By Kevin Dougherty, Gazette Quebec Bureau
A Muslim woman wearing a niqab. Under Bill 94, women wearing the niqab will have to reveal their faces to be served in public institutions.
QUEBEC – Quebecers were asked Wednesday to put a new face forward – an uncovered one – as the Charest government announced guidelines on reasonable accommodation that ban the niqab, the Islamic face veil, while allowing the hijab, or head scarf.
Public employees, education and health workers will be required to have their faces uncovered under Bill 94, presented in the National Assembly Wednesday.
Quebec is also lifting the veil on people seeking government services – for example, those who show up looking for student loan information, or trying to cash in a winning lottery ticket at Loto-Québec, a government agency, or challenging a bill at Hydro-Québec.
Students from daycare all the way to university, as well as hospital patients and people consulting a CLSC nurse, must also show their faces.
“Today, the government has taken a determined step to clarify the issue of reasonable accommodation and to affirm Quebec values,” said Premier Jean Charest.
The premier said the ban on face veils would apply to all employees in the public sector, even if they have no contact with the public.
Conseil du statut de la femme president Christiane Pelchat, who wants a ban on religious symbols and would like Quebec to be a secular state, supports this limited measure as a first step.
“I urge the opposition to vote quickly for this,” she told reporters.
But Louise Beaudoin of the Parti Québécois was quick to reply that Bill 94 was “completely empty,” saying it relies on Quebec’s existing Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
Beaudoin said the PQ would propose amendments to the charter so it takes into account “the fundamental values of the Quebec nation, notably the equality of women and men, the primacy of French and the separation of the state and religion.”
The PQ proposal would also grandfather Quebec’s Christian past, designated its “historic heritage.”
The government is thought to be eager to adopt Bill 94 before the Assembly recesses in June, but the next step will be committee hearings. And the PQ opposition hopes to turn those hearings into a debate on its proposal to make Quebec an officially secular state.
Bill 94 is designed to defuse the controversy simmering in the province over religious face coverings since a woman wearing a niqab was expelled twice from French courses for immigrants after refusing to uncover her face.
The woman, Naema Ahmed, has filed a complaint with Quebec’s human rights commission, charging religious discrimination.
Bill 94 would also end the practice of a man or woman being allowed to ask for service by a public employee of the same sex for religious reasons, Pelchat said.
She said that she worked with the government in framing the bill and that the intent of Section 4, affirming gender equality and the religious neutrality of the state, is to end this type of concession.
“This is a bill to protect equality between women and men,” she said.
In the past, Pelchat has objected to Islamic women asking that a female photographer take their picture for medicare cards and Hasidic Jewish men who ask for male driving-test examiners.
Bill 94 says accommodations must be denied for reasons of “security, communication or identification.”
But it would not ban the hijab, kippa, turban or other other religious head coverings that leave the face visible.
Justice Minister Kathleen Weil, who presented Bill 94, said accommodations for religious differences “cease to be reasonable when they impose an excessive constraint on a department or (public) organization in terms of the costs incurred, its impact on the proper functioning of the organization or on the rights of other people.”
“In other words, when accommodation becomes unreasonable,” she said.
Weil called the approach “open secularism,” explaining it doesn’t “favour or disfavour one particular religion.”
“So religious signs, such as a cross around the neck of state employees, are allowed because they do not cast doubt on the neutrality of the service offered.”
Immigration Minister Yolande James added that Bill 94 “could not be more clear.”
“To work in the Quebec public service or to receive the services of the Quebec state, your face has to be uncovered,” James said.
The bill establishes guidelines for reasonable accommodation requests, she said, and is an expression of “interculturalism,” which she called the government’s philosophy to integrate newcomers.
The Bouchard-Taylor commission, which reported two years ago on the issue of reasonable accommodation, proposed “interculturalism” as a way to extend a hand to newcomers – asking them to accept Quebec’s values while remaining open to their differences.
“We need these talents,” James said. “Quebec society chose them for the potential we recognize in them, and they chose Quebec for all the possibilities it offers them to do well.
“We do, however, ask newcomers to respect the common values of Quebec,” James said, calling these values “the foundation of Quebec identity.”
Charest expressed surprise at the reaction outside Quebec to the explanation by James for expelling Ahmed from French classes for wearing a niqab.
“We want to see your face,” James said then, unleashing a torrent of editorials and commentaries condemning the niqab ban.
Charest said he hopes Bill 94 gets serious consideration, not the same “knee-jerk reactions,” adding that what he saw in some newspapers doesn’t reflect the reality of Quebec.
But he has no illusions Bill 94 will end the debate.
“If you have a charter of rights, as we do here and elsewhere in the world, there’s going to be case-by-case approaches,” he said.
“Our responsibility is to establish clearly the principles, which we are doing now. And then people are in a better position to make those decisions.”
Charest said he hopes Bill 94 will be a model for other jurisdictions to follow, calling it “common sense.”