Trudeau claims federal government ‘defends individual rights,’ then says Quebec’s ‘discriminatory’ Bill 21 not federal jurisdiction

"First of all, I have… protected people’s rights, protecting minorities from Stephen Harper’s conservatives, who were talking about banning niqabs and creating snitch lines. We remember what the conservatives did around that, and they continue to play those games," he said. "We will always stand in defence of individual rights," he claimed.

Quebec’s Bill 21, which bans public workers in positions of authority, including prosecutors, police officers and teachers, from wearing religious symbols, specifically, while they are on duty. The bill, tabled in March 2019, follows similar legislation passed in 2017 that banned the wearing of face coverings by individuals providing or receiving certain public services.

Trudeau made clear his opposition to it and doesn’t believe that government should be in the business of telling people what they can and can’t wear in a "free country." However, he also said the federal government doesn’t have the authority to directly pick a fight with provincial matters in areas of their jurisdiction.

Trudeau claimed that with individual people taking their government to court to stand up for their rights, Canada has a system that allows the country to move forward in the "right direction." However, legal challenges to the law in the courts have proved difficult because Quebec invoked a constitutional loophole known as the "notwithstanding clause" to empower provinces to override freedom of religion or expression.

Superior Court Justice Marc-André Blanchard ruled in April that while Quebec's secularism law violates the basic rights of religious minorities in the province, those violations are permissible because of the Constitution's notwithstanding clause, reports the Montreal Gazette. However, he added that the ruling cannot be applied to English school boards.

Blanchard ruled that who they hire is protected by the minority-language education rights in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and that section 23 of the charter, which protects those rights, is not covered by the notwithstanding clause.

Ontario lawyer Kristopher Kinsinger wrote that though religious neutrality limits the state’s theological jurisdiction, it doesn’t consign religion to private practice, nor does it justify legislation that discriminates against religious minorities. In a submission to Policy Options, he said, "Civil servants enjoy the same Charter rights as everyone else; the suggestion that a crucifix- or hijab-wearing public employee undermines religious neutrality inherently misapplies this constitutional principle."

"The Canadian principle of religious neutrality holds that governments must remain neutral on questions of religion or theology by neither favouring nor disfavouring any particular belief," said Kinsinger. "In practice, this means that it’s unconstitutional for the state to instruct its citizens on what constitutes the right religion."

He added that while governments can’t be explicitly religious, they also can’t be explicitly irreligious, meaning the state must treat religious groups equally.

"In this way, religious neutrality reinforces the Charter’s guarantees of freedom of religion under section 2(a) and the right to equality under section 15."

"Without religious neutrality, there can be no meaningful guarantee for either of these constitutional protections. If the state can unconditionally pass laws forcing religious adherents to deny their core identity every time they step into the public square, then our society is not one in which religious minorities are respected as equal citizens."