Quebec releases guidelines for requesting religious accommodation

CTV Montreal: Confusion over religious accomodation After months of controversy, the Quebec government released its criteria for religious accomodation.

The Quebec government has released its guidelines for requesting and granting religious accommodation under Bill 62, a controversial “religious neutrality” law that prohibits citizens from giving or receiving public services with their faces covered.

Bill 62 was passed in the National Assembly in October. Under Section 10 of the bill, Quebecers would be required to uncover their faces while providing or receiving a government service, such as taking the bus or borrowing a book from the library.

The legislation has been accused of unfairly targeting Muslim women who wear religious face coverings such as, burkas.

It prompted widespread protests and was challenged in court by the National Council of Canadian Muslims and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association in the fall.

In response, the Quebec Superior Court suspended the section of the law that dealt with face coverings in December until the government could establish a clear framework for requesting religious accommodation.

Justice Minister Stephanie Vallee released the new guidelines on Wednesday and said there is no “one size fits all” solution and they would be applied on a case-by-case basis.

“It’s going to help a lot of people respond to requests because right now there is absolutely nothing,” she said during a press conference.

According to the government, the six conditions that must be met in order to grant religious accommodation are:

Vallee also clarified that rank-and-file government employees would not be responsible for determining whether a request for religious accommodation meets the required criteria.

“We don’t want to put the burden on bus drivers. They are not the ones that should be doing the arbitration,” she explained.

Instead, every public institution will assign an employee from its highest administrative body to deal with requests for accommodation.

Agnes Maltais, a MNA for the Parti Quebecois (PQ), criticized the guidelines and said the onus for granting religious accommodation shouldn’t fall on any employee.

“It’s always case by case,” she told reporters on Wednesday. “It’s that thinking of doing things case by case, judging things case by case, that gives the responsibility to the people, to the employees. That's the problem.”

The Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) party also slammed the government’s guidelines in a written statement released on Wednesday.

"Stephanie Vallee is opening the door to a religious accommodation for the niqab and the burqa if the (person's) faith is ‘legitimate’ and she is making Bill 62 more confusing,” the statement read. “It was a mess and now it's a shambles."

Shaheen Ashraf, a board member for the Canadian Council for Muslim Women, called the guidelines “mind-boggling” and questioned the necessity of including them at all.

“It took how many hours and how many people to come to this decision?” she asked. “Why? We're Canadian. We’re Quebecers.”

Valle said the government expects the section of the law governing face coverings to come into effect July 1.

With a report from CTV Montreal’s Amanda Kline and files from The Canadian Press