Please register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles.
Please register to receive free alerts on new postings of articles.
________________________________________________________________________
Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2019
Bill 21: An Answer to Those
who Have Criticized Quebec’s Secular Government*
Dr. Rodrigue Tremblay,
emeritus professor at the Université de Montréal and a former minister in the
Quebec government**
“Secularism in the Christian
world was an attempt to resolve the long and destructive struggle of Church and
State. Separation, adopted in the American and French Revolutions and elsewhere
after that, was designed to prevent two things: the use of religion by the
state to reinforce and extend its authority; and the use of the state power by
the clergy to impose their doctrines and rules on others.“ Bernard Lewis (1916-2018),
British-American historian at Princeton University, (in 2003)
Recently, Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister publicly
criticized the Quebec government's secularism law, Bill 21.
Would it be possible to suggest to Mr. Pallister to stop making
political capital on the backs of Quebec and tell him that his time would be
better spent if he cared a little more about the fate of his province’s Métis
population. We could also remind him that his province has no lessons to give
Quebec about human rights, when we know that Manitoba suspended the rights of
francophones to have French schools in 1890 and 1896.
Quebec is not a province like the others
Quebec is one of the founding provinces of
the Canadian Confederation of 1867, and it is the only one with a French-speaking
majority. Moreover, it is the only province to have had, for the last several
centuries, linguistic and judicial rights which are different from most English-speaking
provinces.
It should not be forgotten also that English-speaking
provinces are under the British Common Law legal system, while Quebec is under
the French Civil and property Code. Also, let us keep in mind that Quebec
obtained an amendment to the Canadian constitutional law, in 1998, through
which the Quebec government set up linguistic, thus secular, school boards to
replace denominational school boards.
The separation of Church and State is a
fundamental democratic principle in the French tradition. In the Common Law,
because the Queen or King of the United Kingdom is also the head of the
Anglican Church, this democratic principle of separating politics from religion
is less prevalent.
Canada:
A democracy—or a constitutional monarchy!
Regarding the issue of the separation
of Church and State, it could be argued that the
French approach is more democratic and more modern than the archaic British
system, which preserves the monarchy as the depository of political power. That
principle rests on the obsolete idea that political power does not belong to the
people, but rather to an abstract deity. Therefore, is it Quebec—whose system
of French civil law goes back to the Quebec Act of 1774—that is lacking in
terms of democracy, or is it not rather English Canada, which still insists on
keeping a foreign royalty as Head of State, (in addition to having an unelected
Senate)?
Indeed, compared to other
countries in the Western world, Canada may seem somewhat less democratic. For instance,
the Constitutional Act of 1982 has never been submitted for adoption to the
people, through a referendum. It was rather the making of a handful of
politicians, temporarily in office, and it refers only to the Anglo-Canadian
conception of individual rights, to the detriment of collective rights—besides
having been imposed on the Quebec population with no input whatsoever from its
government and its Parliament.
In the final analysis, Canada is essentially a
constitutional monarchy where the ultimate authority rests with a queen or a
king, whose power in turn rests on “the supremacy of God and the rule of law”. In 1982, Prime
Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau enshrined in the Preamble of the constitution,
imposed on Quebec and without a referendum, that political power in Canada comes
ultimately from ‘God’ and his representative on Earth, the British royalty.
Indeed, many in Canada are
unaware that the Queen, as the final authority in Canada, not only consults with
the Canadian government, but can also consult, in a time of crisis, with the Queen's
Privy Council. This is an organization that is composed
of present and past cabinet ministers, Supreme Court justices and other present
or past dignitaries. Its function is to advise the Queen or her representative,
the Governor General, who is also not elected and who is not directly beholden
to the people.
That
sounds awfully archaic. —Who is backward here? Quebec with its secular democratic
government that respects the beliefs of all, or the idea that the rest of
Canada adheres to, that political power rests with a monarch whose advice can
come from unelected officials?
Secularism
is a guarantee of democracy and freedom for all
Secularism in the modern
state is a great democratic value. It puts all citizens on the same footing. It
guarantees that believers and non-believers have the same right to freedom of
expression of their convictions. It also ensures the right to have, or not to
have, a religion, to change religions or to no longer have one at all.
Most European countries,
whether or not members of the European Union, have laws similar to that of
Quebec’s, in order to proclaim a secular state and its neutrality towards the
beliefs of everyone. This is guaranteed by the principle of the separation of
Church and State, and the secularism of the State in its daily dealings with
citizens.
1. In France, for example,
the "1905 law" guarantees the separation between Church and State.
2. In the United States, the
First Amendment of the Constitution of 1787 proclaims the separation of Church
and State and guarantees freedom of worship.
3. In Italy, Catholicism has
not been a state religion since 1948 according to the Constitution, even though
the country is largely Catholic.
4. In Portugal, the
Constitution states that the state is secular.
5. In Spain, since the 1978
Constitution and the abrogation of Catholicism as the official religion, the
country is a secular state separated from the Church.
6. In Switzerland, the
separation of church and state has existed, at the federal level, since 1848,
although some cantons may grant public law status to certain cults. Etc.
Propaganda
against Quebec must stop
All of this is to say that there is an
insidious propaganda, essentially launched by some Toronto media and some
politicians, against Quebec and the Quebec government, concerning the secularism
of the Quebec state. On the forefront has been The Globe and Mail, an
anti-francophone newspaper since the time of its founder, George Brown, and the
National Post (see the Globe and Mail editorial of October 28, 2019, and an
article by Chris Selley in the National Post of November 6, 2019).
In
fact, the Quebec government's secularism law is very moderate and it applies to
everyone, regardless of beliefs or convictions.
Bill
21 respects acquired rights and its principles apply to everyone. The ban on wearing
religious symbols applies only to state employees in a position of authority
(judges, police officers, teachers), who are in direct contact with users. The
latter have an inalienable right not to be subjected to political or religious
propaganda by state employees in a monopoly position, when they receive public
services. A very large majority of the Quebec population supports this
democratic law. Many in English Canada also support it, but the media do not
mention it.
There
would be many other things to say, but the above illustrates how some
English-language media are misinformed, and some are possibly in bad faith, on
the question of the separation of Church and State in Quebec. Quebec is the
only French-majority society in North America, and it has an inalienable right
to take necessary measures to survive.
More fundamentally, some in
Toronto should abandon the idea of making Quebec into a colony of English
Canada. They should also consider whether it is such a good idea to transform
Canada into a carbon copy of the United States!
________________________________________________________
* Translation of an article published in the Montreal newspaper La
Presse, Nov. 6, 2019.
** Author of the book ‘La régression
tranquille du Québec, 1980-2018’, (Éditions Fides), recipient of the
Richard-Arès Prize, 2018.
