Hanes: Even kids can see that Bill 21 is wrong, why can’t our leaders?

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Children at an elementary school in Chelsea, north of Gatineau, are receiving painful lessons about discrimination in real life.

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Your third grade teacher, Fatemeh Anvari, was recently expelled from the classroom. because she is a Muslim woman wearing hijab. Under Quebec Bill 21, no public servant in a position of authority, including police officers, prison guards, prosecutors, and teachers, may wear religious symbols in the line of duty.

Imagine the questions and dismay of eight-year-olds who lost their beloved teacher. Why? How? How do you explain something like this to children in terms they understand? You can not. Doing so only emphasizes how wrong, hateful, and harmful Bill 21 really is.

Anvari is no longer allowed to do his job because of what he wears, what he looks like, and what he believes in. Her headscarf is part of her identity, so she can’t take it off like a winter coat. Some people are offended by it and have misinformed opinions about why you use it. To make those people feel better, the government passed a law to prevent her from being herself. It sure looks a lot like bullying and the opposite of how we should treat others.

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To make these difficult explanations even more jarring, this is not the case of a schoolyard bully picking on someone who is different. This time it’s our state, our leaders, and ours ws. And no, that doesn’t do it right.

This is a lot for youngsters to process at a tender age. However, third graders at Chelsea Elementary School have had no trouble seeing how wrong Bill 21 is – in Quebec, Canada, in 2021. Many of Anvari’s alumni and their families have rallied in support , drawing pictures and tying green ribbons to the fence. out of school. A protest was held for members of the community at large over the weekend and another is planned for Tuesday.

The deleterious effects of Bill 21 were obvious from the moment it was introduced. But they were theoretical until the Western Quebec School Board, which opposes the law, was forced to apply them to one of its employees, and amid a teacher shortage, no less.

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Anvari has given state-sanctioned discrimination a face and a name. The fact that you have lost your job due to a law that is erroneously intended to emancipate women from paternalism is an additional layer of irony.

A Quebec Superior Court judge has already ruled that Bill 21 violates fundamental rights, especially those of Muslim women. But Judge Marc-André Blanchard refused to repeal the law because it was preemptively protected by the nevertheless clause. Even when the rules are unfair, hurtful and mean, the law is the law. But the challenge of Bill 21 is still making its way through the courts. Someday, justice may still prevail.

If school children can see that Bill 21 is wrong, why can’t our leaders?

Prime Minister François Legault says that the majority of Quebecers support the law, therefore it is democratic. That’s majority rule, not democracy, but we already know that Legault doesn’t care about minority rights. He compared the use of religious symbols to donning a T-shirt with a Liberal Party slogan, as if it were an election meant to make a statement. That oversimplification just makes it easier to portray the “other” as the problem.

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The opposition of the Parti Québécois tried to overtake Legault the prime minister on Monday, and secularism critic Pascal Bérubé slammed anyone criticizing Bill 21 from outside the province for attacking the nation of Quebec.

The liberals of Quebec are completely missing in action. The only response that leader Dominique Anglade could give to the reassignment of a teacher was to point out that her party voted against the law in the first place. It was more of a shrug.

But at least it’s better than fake sympathy and cowardly paralysis from the one person who could make a difference.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday that no one should lose their job because of their beliefs or identity. He said he has always been against Bill 21 (although it sure was difficult to know when the issue came up during the federal election campaign). While he has not yet ruled out intervening in the ongoing judicial challenge, he said he wants to avoid giving Quebec an excuse to claim he is interfering in its jurisdiction.

In other words, political calculations trump rights and take precedence over doing the right thing.

Chelsea schoolchildren will receive an intensive civics course this year. Not only are they looking closely at the definition of systemic discrimination, they are witnessing populism, political expediency and hypocrisy in action.

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