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The town of Hampstead has cancelled a special council meeting scheduled for Monday to condemn Bill 21.

“In light of the media storm surrounding Mayor Steinberg’s remarks on Bill 21, and since the Town Council wants all arguments against this Bill heard and debated without unnecessary distractions, Mayor Steinberg has decided to cancel the Special Council meeting on April 15,” the municipality announced in a communiqué posted Friday morning.

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“The town will present a resolution against Bill 21 at a later date in a calmer atmosphere.”

The announcement comes one day after Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante added her voice to a growing chorus of political condemnation targeting Steinberg’s decision to liken Bill 21 — which would ban the wearing of religious symbols by public servants in positions of authority — to “ethnic cleansing, not with a gun, but with a law.”

The expression “ethnic cleansing” has most recently been linked to massacres and atrocities carried out in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.