"Scheduling reasons?" Really? As an explanation for the Quebec government's abrupt suspension until August of hearings of the so-called niqab bill, that little phrase, offered Wednesday by an aide to the government House leader, is at least concise. But it is also opaque, even mysterious.
Yesterday the government was insisting that the hearings really will resume in August. But we would much prefer to think this strange decision is a prelude to relegation of this bad bill to the echoing dusty archives of abandoned legislation.
In March, when Jean Charest's government brought in this bill, we called it "unreasoning anxiety elevated to law." Nothing we've heard since has changed that view.
Opinion polls, however, say the bill is very popular. For a government desperately unpopular, it is strange indeed that Bill 94 has been slowed down so dramatically.
Three more weeks of hearings had been expected, because plenty of individuals and groups want their say before lawmakers. But the government suddenly postponed all of that until August.
Some have been saying the bill goes too far; more have argued it doesn't go far enough. We think it's fundamentally unjust.
Nowhere in the proposed law (in English at snipurl.com/v2zsy) is the niqab mentioned. Instead, the bill first defines "accommodation" as "an adaptation of a norm or general practice, dictated by the right to equality, in order to grant different treatment to a person who would otherwise be adversely affected by the application of that norm or practice."
It goes on to say any such accommodation must comply with the Quebec Charter of human rights and freedoms, "in particular as concerns the right to gender equality and the principle of religious neutrality of the State." That's all fine.
But then comes the punch-line: Showing your face, if you are a government employee dealing with the public, or a member of the public dealing with a government employee, "is a general practice" and "if an accommodation involves an adaptation of that practice and reasons of security, communication or identification warrant it, the accommodation must be denied." No wonder many Quebec Muslims think Bill 94 targets them.
All this furor was unleashed last winter by just two women who wore niqabs to French classes. The niqab, even more than the kirpan before it, seems to have triggered the worst instincts in many Quebecers. We can't count the letters we've received from people saying they expect to see faces, and/or that the niqab does not truly have its roots in Islam and therefore deserves no protection.
To which we answer that faces are often hidden in Quebec, behind beards or cold-weather gear or even goalie masks. And that the niqab doesn't need religious protection, any more than baggy pants on teenage boys, or tight dresses, or silly hats.
In this country we are free to choose what we wear. "Fashion crime" is a joke, not a real offence. Can't the government see the absurdity of refusing equality to some women on the basis of what they wear?
We know of not one case in which a niqabi, asked to show her face for security reasons, has refused. As for "communication," in an age of e-mail who can seriously claim that face-to-face contact is essential to, say, obtaining a government form?
Obviously there is, however, something significant behind all this angst about a bit of cloth. The niqab is merely a lightning rod for simmering public concern about Muslim and other immigrant communities.
This phenomenon is not limited to Quebec; across Europe lawmakers are wrestling with the same issue; this week France moved toward a full ban on face veils in public places.
The wariness behind these symbolic measures is to a degree natural, but the government's proper job is to allay it, by fostering cultural and economic integration. Instead, Bill 94 panders to public anxiety.
No doubt some women wear the niqab, or even the hijab, resentfully, under orders from domineering patriarchs who have disdain or contempt for the principle of female equality. But it is wrong and arrogant to assume that certain garments, whether religious or simply cultural, automatically prove oppression.
The government's partial ban on the niqab is all about cheap popularity. Instead of meddling in Quebecers' clothes closets, the government should be firmly, patiently, thoroughly reaching out to all ethnic communities to make sure everyone here understands that women have equal rights, that there is recourse when those rights are violated, and that in Quebec, as all across Canada, justice is the same for all.
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/opinion/government+coming+senses+niqabs/3054161/story.html#ixzz0oaq32KDJ