Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Quebec's Charter of 'Values': 5 things it would do and 5 things it wouldn't

From reading these 5 things (would & wouldn't) it is obvious who is targeted.


Would

  • 1. Bar public sector employees — including everyone from civil servants to teachers, provincial court judges, daycare workers, police, health-care personnel, municipal employees and university staff — from wearing a hijab, turban, kippa, large visible crucifix or other "ostentatious" religious symbols while on the job.
  • 2. Allow five-year opt-outs from the ban for certain organizations, but not daycare workers or elementary school teachers.
  • 3.Require that those receiving or providing government services uncover their faces.
  • 4.Exempt elected members of the Quebec legislature from the regulations.
  • 5.Amend Quebec's human rights legislation, the Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms, to specify limits on when someone can stake a claim for religious accommodation.

Wouldn't

  • 1.Remove religious symbols and elements considered "emblematic of Quebec's cultural heritage." That includes: the crucifixes in the Quebec legislature and atop Mount Royal in Montreal, the thousands of religiously based geographic names (e.g. Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!) and the names of schools and hospitals.
  • 2.Ban public sector employees from wearing small religious symbols like a ring with a Star of David, earrings with the Muslim crescent or a necklace with a small crucifix.
  • 3.Eliminate subsidies to religious private schools. The Quebec government currently funds about 60 per cent of the budgets of most of the province's private schools, including parochial ones.
  • 4.Ban opening prayers at municipal council meetings, which was recommended by the 2008 Bouchard-Taylor Commission report into cultural accommodation. The Quebec Court of Appeal ruled in May that such prayers do not necessarily violate Quebec's current human rights legislation.
  • 5.Eliminate property tax exemptions for churches, mosques, synagogues and other religious buildings.
Read more here.

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