Quebec Proposes Bill Barring Public Employees From Wearing Head Scarves at Work

MONTREAL — The Quebec government on Thursday proposed a bill barring public school teachers, judges, police officers and other public employees from wearing religious symbols including Muslim head scarves while working, a move that could aggravate simmering cultural tensions in the province.

The Quebec premier, François Legault, has said the bill, which also applies to Catholic crosses, Jewish skullcaps and Sikh turbans, was necessary to preserve Quebec’s secular values and identity. It is expected to pass in the Quebec legislature, where his right-leaning party has a majority.

Religious and human rights advocates immediately attacked the legislation as a breach of religious freedom. Some said it conflicted with the image Canada has projected as an open, multicultural society.

“Every young person who aspires to a be a judge, a teacher or a police officer and wears a head scarf will think that they have no future in this province and it will push Muslims away from Quebec,” said Shahad Salman, a young lawyer who wears a head scarf and whose parents emigrated to Montreal from Iraq in the 1980s.

“This will create two classes of citizens and does not reflect the Quebec and Canada that my parents chose for their children,” she said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada also criticized the bill. Speaking in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he said that while Canada and Quebec were secular societies, it was unthinkable for him “that in a free society, we would legitimize discrimination of citizens based on their religion.”