quebec passed Bill 21 in 2019, some said it was a compromise, while others warned it would lead to further bans, says Solange Lefebvre, a professor at the University of Montreal who studies the interaction between governments and religion.
“I think it was the beginning of more and more restrictions.”
Last year, Quebec introduced Bill 9, which proposes to ban daycare workers from wearing religious symbols and to remove prayer rooms in colleges and universities.
Yet, Quebec’s bans in Bill 21 do not extend to symbols associated with Quebec’s Catholic cultural heritage, such as crosses on buildings or streets named after saints, says Barras.
“[The law] couches Catholicism as being part of culture or heritage, therefore not being part of religion, and that therefore is not affected by those types of laws,” said Barras.
Unique heritage
In Quebec, many view secularism as part of the province’s distinct identity, says Barras.
“It’s also a way for the province of Quebec now to define itself as being very different than the rest of Canada,” she said.
The federal Bloc Quebecois has defended Quebec’s secularism law. The separatist party has insisted the law reflects Quebec’s unique cultural heritage.
“Statements equating the democratic choices of Quebeckers with a kind of intolerance that is inherent to the nation are themselves an expression of intolerance, the product of a cultural bias, that must be condemned,” the party said in a dissenting opinion to a committee report on combatting Islamophobia.
Lefebvre, of the University of Montreal, says even with laicity, governments still need to consider how citizens’ religions impact their social participation.
“The state cannot be blind and refuse to see that there are religions on its territory,” said Lefebvre. “You cannot purely ignore them.”
For his part, Jasmin does not expect the debate about laicity in Quebec to be resolved anytime soon, even after the Supreme Court releases its decision on the Bill 21 case later this year.
For him, the different views on Quebec’s law reflect the different French and English traditions that make up Canada.
“The debate weaves together so many of the cultural strings that make this country,” he said.
“We’ll see if we can make something out of it, like a beautiful fabric or a Gordian knot.”
Secularism is a minor human travesty. The bigger issue is that religion as a whole is the greatest hoax ever told. It’s all based on lies to control the masses. If you want to worship something, try the sun, our only life giver. Once we get over religion, we can believe in each other to make our species live a little longer before our extinction. Believe it. That’s coming too.
Succinctly put, Robert. I agree completely!