The new government in the Canadian province of Quebec will prohibit all religious coverings, including turbans and niqabs, from elementary schools, in a move that adds restrictions to those already in existence. The impact will mostly be on young Sikh, Muslim and Jewish children.
The vast majority of people will understand that a religious symbol can be removed. “Once again, we’re faced with a solution in search of a problem.
“We were elected on this base, and it’s on this base that we are going to work,” the province’s education minister Joël Arseneau said, according to the outlet Montreal Gazette. In September, Paul St-Pierre Plamondon, now the province’s Premier, said, “It’s accepted that when you send your child to school, there are rules. And this time, the Quebec government is targeting children, sending a message of exclusion and rejection of difference to every elementary school student,” McNicoll said.
That banned religious practice in public universities, private institutions subsidised by the government, even child car centres, the Gazette reported at the time. It builds on further restrictions enacted in April this under the previous Coalition Avenir Québecor (CAQ) government. It also prohibits collective religious practices on roads or in parks. The so-called secularism law prohibited certain categories of public servants from displaying a visible symbol of faith like the Sikh turban or a Muslim woman’s hijab.
The process of barring religious attire in public spaces began in 2019 under the CAQ government.
In a statement, Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, Quebec spokesperson and Director of Fundamental Freedoms at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), said Quebec had “progressively expanded restrictions on religious expression” after it “first banned certain public sector employees” then extended it to “staff at public schools, publicly funded private schools, and public or publicly funded daycare centres.”
