A new poll suggests support may have waned for a key element of Quebec’s secularism law, known as Bill 21.
A web panel poll conducted by Leger for the Canadian Studies Association earlier this month found that 55 percent of Quebecers favor banning public school teachers from wearing religious symbols.
That appears to be a drop from the results of an earlier Leger poll released in September that found 64 percent of Quebecers favored Bill 21, which applies to public officials in positions of authority, including judges. , teachers and police.
Jack Jedwab, president of the Canadian Studies Association, says the apparent shift in public opinion could be related to recent debate on the issue, including the case of an elementary school teacher in western Quebec who was removed from her job. teaching post in December because her hijab is against the law.
The incident sparked calls for the federal government to intervene in court challenges against the law and prompted the mayors of several major cities to pledge to support the legal battle to overturn it.
The survey was conducted through a web panel between January 7 and 9, in which 1,547 Canadians aged 18 and over participated.
The professional body for the survey industry, the Canadian Research Insights Council, says that online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not take random samples of the population.
READ MORE: Dismissal of Quebec teacher for wearing hijab is a ‘cowardly’ move, says minister
Debate over Bill 21 flared up in December after third-grade teacher Fatemeh Anvari was reassigned teaching duties at her Chelsea, Quebec, school because she was wearing a hijab.
In an interview, Jedwab said he believed the incident demonstrated the real impacts of a law that had previously felt largely symbolic.
“When we saw someone wearing a hijab being taken out of the classroom, I think my feeling is that that contributed to this drop in support,” he said.
Prime Minister François Legault has repeatedly mentioned the strong public support for Bill 21 as a warning to any leader outside of Quebec who challenges it. Jedwab said the poll results suggest the consensus may be eroding, though he said it was too early to tell whether the drop in support was a temporary response to Anvari losing her job as a teacher.
The survey suggested that support for House Bill 21 is divided along linguistic and generational lines.
While 59 percent of Francophones in the survey said they “strongly” or “somewhat” support a ban on visible religious symbols worn by teachers, only 26 percent of English speakers felt the same.
Among Quebecers, 73.9 percent of people ages 65 to 74 said they supported the ban, the highest of any age group, while only 27.8 percent of people ages 18 to 24 said they supported the ban. Yes.
Across Canada, the average was 33 per cent for the ban, 55 per cent against and 12 per cent undecided.
Across Canada, including in Quebec, the majority of respondents said they felt it was important for the Supreme Court of Canada to issue an opinion on whether Bill 21 discriminates against religious groups.
Opinion was more divided on whether the federal government should intervene in any eventual Supreme Court challenge to the law.
A total of 39 percent of those surveyed were in favor of federal intervention compared to 29 percent against. That support was strongest in Ontario but lowest in several other provinces, including Quebec, where 42 percent felt the government shouldn’t intervene and 37 percent said it should.
Support was even more mixed when it came to the participation of mayors from large cities outside of Quebec. The largest number of respondents, by a margin of 34 percent to 29 percent, felt that mayors should not support opponents of the bill. That sentiment was strongest in Quebec, while respondents in Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta narrowly voted in favor of the mayor’s action.
© 2022 The Canadian Press
Reference-globalnews.ca