Category Archives: Canada

While Quebec plans ban, Edmonton adopts new hijab uniform for police officers

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Edmonton police hijabEdmonton Police Services has designed and approved a new hijab female police officers can wear as part of their uniform.

A hijab tailor worked with the police tactics training unit, as well as the police equity, diversity and human rights team, to design a head scarf that covers the head and neck of an officer without covering the face.

“After rigorous testing, it was determined that the head scarf did not pose any risk to the officer wearing it, or reduce officer effectiveness, nor interfere with police duties or public interactions,” reads a statement from Edmonton Police Services. Changes to the uniform policy for police have been approved by various police committees and people in the Muslim community.

“EPS respects a Muslim woman’s choice to wear the head scarf,” the statement reads. “The Edmonton Police Service continues to change with the times, as have a number of police, justice and military organizations in western nations that have already modified their uniforms to accommodate the hijab.”

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Quebec premier who wants to ban hijab once held a different view

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Past remarks promoting diversity in Quebec’s schools have come back to annoy Premier Pauline Marois as her government tries to pass legislation forbidding the display of overt religious symbols in the public service. But the premier says there’s no contradiction between what she says now and what she said then.

Opposition Liberals raised a 1998 policy on school integration that was signed by Marois when she was the provincial education minister. In it, she encourages the “visibility” of religious diversity “by school personnel.” She goes on to note in the 40-page document, which was co-signed by then-immigration minister Andre Boisclair, that the province’s “common values” include “openness to diversity in ethnocultural, linguistic and religious matters.”

“The credibility of the discussion over the openness of ethnocultural and religious diversity is supported in good part by the visibility of this diversity among school staff,” the document says. The document also states that “the mere wearing of the hijab cannot be prohibited in Quebec schools” because it does not break any laws or the Canadian or Quebec charters of rights.

Under the values charter proposed by Marois’ government, religious headwear such as hijabs would be banned in schools. The charter, which still has to be passed by the provincial legislature, would ban public sector employees from wearing any obvious religious objects or clothing.

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Quebec federation of nurses’ unions backs repressive ‘charter of values’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

FIQThe federation of Quebec nurses’ unions (FIQ) says it will support the province’s proposed secular charter, if it’s passed.

The federation, made up of 60 unions representing nurses and other health-care professionals, based its support on the results of a telephone survey it conducted with its members. “Our responsibility was to see what they were thinking about it, and you see the result today that a very high majority is supporting the charter,” said Michèle Boisclair, vice-president at the FIQ.

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Signs of revolt mount as French universities reject secular charter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Université de MontréalQuebec’s largest university is panning the province’s secular charter as a useless measure, adding to signs of a growing revolt against the Parti Québécois’s controversial bill.

The French-language University of Montreal is challenging the very basis of the government’s argument for its legislation. When the minister responsible for the charter, Bernard Drainville, introduced it in September, he said it was meant to address a “crisis” over religious accommodations that had festered for years and created tensions in Quebec.

The U of M searched its human-resources files going back 20 years and found no incidents whatsoever involving conflicts over religious accommodations. Whatever minor incidents occurred were quickly settled by applying the university’s internal rules, a spokesman said.

The university decided at a meeting of faculty, student representatives and administrators on Monday that the government’s legislation serves no purpose.

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Ontario police make arrests in post 9/11 hate crimes

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Hamilton, Ont., Police have arrested three men for alleged hate crimes committed in the days after 9/11.

On Sept. 15, 2001, the large front window of the Hamilton Mountain Mosque was damaged and the entire interior of the Hindu Samaj Temple was gutted in an arson.

Police said the case will be presented as a hate crime, given that the alleged offences took place only four days after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the U.S.

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Quebec profs don hijab in Muslim solidarity

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Showing solidarity to the Muslim minority, two renowned Montreal professors have donned hijab in a protest against the proposed ban on religious symbols in the Parti Québécois’ secular charter.

“I wear it as a kind of sign of solidarity,” Concordia University history professor Nora Jaffary told CBC on Monday, November 25.

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So much for a calm, respectful debate on the values charter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Parti Québécois government says it wants a calm, respectful debate on its proposed “values” charter.

So, how’s that going?

Well, on Sunday, a columnist in Le Journal de Montréal likened the niqab worn by two Montreal daycare educators, a photo of whom sparked a controversy last week, to the hood worn by members of the violently racist Ku Klux Klan.

And on Saturday, La Presse reported, two participants walked out of a debate on secularism after they were repeatedly interrupted and heckled because they were not in favour of banning Muslim veils.

Don Macpherson reports on the hysteria generated by supporters of the proposed Charter of Values which would prohibit public employees in Quebec from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols at work.

Montreal Gazette, 25 November 2013

Veteran Quebec politician says Qur’an is a book of ‘conquest and violence’

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Jean AllaireThe founder of the Action Democratique says his current party, the CAQ, should be staking out a tough stand in favour of the PQ’s proposed Charter of Values.

Jean Allaire says his views on the wearing of religious symbols are much closer to those of the PQ than those of the CAQ, which favours a ban only for civil servants in positions of authority such as judges and police officers.

Allaire told La Presse he read the Koran and concluded that it is a book about conquest and violence and bearded men wrongly use it to convince women that they should wear headscarves.

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PQ government prepared to fall over beefed-up secularism charter

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MONTREAL — The minority Parti Quebecois tabled a toughened secularism charter Thursday and warned that it’s prepared to go to the polls if the bill is rejected. The PQ considers the bill a confidence motion and didn’t make any compromises to appease opposition parties whose support would be needed to pass it.

“If the Liberal Party objects, this is the kind of vote that involves the confidence of the government,” house leader Stephane Bedard told the legislature. He said the secularism charter is at the heart of the government’s program.

The PQ bill would bar all public service workers from wearing conspicuous religious symbols on the job. The ban would also apply to municipalities and universities, which had a “right of withdrawal” under earlier drafts of the charter.

Bernard Drainville, the minister in charge of the secularism charter, told a news conference the bill “marks a significant milestone in our history.” He has said the charter is a logical outworking of increased separation of church and state that began in the 1960s after 200 years of church control over Quebec society.

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