Category Archives: Canada

Man behind Herouxville affair launches campaign against immigration and multiculturalism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Andre DrouinAndre Drouin’s lips curl up in a mischievous grin as he recalls the insults hurled at him at the height of the Herouxville affair in 2007. “Twit, moron, xenophobe, racist, stupid – all of it,” says the retired engineer who penned the infamous municipal charter barring the stoning, burning and genital mutilation of women in this hamlet north of Trois-Rivieres, Que.

But the recent storm over the niqab suggests l’affaire Herouxville was no anomaly. Drouin is now lending his support to a nascent coalition that aims to drum up opposition to immigration and multiculturalism in English Canada. “Three years ago, they thought I was a mad person, but right now I don’t think they think the same thing,” Drouin said.

In recent months, Drouin has spoken to small groups in Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver, where his tough talk on minorities strikes a chord with longtime critics of Canada’s immigration policy, such as Martin Collacott, a senior fellow at the conservative Fraser Institute.

Collacott and James Bissett, both retired diplomats who frequently write on immigration issues, and Drouin are among the founders of a new group that will push for a radical reduction in immigration and a tougher stand on minority accommodation.

Collacott said organizers are putting the finishing touches to a website and will launch the group, tentatively called the Centre for Immigration Policy Reform, in June.

Montreal Gazette, 12 April 2010

Quebec Muslim woman ordered to unveil or leave French course

Posted on by Bob Pitt

One morning recently, a young Muslim woman whose face was hidden by a religious covering was pulled out of her government French class near Montreal and told to unveil or leave the course.

“Aisha,” a 25-year-old permanent resident from India, is the second such case to come to light in Quebec. Last month, the same ultimatum was given to Naema Ahmed, an Egyptian-born woman whose case sparked an uproar and led to landmark provincial legislation against religious face veils.

But, while Ms. Ahmed was portrayed in media accounts as difficult to accommodate, Aisha, as she has asked to be called to shield her identity, didn’t make waves.

According to former classmates and officials at the suburban centre she attended, the young woman was a model student who placed no demands on others and even teamed up with male students for class assignments.

“She was an excellent student. I saw in this woman a will to integrate,” said Mustapha Kachani, executive director of the Centre d’intégration multi-services de l’Ouest de l’Île.

The Immigration Department’s assertion that her veil, or niqab, posed a problem for “pedagogical” reasons was unfounded, Mr. Kachani said.

“She demonstrated great diligence in the course, in addition to actively participating in class, all the while articulating very well,” he wrote in a letter to Immigration Department officials and copied to Quebec Immigration Minister Yolande James. “The decision upset the whole class.”

Globe and Mail, 11 April 2010

Update:  See also Montreal Gazette, 12 April 2010

Quebec’s veil law is a slap in the face to Muslim women

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“In Canada all citizens have the right to personal freedom as long as it does not infringe on another’s right. However when it comes to a Muslim woman, we have convinced ourselves that she is a victim of her husband’s dominance and so we do not believe her when she says ‘this is my choice’.

“What a cunning, circular web we weave. First we discredit her as an intellectual being, ridicule her claim to be a free-thinking woman, demonize her for practising her faith, and then smugly claim to be emancipating her.”

Shahina Siddiqui argues against the proposed ban on the veil in Quebec.

Montreal Gazette, 30 March 2010

See also “Quebecers opinion of Muslims on the decline: poll”, Toronto Sun, 30 March 2010

Most Canadians want niqab restricted

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Most Quebecers and Canadians agree that women wearing the niqab or burqa should not receive government services, hospital care or university instruction, a new Angus Reid poll shows.

Ninety-five per cent of Quebecers support a proposed provincial law barring the face veil from government offices, schools and other publicly funded institutions, says the poll, provided exclusively to The Gazette yesterday.

In the rest of Canada, three out of four people give the thumbs up to Bill 94, tabled Wednesday by the Charest government. The bill would require all public sector employees to have their faces uncovered, as well as any citizen using government services, for example, someone applying for a medicare card or paying her car registration.

Nationally, four out of five Canadians support the bill.

Mario Canseco, vice-president of public affairs for the pollster, said the survey shows an unusually high level of support for a government measure. “It’s very rare to get 80 per cent of Canadians to agree on something,” he said. “With numbers like this, there is not going to be much of a controversy over the legislation in Quebec or anywhere else in the country,” he added.

