The PQ's 'zero tolerance'

"Maintaining security in school settings requires zero tolerance toward the bearing of bladed weapons," Justice Minister Paul Bégin declared this week in a statement announcing an action he was taking.

You might assume from that statement that the action the justice minister was announcing was to put security guards and metal detectors in every school to search pupils to make sure no one brings in a knife.

That's what some American schools do to keep out guns. That's what airlines do to keep passengers from carrying on board anything that might be used as a weapon.

After all, that's what "zero tolerance" really means. It means not just saying you're banning something but also taking measures to enforce the ban. Without enforcement, you have, in effect, tolerance.

But the action Bégin announced would not make it more difficult for anybody to bring a concealed, bladed weapon into a school.

Well, except maybe for one pupil.

By now, not just the principal and teachers at 12-year-old Gurbaj Singh's school in the LaSalle district of Montreal but everybody in Quebec knows that he won't come to school without his kirpan, the symbolic dagger worn by baptized Sikhs.

No One Knew

Until November, however, nobody except Singh and his family knew that, because Singh kept his kirpan, which is only 10 centimetres long and has a blade similar to that of a letter opener, concealed. And while his school has a "zero tolerance" policy toward bladed weapons, it doesn't actually enforce it by searching pupils.

Singh might still be wearing his kirpan to school undetected if it hadn't fallen to the ground in the schoolyard one day in November while he was playing. A parent saw it and complained, the school's governing board decided it violated the "zero tolerance" policy, and finally, the lawyers were called in.

Two weeks ago, a Quebec Superior Court judge decided that Singh may wear his kirpan to school, provided it is in a wooden sheath that is, in turn, inside a cloth cover sewn shut, firmly attached to a carrying strap and worn concealed beneath his clothing at all times.

This was a compromise between Singh's freedom of religion and the school's need to ensure the safety of its pupils, worked out between Singh's family and the school board.

The action Bégin announced this week was to appeal this decision. In doing so, he came out against a compromise that has apparently worked in the rest of Canada, where there are longer-established Sikh communities and the issue of the kirpan in school has had to be dealt with previously.

Experience Elsewhere

Eleven years ago, a school board in the Toronto region lost a court case in which it sought to prevent Sikhs from wearing the kirpan in its schools. It was required to allow them to do so under restrictions similar to those in the compromise reached in the Quebec case. Since then, the school board reports, it has had no problems related to the kirpan.

For that matter, in the 100 years or so that Sikhs have been living in Canada, there hasn't been a single case of violence involving a kirpan in a school. In fact, Sikhs are forbidden from using the kirpan as a weapon.

Experience suggests Singh's classmates are in more danger riding to school on buses without seatbelts than they are from his kirpan.

But the Quebec government has chosen to ignore the instructive experience of the rest of Canada, as though no good idea could possibly come from that direction. And instead of trying to ensure that the compromise works, it has come down squarely on one side of the question.

This may please supporters of the Parti Québécois and others who resent what they see as the minorities imposing themselves instead of assimilating and becoming just like the majority. And the PQ risks losing little support among the minorities since it has little to begin with.

But there may be some Quebecers who would like their government to explain why it believes a compromise that seems to have worked in the rest of Canada can't be made to work in Quebec.

- Don Macpherson is The Gazette's Quebec-affairs columnist, based in Montreal. His E-mail address is dmacpher@thegazette.southam.ca.