Quebec's Bill 94: What's “Reasonable”? What's “Accommodation”? And what's the Meaning of the Muslim Veil?

Abstract

On March 24, 2010, Justice Minister Kathleen Weil introduced Bill 94, called An Act to Establish Guidelines Governing Accommodation Requests Within the Administration and Certain Institutions, in Quebec's National Assembly. If passed, the bill would limit Muslim women's ability to wear a face veil when requesting services from the government. Examination of the 51 briefs submitted to the National Assembly by members of the public in May, October, and November 2010 reveals three different frameworks witnesses used to make sense of the bill, defined by the goals they sought to achieve: upholding the ideals of the Quiet Revolution, encouraging legal clarity, and respecting the rights of religious believers. This article describes those frameworks and how they influenced the meanings witnesses attributed to the terms “reasonable” and “accommodation” and to the symbol of the Muslim veil itself.

Keywords:

• Quebec Bill 94
• reasonable accommodations
• Muslim veil/niqab
• secularism
• Quiet Revolution
• religious minority rights

Notes

1. The original title of the bill was Projet de loi n^o 94: Loi établissant les balises encadrant les demandes d'accommodement dans l'Administration gouvernementale et dans certains établissements. For the sake of readability, I will cite translations of all documents originally produced in French. In cases where official translations are available, I will cite them and indicate their status as translations in the bibliography. In cases where official translations are not available, I will provide my own (with explicative notes where necessary), and the bibliographic entry will refer to the French-language original.

2. These briefs are all available on National Assembly's website, www.assnat.qc.ca/fr/travaux-parlementaires/commissions/CI/mandats/Mandat-12329/mémoires-déposés.html.

3. Authors included: May: Confédération des syndicats nationaux; Alain Massot; Marie-Claire Belleau; Association des retraitées et retraités de l'éducation et des autres services publics du Québec; Centrale des syndicats du Québec; Syndicat de la fonction publique du Québec; Groupe de professeures associées à La Chaire Claire-Bonenfant de l'Université Laval; Fédération des travailleurs et des travailleuses du Québec; Mouvement laïque québécois; Association féminine de l'éducation et de l'action sociale. October: Andréa Richard; Robert Talbot; Claude Latour; Gemma Gauthier; Québec Solidaire; Ghyslain Parent, Andréa Richard, and Louise Hubert; Rassemblement des chrétiens du Moyen-Orient; Gérard Lévesque; Diane Guilbault, Micheline Carrier and Élaine Audet; Les Intellectuels pour la laïcité; Sheldon Keith; Irène Doiron and Pierre LeyraudNovember: Georges Karam; Gilles Guibord; Carole Dionne; Ligue des femmes du Québec; Michel Brunelle; Collectif citoyen pour l'égalité et la laïcité

4. Authors included: May: Barreau du Québec; Ligue des droits et libertés; Conseil du statut de la femmeOctober: Alain PronkinNovember: Fédération des commissions scolaires du Québec; Mitchel Fortin; Louis-Phillipe Lampron; Conseil des relations interculturelles

5. Authors included: May: Fédération des Canadiens musulmans; Jean Tremblay/Ville de Saguenay; Simone de Beauvoir InstituteOctober: Communication, l'Ouverture et le Rapprochement interculturel; Conseil orthodoxe juif des relations communautaires au QuébecNovember: Lord Reading Law Society; Coalition Non au Bill 94; Jack Jedwab; Alliance des Communautés culturelles pour l'Égalité dans la Santé et les Services Sociaux; Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations; Canadian Council of Muslim Women; Canadian Muslim Forum; Association canadiennes de libertés civiles; Fédération des femmes du QuébecOne brief did not fall into any of the categories described here. Its author, André Drouin, departed considerably from the text of Bill 94. For instance, he provided a list of laws that he feared were not being applied to everyone, including “Smoking in public areas is prohibited” and “No book can recommend public-hangings for homosexuals,” and blamed a wide range of problems only tangentially related to Bill 94 on “The Canadian Charter of Rights,” “The multicultural ideology,” and “Our Immigration policies and process” (Drouin 2010, 6, 8). This brief does not figure in my analysis.