A proposed secular charter for the province of Quebec could create more protests and more women isolated at home in cultural “ghettos,” warns the head of the Assembly of Quebec Catholic Bishops, Msgr. Pierre-Andre Fournier.
The current government of Quebec wants to forbid all public-sector employees from wearing visible religious symbols including hijabs, turbans, yarmulkes and large crucifixes. Its stated goal is to make the state more secular.
The plan could backfire warns Fournier. “The more you try to have an identity by pushing back others, the more you create ghettos,” Fournier told a news conference Thursday. “Women will stay at home and will not integrate — and neither will their children,” he said noting the charter would be particularly unfair to Muslim women.
Some institutions denounce charter
Several hospitals and universities in Montreal have denounced the charter as have many political leaders in the rest of Canada.
The Quebec government is expected to table legislation this fall to create the charter, however it has a minority and will need the support of another party to pass it.
Public opinion divided
Two public opinion surveys this week suggest the plan is supported by about half of Quebecers — which is a precipitous drop from the levels of support expressed in recent months for the charter.
Meanwhile the president of the Quebec Council on the Status of Women says the council was pressured to not criticize the charter, and that the government has named four new members to the council who have already expressed their support for it. Julie Miville-Deschenes says the council must remain independent of political pressure.
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