Dan Bilefsky

<h1>MONTREAL — The Quebec government passed a bill late Sunday barring schoolteachers, police officers, judges and other public employees from wearing religious symbols in the workplace, prompting an outcry that civil liberties in the province were under attack.</h1>

François Legault, the right-leaning Quebec premier, had called the bill a necessary measure to ensure the separation between religion and state in an abidingly secular province. It applies to Muslim headscarves, Jewish skullcaps, Sikh turbans and Catholic crosses, among other symbols.

Legault had also argued that the bill, which passed 73-35, was supported by a majority of Quebecers.

Members of the opposition called Sunday a dark day for the province. Critics say that the legislation will effectively exclude religious Muslims, Sikhs and Jews from positions of authority in education and law enforcement, and that it runs roughshod over the freedom of religion and expression at the heart of Canada’s model of multiculturalism.

They also argue that it threatens to foment Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and fear of other minorities. Public officials, including several mayors and school boards in Montreal, have vowed to ignore the law, setting up a potential clash with the police and other authorities charged with enforcing it.

At the last minute, the government added an amendment that would allow inspectors to verify that the law was being obeyed, prompting the opposition Liberals to rail against the creation of a “secularism police force.” A government spokesman called such a characterization “ridiculous,” saying the government was merely ensuring that the bill had powers of verification. Public employees who flout the law could also face disciplinary measures.

As part of an overhaul of immigration policies, the government also passed a bill over the weekend that would scrap about 16,000 immigration applications. The legislation would affect about 50,000 people and force some immigrants who have been waiting in limbo for years to apply again.

The Quebec government has been seeking to tighten immigration, and has also proposed testing immigrants to ensure they espouse Quebec’s values as a prerequisite for gaining permanent residency in the province.

In April, thousands of people took to the streets in Montreal to protest the religious symbols bill. One clutched a sign that read, “It’s what’s in my head, not on my head, that matters.”

“This is a sad day for Quebec,” Catherine McKenzie, the lead lawyer for a group seeking to overturn the legislation, said on Friday as the bill was expected to pass.

“This government is introducing a law that tramples on the rights of thousands of people,” she said. “This bill is based on the same forces of populism we are seeing in the United States and Europe: the fear of the other.”

She said the National Council of Canadian Muslims, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and a woman who wears a headscarf and is affected by the ban planned to mount a legal challenge in Quebec Superior Court in Montreal.

The case, she said, would be predicated on the legal argument that, under the Canadian Constitution, the Quebec government does not have the legal right to legislate the relationship between religion and the state.

But challenging the bill in the courts could prove difficult because to insulate it from potential court action, the government invoked a rarely used constitutional loophole known as the “notwithstanding clause,” which empowers Canadian legislatures to override some constitutional rights like freedom of religion or expression.

The clause was added to Canada’s 1982 constitution to appease some provinces, which were resistant to including a charter of rights as part of the document.

Proponents of the bill argue that it will protect Quebec from encroaching orthodoxy that threatens to undermine the province’s liberal values, including respect for women and homosexuals.

Amani Ben Ammar, 34, an accountant who emigrated from Tunisia to Montreal six years ago and comes from a Muslim family, said she supported the bill because it was imperative that those representing the state in positions of authority appeared to be neutral.

“How can a judge wearing a Muslim head scarf be deemed neutral in a case involving a homosexual?” she asked, referring to Islamic views condemning homosexuality. “Diversity is important in society, but the state needs to avoid conflicts between professional duties and religion.”

“I left my country because of the pressure of Islamization and do not expect to find that in Quebec,” she added.

Issues of immigration and identity run deep in Quebec, a majority French-speaking province surrounded by English-speaking North America. The case of religious orthodoxy is especially sensitive. In the 1960s, Quebec experienced a social and cultural revolt known as the Quiet Revolution, during which Quebecers rebelled against the influence of the Roman Catholic Church in the province — including pressuring women to have children.

The bill also has echoes in Europe, where Austria approved a law in May banning Muslim headscarves in primary schools. France has also banned Muslim headscarves and other conspicuous religious symbols at state schools.

After criticism from opposition politicians that the bill failed to adequately define what constitutes a religious symbol, the government amended the measure to clarify that a symbol constituted “any clothing, symbol, jewelry, ornament, accessory or headgear that is worn in connection with a religious conviction or belief.”

The legislation does not apply to those already working in the public sector as long as they stay in the same position. However, under the bill, a Muslim teacher wearing a headscarf could not be promoted to a higher position like school principal if she refused to remove her head scarf.

Lawyers who wear headscarves, crosses, skullcaps or turbans will also no longer be able to work as external counsel for the government, or to represent it before the courts or with a third party.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/17/world/canada/quebec-head-scarf-ban.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>.

Legault had also argued that the bill, which passed 73-35, was supported by a majority of Quebecers.

Quebec bans religious symbols on job

There was that time Prime Minister Justin Trudeau cuddled with two baby pandas.

