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Suppose you are a woman living in Quebec who wears a hijab. Would you feel safe at this weekend’s nationalist holiday celebrations, a week after the legislature passed a law implying that people like you can’t be trusted?

Premier François Legault said that if his Coalition Avenir Québec government didn’t pass Bill 21 before summer, Quebec’s “social cohesion” would be threatened.

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The social fabric was already badly torn, however, by the Islamophobia legitimized by the legislation. Women wearing veils associated with Islam were reported to have been harassed in public, the objects of hostile stares and remarks, discriminated against in workplaces and public services, spat upon, their veils torn off.

The premier, whose moral leadership is as weak as his poll numbers are strong, said nothing about this. Only when an incident outside the Quebec City mosque where six worshippers were killed two years ago led to an arrest was he prompted to draw a line, finally, calling that incident “clearly unacceptable.”