According to
CBC News yesterday, universities, school boards and municipalities in Quebec are increasingly saying they will refuse to enforce Quebec's Bill 60, the province's proposed charter of secularism (see
prior posting) if it is adopted by the National Assembly. On Monday, the Town Council of the Montreal suburb of Hampstead passed a strong resolution (full text in
linked CBC News article) declaring in part:
...The separation of church and state should not ... be confused with the persecution of religion by the state....
[W]e reject the notion that people who believe in a deity are somehow lesser citizens. We reject the notion that wearing an identifiable religious symbol that does not physically impede a person from performing his/her duties, is a basis for discrimination;
... [S]hould this Charter, or any variation which violates the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms or the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. be passed by the National Assembly, the Town of Hampstead will not recognize it as a valid law. We will not comply. We will not be complicit with hatred, racism and intolerance.
