TORONTO — The new premier of French-speaking Quebec is forging ahead with a controversial plan to bar public servants in positions of authority from wearing religious symbols in the workplace, even as he faces accusations of employing a double standard for refusing to remove a crucifix from the provincial legislature.
The ban would prevent teachers, judges, prison guards and police officers from wearing religious garments such as hijabs, turbans or kippahs at work. The crucifix can stay up, the new government argues, because it is a historical symbol and not a religious one.
“We have a cross on our flag,” said Premier Francois Legault, whose center-right Coalition Avenir Quebec party swept to power earlier this month, ousting the provincial Liberals who ruled for many of the past 15 years.
Legault was speaking to reporters last week at a summit in Armenia. “I think that we have to understand our past. In our past, we had Protestants and Catholics. They built the values we have in Quebec. It’s part of our history.”
The ban highlights the complicated nature of managing religious symbols in Quebec, a once fiercely Catholic province that has for decades struggled with how to accommodate religious minorities, especially those from immigrant communities.
And it opens up a potential new point of conflict with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who opposes the plan, saying that he is “not of the opinion that the state should be able to tell a woman what she can wear, nor what she cannot wear.”
Trudeau is not the only one panning the proposal.
Thousands of people protested it – and Legault’s plans to slash immigration and expel all immigrants who fail French-language tests – in Montreal last week.
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