Photo credit: Montreal Gazette
The Toronto Sun reports that for Sikh teacher Amrit Kaur, removing her turban to enter a classroom would be like walking naked and “abandoning who she is as a person,” her lawyers told the Supreme Court of Canada as it began hearing a landmark challenge to Quebec’s secularism law.
A Sikh organization, the English Montreal School Board, a teachers’ union and a group representing Jewish lawyers presented arguments on Monday, the first of four hearings into Bill 21.
Kaur, who also carries a kirpan, a small ceremonial dagger, graduated as a teacher in Quebec the same day the law was adopted in 2019.
Bill 21, which bars public school teachers and authority figures from wearing religious symbols on the job, effectively ended her career in Quebec before it began, forcing her to leave the province – and her family – to pursue her career.
The turban and kirpan “are traditionally clothing accessories,” the World Sikh Organization of Canada’s lawyer Faiz Lalani told the court.
“They are part of her, representing her fundamental values: gender equality, the duty to fight injustice and the importance of being aware of one’s actions.”
The Sikh group says Bill 21 collides with a religious freedom guarantee dating to 1852 that it argues is embedded in the Canadian Constitution and therefore beyond the notwithstanding clause’s reach.
The Coalition Avenkir Quebec government invoked the notwithstanding clause when it passed the law, pre-emptively shielding it from some protections in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Bill 21 also covers school principals, police officers, prosecutors and judges.
The Supreme Court constitutional challenge is led by the English Montreal School Board and backed by a coalition of individuals and organizations arguing the law violates multiple constitutional guarantees – some they say the notwithstanding clause cannot override.