Over the weekend, Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland welcomed a Saudi teenager at Toronto airport with a warm embrace after she had fled abusive members of her family and been granted asylum in Canada.

Now, Canadian air traffic controllers have helped burnish the country’s image as the do-gooder of the world by sending hundreds of pizzas to their U.S. counterparts, who have been working without pay since a government shutdown began Dec. 22.

And, yes, some were apparently garnished with Canadian bacon.

Peter Duffey, president of the Canadian Air Traffic Control Association, said the show of cheesy support began last week when employees at an air traffic control center in Edmonton, Alberta, decided to buy pizzas for their colleagues at an office in Anchorage, Alaska. Soon, dozens of other Canadian traffic control centers joined in.

“We wanted to show solidarity with our American colleagues,” he said. “In our society we are polite and friendly people, and this gesture is part of that.

“In the United States, people have responded to this simple act of pizza by saying, ‘Damn, you Canadians are so nice. I’m moving to Canada.’ ”

By Monday, about 400 pizzas had been delivered to air traffic control towers across the United States, from El Paso, Texas; to Ronkonkoma, New York, which Friday received 32 pies from Gino’s Pizzeria of Ronkonkoma, compliments of air traffic controllers in Gander, Newfoundland, and Moncton, New Brunswick.

Many Canadians have reacted with shock to what they regard as the seemingly endless drama of the Trump administration, including the special counsel investigation of President Donald Trump and the acrimonious trade negotiations between Canada and the United States.

Now the U.S. government is partly shut down, caught in a political dispute over securing money for a southern-border wall that Trump wants to help keep migrants out.

Many Canadians have sought to avoid un-Canadian-like behavior such as gloating. But with the pizza deliveries, they appeared to bask in their own relative serenity and yet another feel-good moment reaffirming their humanism.

“'Pizza Diplomacy’, eh!” Ankur Chhabra, an economist studying public health in Toronto, wrote on Twitter. “Proud to be in a country that is so full of love and respect for everyone. Our southern neighbors need to imbibe this more often, I guess.”

“That’s why the world loves Canada,” an entrepreneur identified as KC wrote on Twitter.

“That’s amore,” added The Toronto Star.

In the United States, where about 10,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay, the reaction was also effusive.

On ATC Memes, a Facebook page run by a former air traffic controller that helped the pizza gifts gain global attention, there was an outpouring of gratitude for Canada.

Among those commenting was Chris Taylor, who saluted the country of bone-chilling weather, socialized medicine and maple syrup.

“I know who I’m voting for next election,” he wrote. “Canada!”

A Twitter user identified as “Call me Myke” wrote that he was very grateful for “the extremely kind gesture of buying us pizza while our own government isn’t paying us.” He added, “I might have to cheer for a Canadian hockey team.”

“O! Canada we don’t deserve you,” added George Capen, a California-based U.S. Navy veteran.

Duffey noted that air-traffic control was among the most stressful jobs, and that the Canadians, who work closely with Americans to ensure the safety of North American airspace, hoped that the pizza would cheer them up.

“In our business you have to be 100 percent right, 100 percent of the time, and there is no room for error,” he said. “Now, on top of that, people have to come to work and worry about the added stress of paying their mortgages or putting food on the table.”

Canadians, he added, had long shown humanity in times of crisis in the United States, including during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when citizens of Gander, Newfoundland, housed and fed nearly 6,700 people after U.S. airspace was closed and 38 planes were forced to land in the small Canadian town of 10,000 people.

Their willingness to host those who were stranded captured the global imagination, and inspired a Tony Award-winning Broadway musical, “Come from Away.”

Pilgrims from the United States have even traveled to Gander to meet “nice people.”

Canadian air traffic controllers were not alone in expressing solidarity with their U.S. counterparts through pizza offerings. Controllers at the Irish Aviation Authority base in Shannon did the same, ordering six large pies for workers in Westbury, New York, news media in Ireland reported Monday. The Irish Sun said Borrelli’s Italian Restaurant Cafe and Pizzeria delivered the pies Sunday night.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/world/canada/shutdown-air-traffic-controllers-pizza.html" id="f1c438cc-ee9c-3d43-a52e-b5d593283fc7">The New York Times</a>.

MONTREAL — Being nice in Canada can sometimes feel like a full-time job.

Canada's Air Controllers, Purveyors of Pizza Goodwill

Now the U.S. government is partly shut down, caught in a political dispute over securing money for a southern-border wall that Trump wants.

“'Pizza Diplomacy’, eh!” Ankur Chhabra, a student, wrote on Twitter. “Proud to be in a country that is so full of love and respect for everyone. Our southern neighbors need to imbibe this more often, I guess.”

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Dan Bilefsky

Articles written by the author

Quebec bans religious symbols on job

Canada's Air Controllers, Purveyors of Pizza Goodwill

Canada's Air Controllers, Purveyors of Pizza Goodwill