Patient work trying to overcome the widespread view of Sikhs as dangerous seemed to be paying off, she said—until recently. Shergill said Sikhs have lately faced a “huge resurgence” of the sorts of challenges to their distinctive practices that they thought were put to rest 15 years or so ago. In Ontario, a Sikh man is fighting in court for the right to wear a turban, but not a helmet, when he rides his motorcycle. In Montreal last week, Judge Gilles Ouellet found a Sikh boy guilty of having threatened two other boys with a hair pin, used to keep his hair neat under his turban.
But Ouellet said the boy didn’t use his kirpan, the small symbolic dagger many Sikh men carry. The judge gave him an unconditional discharge, leaving him with a clean record, and said the case would never have reached his bench if the incident hadn’t had a religious dimension. “Too much importance has been given this case,” he said. “This matter should end here.”
Shergill suspects that many more Canadians read about the initial charge being laid than the remarks of the obviously frustrated judge. And the fact that this episode unfolded in Quebec is not incidental. The province appears to be an incubator of deep suspicions concerning minority faiths.
A mere 17 per cent of Quebecers said they have a favourable opinion of Islam, and just 15 per cent view Sikhism favourably. Only 36 per cent of Quebecers said they hold a favourable opinion of Judaism, far below the national average, and in sharp contrast to neighbouring Ontario, where 59 per cent expressed a favourable view of the Jewish religion. “It’s sadly not a shock,” Farber said.
Farber said his group, a 90-year-old advocacy organization for Canadian Jews, recently rebranded its Quebec wing as the Quebec Jewish Congress, a bid to highlight its roots in the province and reach out to francophone Quebecers. He said Quebec’s perennial anxieties about the survival of the French language play into attitudes toward minorities. “There are built-in fears there that have to be overcome,” he said. In fact, all religions were regarded less positively in Quebec than in Canada as a whole, including Christianity, which 67 per cent of Quebecers view favourably, five points below the Canadian average.
A heated debate over how far to go in “reasonable accommodation” of minorities gripped Quebec in 2007 and 2008. A commission headed by sociologist Gérard Bouchard and philosopher Charles Taylor toured the province holding often controversial hearings on the subject, ultimately concluding in a final report that Quebec needed to adapt, but that its cultural foundations were not at risk.
Angus Reid took that debate national, asking how far governments should go to accommodate minorities. A strong majority of 62 per cent agree with the statement, “Laws and norms should not be modified to accommodate minorities.” A minority, 29 per cent, agreed with the alternative statement, “On some occasions, it makes sense to modify specific laws and norms to accommodate minorities.” Another nine per cent weren’t sure. In Quebec, 74 per cent were against changing laws or norms, the highest negative response rate on the accommodation question in the country.
Recent campaign trail experience in Canada has taught politicians to be cautious about anything that smacks of a concession to religious minorities. John Tory, the former leader of Ontario’s Conservatives, was largely expected to win the province’s 2007 election, until he pledged to extend public funding to all religious schools. That promise proved deeply unpopular, even with his party’s base. The Angus Reid poll suggests that lesson can be broadly applied. It found 51 per cent oppose funding of Christian schools, and the level of opposition soars from 68 per cent to 75 per cent for all other religions. On even hotter-button religious issues, opposition is overwhelming. Only 23 per cent would allow veiled voting, and just three per cent Islamic sharia law—an even lower level of support than the eight per cent who would allow polygamy. There’s substantial sympathy for recognizing religious holidays, 45 per cent, but a solid majority still opposes the idea.
