Hon. Julie Miville-Dechêne: Honourable senators, Supreme Court hearings on the notwithstanding clause have put a debate that upsets me back in the news.
The prohibitions in Quebec are piling up. First came the prohibition against teachers wearing headscarves, the hijab, which was then expanded to include all school staff and will soon be expanded again to include all early childhood centres. We’re talking about hundreds of Muslim women who wear the hijab in an education-related setting.
In the name of state secularism, a certain form of feminism and Quebec values, people are claiming to be liberating Muslim women from the oppression of the headscarf, without considering that the hijab means different things to different women in different countries.
I became deeply involved in this debate in my former role as president of Quebec’s Conseil du statut de la femme in 2023, when the government of the day introduced its famous charter of values. I publicly voiced my concerns over the consequences of this charter, which risked turning away Muslim women wearing headscarves from women’s shelters and depriving them of the very jobs they depended on for emancipation and integration.
No one is denying that Quebec has had a troubled relationship with religion. Before the Quiet Revolution, the Catholic Church dictated what women had to do: procreate, submit to their husbands and perform their marital duty. All of this has left a mark.
However, times have changed. We cannot compare the collective oppression of that era with the fact that a number of Muslim women wear the hijab here in Quebec. Of course, some women face pressure from their communities, their spouses and the patriarchy, but others wear the hijab because of their faith, which is at the core of their identity. Furthermore, there have never been any studies or evidence to suggest that these hijabi women are proselytizing in schools.
These women are often afraid to speak out for fear of being further ostracized. Last Sunday, the Radio-Canada program “Tout terrain” introduced us to Nadia, speaking on condition of anonymity, who was forced to remove her hijab to continue working at a school in Laval. She said:
It upset me. It upset me so much, I cried. I had a lot of sleepless nights. I’ve been wearing the hijab for a long time. I believe in my religion. I care about my religion. I don’t understand why religion bothers them. We are doing our job. We’re there to support the children.
This single mother can’t afford to lose her job, but she feels very guilty.
Kadidja, meanwhile, decided to stop wearing her hijab because of the prevailing climate in Quebec. She said:
I needed to stop being seen, to go unnoticed, to no longer have to endure those cruel, hostile stares. Another reason that drove me was the need for protection, to protect myself and my children. I didn’t want us to be the target of that hatred anymore.
These words powerfully convey the perverse effect that these various laws can have on the fabric of Quebec society and on openness toward others.
It’s sad.