5 things Quebec's values charter would do, and 5 it wouldn't
Would
- 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.
- Allow five-year opt-outs from the ban for certain organizations, but not daycare workers or elementary school teachers.
- Require that those receiving or providing government services uncover their faces.
- Exempt elected members of the Quebec legislature from the regulations.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Eliminate property tax exemptions for churches, mosques, synagogues and other religious buildings.
