Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s push for diversity and inclusiveness hit a speed bump after Quebec finalized plans to ban Muslim women from wearing a burka or niqab on public buses.
CBC reports:
“As long as the service is being rendered, the face should be uncovered,” Quebec Justice Minister Stéphanie Vallée said Monday in an interview with Daybreak host Mike Finnerty.
“This is a bill about levivre ensemble [living together in harmony], it’s a bill about guidelines and clearly establishes neutrality of the state.”
The legislation, she said, is necessary for “communication reasons, identification reasons and security reasons.”
[…]
Vallée said the law would be the first of its kind in North America.
However, the law is not all smooth sailing.
“The management of the [law] is a bit hard to figure out,” said Lamarche, a law professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
“The thing with guidelines is that they are read and applied by many people in many different contexts in many different regions,” added Lamarche
“As we know, there are many different opinions about the role of the state and the principle of state neutrality in Quebec. So it’s hard to believe that those guidelines by themselves won’t produce discrimination.”
