Graeme Hamilton, National Post - Files Of 146,000 people served in health-insurance board offices in Montreal and Quebec City in 2008-09, 10 were veiled.
MONTREAL - A reader of Montreal newspapers could easily get the impression that the city's streets are teeming with fully veiled Muslims. Photos of niqab-wearing women, their eyes visible through a narrow slit in their head-coverings, are frequent front-page fare as debate rages over whether to tolerate such religious garb. What the papers rarely make clear, however, is that most of these photographs have nothing to do with Quebec. A close look at the photo credits reveals that the pictures are provided by overseas wire services.
The reason is simple: There are so few women in Quebec who wear the full veil that a photographer could spend weeks prowling the streets without happening upon one. No precise count exists, but one local Muslim organization estimates there are a few dozen such women in Montreal.
The Quebec human rights commission last week noted that out of 146,000 people served in provincial health insurance board offices in Montreal and Quebec City in 2008-09, 10 were veiled. And yet, Quebec on Wednesday became the first province to introduce legislation aimed at wearers of the niqab and burka, saying they would be ineligible to attend university, visit a doctor or receive any government service unless they remove their veils. They would also be barred from working for the government.
The legislation, Bill 94, is a matter of "drawing a line" to defend Quebec values, Premier Jean Charest said. It follows a policy Mr. Charest's government introduced in 2008 requiring new immigrants to sign a declaration promising to learn French and respect Quebec's "shared values."
If Quebec seems more preoccupied with preserving its values, there is a reason. As inhabitants of a Frenchspeaking province in mostly Englishspeaking North America, Quebecers see themselves as a minority whose survival is precarious. For decades, that has manifested itself in efforts to limit the spread of English, but more recently the self-preservation impulse has expanded to cover such perceived threats as religious fundamentalism.
A recent column in La Presse, reporting new demographic projections, captured the public mood. "According to Statistics Canada, the metropolitan Montreal population will be more and more mixed," Michele Ouimet wrote. "The percentage of visible minorities is going to double, going from 16% in 2006 to 31% in 2031. And the Arabs are going to catch up to the blacks. Keep calm, keep calm."
Other provinces occasionally struggle with accommodating religious minorities, but the debate is most vigorous in Quebec. It began with a 2006 Supreme Court of Canada ruling authorizing a Montreal Sikh boy to attend school wearing a ceremonial dagger inside his clothing. The decision was broadly condemned in Quebec, with people expressing concern that the dagger, even though it was sheathed and wrapped in cloth, would be used as a weapon. There soon followed an avalanche of inflammatory stories about various "accommodations" granted to religious groups, primarily Muslims, Jews and Sikhs. The Action Democratique du Quebec helped fan the flames and it brought them to within a few seats of winning the 2007 provincial election.
A government commission presided by philosopher Charles Taylor and sociologist Gerard Bouchard, which reported in 2008, briefly calmed things down. It revealed "striking distortions" in the way instances of accommodations had been reported in Quebec. The authors also tried to put their finger on why Quebecers had been so consumed by perceived, and often exaggerated, threats to their culture.
The most important factor, they concluded, relates to the insecurity French-speaking Quebecers feel as members of a minority group in North America. "All of these anxieties reveal a feeling of fragility that expresses itself in various ways," they wrote. "It must be noted that the French-Canadian past has been and always will be fraught with tension. A concern for survival has been a hallmark of this past, which has sustained a keen awareness of failures and a desire for affirmation."
Messrs. Bouchard and Taylor prescribed greater openness to immigrant cultures: "The identity inherited from the French-Canadian past is perfectly legitimate, and it must survive because it is a source of diversity, but it cannot alone define the Quebec identity and must take into account the other identities present, in a spirit of interculturalism."
The report also shone a light on Quebec's Muslim community, which has been growing rapidly as the province seeks out French-speaking immigrants from North Africa. It noted that contrary to popular belief, religious fervour among Muslim immigrants was low and that there was a strong feminist current among Muslim women in the province. Media too often fall back on stereotypes, with "repeated displays of the same Muslims wearing the burka or niqab, of Muslims bowing down in prayer," it said. The way to overcome Islamophobia, it advised, "is to draw closer to Muslims, not to shun them."
Legislation that singles out the Muslim community, even if only a small segment of it, will not further that end. But then there has been little sign that Mr. Charest attached much value to the report he commissioned. His first move, before the authors had even finished presenting their findings in 2008, was to join in an all-party resolution affirming that the crucifix hanging behind the speaker's chair in the National Assembly would remain. The Bouchard-Taylor report had recommended the removal of the crucifix to demonstrate the state's religious neutrality.
Bouchard-Taylor examined the issue of religious symbols and recommended that certain people who embody the neutrality of the state -- judges, police officers and Crown prosecutors, for example -- be prevented from wearing religious symbols on the job. Its only specific advice about the niqab was that it should not be worn by teachers and other state employees "where full, open communication between colleagues and with the public is essential."
Messrs. Bouchard and Taylor spent $5-million and more than a year producing their report, but their findings counted for less than the controversy this month over an Egyptian immigrant who was expelled from a Montreal college because her niqab was disrupting class. The government promised immediate action, and this week a new Quebec value made its debut. "If you are a citizen who receives [government] services, you will receive them with your face uncovered," Mr. Charest said.
BACK STORY
The Natioanl Post's Kathryn Blaze Carlson looks at niqab-related laws throughout the world
FRANCE
This week, President Nicolas Sarkozy pledged to introduce legislation banning the full Muslim veil, which he called "contrary to the dignity of women." His statement comes less than two months after a Parliamentary Commission recommended sweeping legislation on religious dress. The report said women should not be allowed to wear a face-covering veil when accessing public services.
UNITED KINGDOM
Earlier this year, the U.K. Independence Party called for a ban on burkas. Not long after, Conservative MP Philip Hollobone urged the House of Commons to seriously consider banning the burqa. In 2009, a U.K. college banned a Muslim student from enrolling because she refused to take off her burka.
BELGIUM
Several towns have passed municipal bylaws that ban the niqab in public places. The town of Maaseik was the first to implement a ban, and women there can be fined 150 euros.
ITALY
In January, the Italian government said it was debating legislation that would ban face-covering veils, which Equal Opportunities Minister Mara Carfagna called a "sacrosanct battle to defend the dignity and rights of immigrant women."
GERMANY
Some German states have banned teachers from wearing any religious symbols in schools, including face-covering veils.
EGYPT
In 2001, a woman wearing the niqab was prevented from using the library at the University of Cairo. She took her case to the country's Supreme Court, which ruled that a total ban on the niqab was unconstitutional. The court did, however, recommend that women wearing the veil be forced to reveal their faces to female security guards for identification purposes.
TURKEY
In Turkey, where the majority is Muslim, all forms of head-scarves have been banned in universities for decades.
UNITED STATES
In 2003, a woman sued the state of Florida for the right to wear a niqab in her driver's licence photo. A Florida appellate court, however, ruled that the woman had no grounds for her case, and required her to show her face to a camera in a private room with a female employee.