After François Legault’s decline in popularity, here is another one that is even more surprising: support for the ban on religious symbols among teachers is waning. According to a Léger poll, conducted on behalf of the Association for Canadian Studies, only 55% of Quebecers (59% among Francophones) support this policy, compared to 64% in a poll in September.
How many times have we heard the Prime Minister say that this policy was overwhelmingly supported by Quebecers? The argument has just taken for his cold. The leader’s popularity, like that of Law 21, is also found at exactly the same level: at 55% of support after having fallen by 9-10 points in a few months. It is all the same a majority, you will tell me. Yes, but it is no longer the state of grace.
Other elements of the sounding highlight this slippery slope. First, the vertiginous gap between the opinion of the youngest (18 to 24 years old) and the oldest (65 to 74 years old). Baby boomers overwhelmingly support banning religious symbols (73.9%), while millennials live on another planet. Support for banning religious symbols is actually higher in Manitoba and Saskatchewan as a whole (30%) than among young Quebecers themselves (27.8%). It gives you an idea of the size of the generation gap.
We can no longer say that in Quebec, “that’s how we live”. Presumably, it’s only a matter of time before we live — or at least think and govern — differently. For now, the raw reality, the “real business”, the case of a woman, Fatemeh Anvari, teacher of 3e year in the Outaouais, dismissed from her post because of a simple hijab, seems to have shaken support for Bill 21.
What shouldn’t have happened — the sidelining of a respected, endearing, competent teacher, at a time when the educational community needs her terribly, for no other reason than her clothing, clothing that she has the right to wear as an administrator in the same school, look for consistency… —, which above all must not happen, the famous reality check, he arrives.
One concrete case was enough to underline the absurdity and the odiousness of the thing. What François Legault himself admitted, indirectly, to Everybody talks about it last Sunday. “Citizens have the right to earn a living,” he said, explaining why consumers were now required to be vaccinated to enter Walmart, but not employees. “It’s not legally possible to coerce a person, to tell them you’re losing your job. Except, of course, if you have the misfortune to be a veiled teacher.
Would the government admit, in veiled terms, the illegality of its action? This is also the reason for the notwithstanding provision, a legal trick that allows you to put under a glass bell an action that infringes fundamental rights. It was also necessary to avoid piling up the corpses, not to cause too many victims, by repeatedly dismissing veiled teachers whose competence is absolutely not in question. That is why we made sure to include an acquired rights clause in the law, thus protecting people already in the position from dismissal. It was necessary to give a big blow, it was said, to defend secularism, but keeping the maneuver as invisible as possible.
The Legault government must congratulate itself today for not having included health personnel in its law. Just imagine, at a time when there are 2,000 workers missing in the field, when hospitalizations are increasing and when load shedding is being carried out, if we had to turn our noses up at already trained attendants, nurses and doctors. Because of a veil? François Legault, who is first and foremost a man of common sense, would certainly have backed down from Bill 21 in the same way that he backed down from the compulsory vaccination of health care personnel. One, because we don’t have the right to prevent people from working. Two, because there’s nothing like a “life or death” situation to tell real problems from fake ones.
Banning the wearing of religious symbols is another “spectacular measure” that seeks to assure the population—particularly older Francophones—that we will not go back, that religion will be kept on a leash. It is a false problem. There is no sign in Quebec of a religious upsurge. We are one of the least religious societies in the world — which includes the Muslim community, 60% of which do not attend mosques and only 10% of women are veiled. Proselytizing, teachers’ unions say, is not a problem in schools. Secularism is well established in Quebec, and the Islamist invasion is not on the agenda.
The case of Fatemeh Anvari, not to mention the pandemic which has the gift of setting the record straight, brings us back to the real problems: the management of education and health, the professionals who can no longer take it, the glaring lack of resources… By dint of rubbing shoulders with real business, perhaps we will see the pointlessness of fighting windmills.
fpelletier@ledevoir.com; on Twitter: @fpelletier1