Montreal Gazette, 27 March 2010

See also “Tories, Liberals back Quebec’s veil ban”, Globe and Mail, 27 March 2010

Quebec passes law against veil

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The province of Quebec passed landmark legislation Wednesday that stipulates Muslim women will need to uncover their faces when dealing with Quebec government services.

The bill says people obtaining or delivering services at places such as health or auto insurance offices will need to do so with their faces in plain view. The law covers all garments ranging from the face veil to the burqa, a traditional head-to-toe veil worn by some Muslim women. It says people’s face-coverings will not be tolerated if they hinder communication or visual identification.

Premier Jean Charest told a news conference that the province was drawing a line in defense of gender equality and secular public institutions.

The Muslim Council of Montreal said there may be only around 25 Muslims in Quebec who actually wear face-coverings. Of the more than 118,000 visitors to the health board’s Montreal office in 2008-09 only 10 people – or less than 0.00009 percent of cases – involved women who wear face veils. There were no cases among the 28,000 visitors to the Quebec City service center over the same time period.

Salam Elmenyawi of the Muslim Council of Montreal questioned the need to legislate against such a small minority of the population. “It is a knee-jerk reaction to the opposition and vote-grabbing more than anything else,” he said, adding the law was unlikely to encourage integration of Muslim immigrants.

Associated Press, 25 March 2010

Update:  See comment piece in the National Post by one Barbara Kay, who writes:

“Chapeau, le Quebec! That means, ‘Hats off to you, Quebec.’ With the announcement of Bill 94, barring the niqab in publicly funded spaces, Quebec has dared to tread where the other provinces, feet bolted to the floor in politically correct anguish, cannot bring themselves to go…. Apart from the odd imam crying ‘Islamophobia!’ and a clutch of disgruntled fundamentalist Muslim husbands, all of us – separatists, federalists, left-wingers, right-wingers, Christians, atheists, democratic Muslims, francophones, anglophones, allophones – are happy a line in the sand has been drawn on reasonable accommodation…. It doesn’t matter if there are only 20 women in Quebec wearing the niqab. Even one is too many.”

‘Secularists’ target minority communities

Posted on by Bob Pitt

MONTREAL — As demonstrations go, the small protest in front of the cathedral in Trois Rivières on International Women’s Day two weeks ago went almost unnoticed. About 20 demonstrators with handwritten placards called on the Quebec government to stop accommodating religious minorities like Muslim women who wear the niqab – a face veil with a slit for the eyes.

It’s time to stop tolerating religious practices “that pollute our society and deny the principle of equality between men and women,” said organizer Andréa Richard, 75, a former nun and author of two books harshly critical of organized religion. Richard called for a charter of “la laïcité” that would make Quebec an officially secular state.

Another demonstrator seconded the proposal: André Drouin, the former town councillor from Hérouxville – population 1,200 – whose 2007 bylaw banning the stoning of women sparked a furor over the accommodation of minorities and led to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission. “In Quebec, 85 per cent of people don’t want religious accommodation,” Drouin, 62, a retired engineer who has been promoting his views to audiences across Canada, said in an interview this week.

In the wake of revelations that a niqab-clad woman was expelled from a government French class for immigrants, Immigration Minister Yolande James has taken a hard line against the face veil and promised guidelines on the wearing of such religious symbols as the hijab (head scarf) by public employees.

But for secularism’s true believers, like Daniel Baril, an organizer of this week’s manifesto and former president of the Mouvement laïque québécois, such measures don’t go far enough. “Whether it is a kippa or a cross or a turban or a kirpan, public employees should not wear any religious sign, just as we don’t accept that public employees should be allowed to wear political emblems,” Baril said.

Such talk is alarming to Daniel Cere, a professor of religion and public policy at McGill University. “It’s almost like ideological apartheid. It’s a very denigrating attitude toward religion,” he said.

Daniel Weinstock, a philosophy professor at the Université de Montréal who holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Political Philosophy, said that hard-line secularism tends to bolster the values of the majority at the expense of other groups. “It’s the minority’s religious symbols that keep getting targeted for special attention,” he said.

