Quebec releases guidelines for requesting religious accommodation
Jackie Dunham, CTVNews.ca
Published Thursday, May 10, 2018 12:06PM EDT
The Quebec government has released its guidelines for requesting and granting religious accommodation under Bill 62, a controversial “religious neutrality” law that prohibits citizens from giving or receiving public services with their faces covered.
Bill 62 was passed in the National Assembly in October. Under Section 10 of the bill, Quebecers would be required to uncover their faces while providing or receiving a government service, such as taking the bus or borrowing a book from the library.

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The legislation has been accused of unfairly targeting Muslim women who wear religious face coverings such as, burkas.
It prompted widespread protests and was challenged in court by the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in the fall.
In response, the Quebec Superior Court suspended the section of the law that dealt with face coverings in December until the government could establish a clear framework for requesting religious accommodation.

Justice Minister Stephanie Vallee released the new guidelines on Wednesday and said there is no “one size fits all” solution and they would be applied on a case-by-case basis.
“It’s going to help a lot of people respond to requests because right now there is absolutely nothing,” she said during a press conference.
According to the government, the six conditions that must be met in order to grant religious accommodation are:
The request must result from the application of Section 10 of the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms.
The application must be serious, in other words based on a sincere belief in the need to comply with a practice that is part of the applicant’s faith.
The request must respect the right to equality between men and women. There must be no discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, gender identity or expression.
The request must be consistent with the principle of state religious neutrality.
The accommodation is reasonable and cannot impede on the rights of others or put others in danger.
The applicant is co-operating in seeking a solution that meets the criterion of reasonableness.
Vallee also clarified that rank-and-file government employees would not be responsible for determining whether a request for religious accommodation meets the required criteria.
“We don’t want to put the burden on bus drivers. They are not the ones that should be doing the arbitration,” she explained.
Instead, every public institution will assign an employee from its highest administrative body to deal with requests for accommodation.
Agnes Maltais, a MNA for the Parti Quebecois (PQ), criticized the guidelines and said the onus for granting religious accommodation shouldn’t fall on any employee.
“It’s always case by case,” she told reporters on Wednesday. “It’s that thinking of doing things case by case, judging things case by case, that gives the responsibility to the people, to the employees. That's the problem.”
The Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) party also slammed the government’s guidelines in a written statement released on Wednesday.
"Stephanie Vallee is opening the door to a religious accommodation for the niqab and the burqa if the (person's) faith is ‘legitimate’ and she is making Bill 62 more confusing,” the statement read. “It was a mess and now it's a shambles."
Shaheen Ashraf, a board member for the Canadian Council for Muslim Women, called the guidelines “mind-boggling” and questioned the necessity of including them at all.
“It took how many hours and how many people to come to this decision?” she asked. “Why? We're Canadian. We’re Quebecers.”
Valle said the government expects the section of the law governing face coverings to come into effect July 1.
With a report from CTV Montreal’s Amanda Kline and files from The Canadian Press
PHOTOS
niqab
A woman wears a niqab in Montreal on September 9, 2013. (Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press.

I think the intention is overlooked. As my understanding is the muslim head wear is for the purpose of 'modesty' which is not an issue when needing to be identified by officials.

We dont know who we are looking at if we cant look at them. and if one will be living somewhere in which such identification is necessary in official situations, I feel they should adapt(only in official situations) as it does not really interfere with their religious requirement of modesty.

i agree, ms.harmony.

Good for quebec


and you wonder why western bill of rights and sharia law are not compatible.


here is proof.

Well, yeah, but then the Western (read United States Only) Bill of Rights isn't compatible with ANY religions' rule systems. Including Judaism and Christianity.

Basically, any religious rules that conflict with local laws, are going to be a problem.

As for the whole very real problem of the wearing of face coverings, that appears to be controversial even WITHIN Islamic societies. It apparently is NOT true, that all women are required to have their faces covered at ALL times.

ha, I recognize you from DH, testsign something??

Anyways I guess I will call you igor here, and to respond to your post
Since we are talking about America you forgot one little thing .

Our American founding fathers were theistic rationalists and the declaration that they wrote expressed their beliefs.

they believed that any religion that worshipped God should be free to worship in America, the christian, the jew, gentile, Mahometans to Deists.

the problem is not our bill of rights its certain religions interpretation of our bill of rights.

As far as I know, Canada is not an imprisoned country.
Its citizens are free to leave if they so desire.

It all makes me think of Sam Kinison's response to World Hunger.
http://youtu.be/VKNoJ2BzSRU?t=1m29s

If you don't like the laws your country imposes, move to a place where you do. By staying put, implies that you will comply.

In this instance it only concerns Quebec. Move out of Quebec, problem solved.

Now, lets look at why Muslim women are required to cover their face/bodies.
Its not so much anonymity as it is because Muslim men are sexual deviants.
The idea of 72 virgins in Islam refers to an aspect of paradise. In Christianity the reward of Heaven is gold.
The fact that paradise is 72 virgins implies virginity of women as a reward.
A 'gift'. What does a man do with a virgin woman? It all establishes a Muslim male mindset that women are objects of desire and those desires must be controlled to maintain order in the male dominated population.
Thus, women must hide their sexuality or mark themselves as 'taken by marriage' to other men.

Quebec's stipulation is for safety to its people because people hide their appearance for anonymity while committing crimes.
If anything, it acknowledges Muslim women as persons, not objects of perverted sexual desire.

Whatever their 'beliefs' were can be argued at length. But what they included in the constitution was not specific to God, and actually called for government to stay out of religion altogether.

which means people are free to worship whom they please in America.

but certain religions bans or does not accept those who worships other than their God in their religion.

See the conflict?

I don't think the OP is about the United States separation of church and state. You can find those topics all thru the Politics, Current News & Events forum.

This topic is about Canada's separation of church and state.
Does Canada have a Constitution and Bill of Rights written by revolutionists?

One of the things the United States citizens do that really ticks off people from other countries is that they tend to make everything out to be based on their model. Like it is the only one that matters.
Canada is not the USA.
Mexico is not the USA.
England, France, Spain and all those 'other' countries that make up the rest of the world, are NOT the USA.

I'm not sure I do. Government should stay out of religion, neither supporting or restricting it for the sake OF RELIGION. What people choose to believe or act upon however must not cross over the line of what the culture deems legal, unless they are willing to accept the potential consequence of it.

but that is the problem,what crosses the line in our society isn't crossing the line in other societies especially when Religion is involved.

nice job of pushing this topic off the rails you 2.
it has zilch to do with the us constitution or our sorely abused separation of church and state.

Okay. In any government or society, part of identifying is being able to see who is being identified. It seems over reaching that 'religious' objection would supercede necessity.

In Denmark, a dane isn't allowed to cover his or her head, but a muslim is???

Not to bring it even more off topic..

no kidding uh.

Yes this is about Canada's quebec province bill , not the US church and separation.

I believe what Quebec is doing is the right thing for them and hopefully the rest of the non muslim world will follow.

Its not a slight against Islam and you have the right to practice whatever religion you choose but public safety is paramount and while the majority of women wearing hijab are honorable you will get those who are not will take advantage like and I know this is off topic, its like the criminals and mentally unstable who uses guns to commit crime and the society wants to push law abiding gun owners because of the criminals and mental unstable committing crimes.

I agree.

Well said...