Quebec premier says proposed law is necessary to separate church and state but educators say they won’t be cowed

Montreal’s Westmount high school last made headlines as the alma mater of the US senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

It now has another distinction: the first Quebec school to publicly commit to ignoring the province’s proposed secularism law, which would ban primary and secondary school teachers, among certain other provincial government employees, from wearing religious symbols.

Teachers, students and parents recently gathered on the school steps in protest against Bill 21, which the government introduced in Quebec’s national assembly last week. As well as teachers, all employees in positions of authority – including judges, public prosecutors, prison guards, police and liquor inspectors – will be prohibited from wearing religious symbols, including the Star of David, the cross or the hijab.

“It would change the culture at the school. I tell my students that they can do anything if they try. Now I’d have to tell some students that they can’t do everything that everyone else can do,” said Arielle Shiller, 28, a physical education teacher at the school.

At the protest, Shiller wore a Star of David necklace and a kippa. “I’m not going to change, and I don’t think my work will make me,” she said.

Shiller is correct in her assertion. Last week, before the government had even introduced the legislation, the English Montreal school board announced it would not enforce any law barring the wearing of religious symbols in its 78 primary, secondary and adult education schools, Westmount High included.

“We can never be afraid of saying and doing what is right, even if there’s going to be consequences,” said the EMSB vice-chairman Joe Ortona. “This bill sends the message that it’s OK to discriminate.”

Quebec’s premier, François Legault, has argued that the proposed law – which also compels those giving or receiving a government service to do so with their faces uncovered – is necessary to foster the “separation of church from the state”. It allows for a grandfather clause for those existing employees wearing religious symbols, though they would lose the right to do so should they be promoted, demoted or fired.

But in an apparent admission that law would violate freedom of religion, guaranteed under both the Quebec and Canadian charter of rights, Legault’s government also said it would invoke the “notwithstanding clause”, a legal instrument that it allows it to temporarily bypass certain charter rights.

Legault has said his government would remove the crucifix from the national assembly should the law pass – a move widely seen as a way to placate critics who see such an overt sign of religiosity as hypocritical in the face of state-sponsored secularism.

“This wrongheaded, stupid bill is clearly discriminatory on the basis of religion, no matter what they say,” says Nuzhat Jafri, executive director of the Canadian Council of Muslim Women. “If you wear a hijab and you are studying to be a teacher, what does your future look like?”

Bill 21 marks the fourth time in nine years that various Quebec governments have tabled comprehensive secularism legislation. The first two never made it into law.

A Quebec court suspended many of the provisions of the third, passed in 2017 under the previous Liberal government, as they would have caused “irreparable harm” to “Muslim women”.

As in the past, opposition to the legislation has been fiercest in Montreal, home to the lion’s share of the minority communities and immigrants in the province. Montreal’s mayor, Valérie Plante, deemed the law a “slippery slope” that “contravenes certain fundamental principles the Quebec and Canadian charters of rights”.

The Fédération autonome de l’enseignement, the Montreal-based union federation representing more than 43,000 teachers in the province, called Bill 21 “a historic step backwards for fundamental rights”. Fourteen Montreal-area suburbs, who have their own city councils, have already said they won’t apply the law should it pass into law as written.

How the government plans to deal with such obstinacy remains an open question. Quebec’s justice minister, Geneviève Guilbault, said “people will notify the police” should the law not be enforced.

Legault, who quickly rebuffed his minister, said people who insist on wearing religious symbols to work simply shouldn’t apply in the first place. “There are other jobs available,” Legault told reporters.