People notice visible signs of other religions but tend to overlook their own, like a Christmas tree in front of city hall, Weinstock said. Weinstock co-signed a pluralist manifesto in January that warned that talk of cracking down on all visible manifestations of religion is fanning anti-minority sentiments.

Cere agreed. “Bottom line, it’s a problem with a new religious community, which is Islam,” he said.

Montreal Gazette, 20 March 2010

Ontario mosque vandalised

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Waterloo mosque graffiti

Regional police are investigating a possible hate crime after the mosque of the Muslim Society of Waterloo & Wellington Counties was vandalized this week.

Two windows were broken and offensive graffiti painted around the Erb Street building, leaving many members to question why someone would do such a thing to a place of worship. Offensive pentagonal symbols and the numbers 666 were painted around the building. The windows that were broken were in the women’s prayer area. “It’s a hate crime,” said Faheem Uddin, president of the mosque. “It’s pretty bad. It’s upsetting.”

Yesterday, a large crowd attended a funeral at the mosque, with the graffiti and broken windows in plain view. “We just pray for the person who did this,” said Abdul Mannan. “May God guide him. We’re peace-living people. We love everyone and we want everyone to love us.”

A news release sent out by Waterloo Masjid public relations states that similar incidents have occurred at mosques in Hamilton and Montreal.

The Record, 20 March 2010

See also IQRA, 21 March 2010

Quebec body rules against right to wear niqab

Posted on by Bob Pitt

A woman wearing the niqab cannot demand to be served by another woman when dealing with the Quebec Health Insurance Board, Quebec’s human-rights commission has ruled.

Concluding that religious beliefs cannot stand in the way of gender equality, the commission found that when a woman wearing the Islamic face covering is required to identify herself and proceed with the photo session needed to produce a health insurance card, the Health Insurance Board has no obligation to accommodate her request to be served by a woman.

“Since freedom of religion was not significantly undermined, there is no obligation to grant an accommodation,” the order states.

The health board had previously agreed to such requests. But last fall critics argued that the health board was acceding to religious fundamentalism.

The decision was greeted with approval in Quebec’s National Assembly yesterday by MNAs of all political stripes.

Immigration Minister Yolande James suggested the ruling will form the basis of new guidelines on religious accommodation for public services, following on the action taken last week to bar a woman from attending a free French language class for immigrants unless she agreed to take off her niqab.

Globe and Mail, 17 March 2010

Canadian cartoonist defends anti-niqab image

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Aislin cartoonAn editorial cartoon in Friday’s Montreal Gazette is highlighting a controversial incident in which a Muslim woman was asked to leave a French language school for refusing to remove her niqab.

The cartoon, by Terry Mosher, who draws under the name Aislin, shows the face of a woman in a niqab. In the space where her eyes would normally be seen, the cartoonist has shown prison bars and a lock.

In an interview with CBC News on Friday, Mosher said his intention was to argue against the woman’s stance. “In the Gazette this morning, there is actually an editorial in support of the woman, and yet my cartoon is against it,” he said. “So that is part of the discussion and I think that’s a very healthy thing.”

CBC News, 12 March 2010

Niqab-wearer blocked again from class

Posted on by Bob Pitt

The Quebec government has intervened again in the case of a Muslim woman who refused to remove her niqab veil during a French-language class.

Last week, Naïma Atef Amed filed a complaint with the province’s human rights commission after she was kicked out of a government-funded language class for new immigrants at the CÉGEP de Saint-Laurent in Montreal. The school had demanded that Amed take off her niqab veil, which covers her head and face and leaves only her eyes exposed, for part of the class.

Premier Jean Charest defended the school’s decision, saying that people who expect to receive public services must show their face.

On Tuesday, the province’s Immigration Ministry said it was informed last week that Amed, who is of Egyptian origin, had enrolled in another French class at a different publicly funded centre in Montreal that permitted her to wear the niqab.

“As we did last time, we told her that we have pedagogical objectives to meet in our French immersion courses, that they have to be taken with her face exposed,” said Luc Fortin, a spokesman for the province’s Immigration Minister. “She refused to take off her niqab and she left the course.”

The government is not prepared to compromise, said Immigration Minister Yolande James Tuesday. “It is a question of common sense,” said James.

CBC News, 9 March 2010