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Why is kirpan a problem only in Quebec?

Back in 1985, when the Cold War was still on, the songwriter Sting expressed the hope that "the Russians love their children, too."

Of course the Russians love their children. Doesn't everybody?

Well, maybe not English Canadians. At least, that's the impression one might have got in Quebec this week.

After all, there must be some reason why the Landry government rejects a compromise on the wearing of the kirpan by Sikh schoolchildren similar to one that has long been accepted in other parts of Canada.

This week, Justice Minister Paul Bégin announced he will appeal a Superior Court decision allowing a Sikh pupil to attend school wearing the kirpan, a dagger symbolizing his faith, under certain strict conditions.

These conditions are that the kirpan must be carried in a wooden sheath sewn into a cloth cover that is then strapped securely to the pupil's body beneath his clothing, out of sight and easy access.

No explanation

Neither Bégin nor his supporters have explained, however, why Quebec needs "zero tolerance" of the kirpan in its schools while other Canadian provinces do not.

Let's try to be logical about this. It's hard to imagine more than a few reasons why the wearing of the kirpan in school has been tolerated in other provinces but can't be here.

Surely no reasonable person would put religious freedom ahead of safety. Does that mean, then, that Canadians in other provinces are unreasonable? Are they less concerned about the safety of their children? Don't they love their children, too?

If it isn't that, then there must be conditions particular to Quebec that make wearing a kirpan to school more of a danger in this province than in the rest of the country, where there has never been an incident of school violence involving a kirpan in the 100 years Sikhs have been in Canada.

Is there something about Sikh pupils in this province that makes them more prone to break the rules of their religion by drawing the symbolic dagger and using it as a weapon?

Or are Quebec schoolchildren more temperamentally predisposed to fits of such rage that they would seek to settle a schoolyard dispute by first tearing open the clothing of a Sikh classmate, then ripping the seams of the cloth cover and finally seizing his kirpan from him to use as a weapon? (For that's what it would take.)

So maybe it's not so farfetched to suggest there's a reason other than safety why Bégin announced his appeal. And since he must know that the odds are against his appeal being upheld, maybe that reason is political rather than legal.

Maybe it's to make a symbolic gesture to Parti Québécois supporters and other members of the Quebec majority who believe they should be "masters in their own house" and that the minorities should behave as polite guests who don't take up too much room.

Parents of the Sikh pupil's schoolmates have complained that the crucifix had been removed from the walls in the name of religious neutrality but that they now are being forced to accept the presence of a symbol of someone else's religion.

When in Rome

"Where is it written that we old-stock Quebecers have to change our laws, our schools, our streets, our ways of doing things so that we adapt to immigrants," wrote Diane Dumouchel of Montreal in a letter to the editor of La Presse. "Whatever happened to 'when in Rome, do as the Romans do'?"

And in an editorial in Le Quotidien of Chicoutimi (where any threat from the kirpan seems remote), Carol Néron commented that "immigrants who, contrary to the law and to the detriment of local traditions or simple good sense, try to impose their religious and cultural customs on the country that welcomes them with open arms also show intolerance.

"At the rate things are going, the streets of Montreal and other Canadian big cities will soon be crowded with whole herds of sacred cows. Milk is good, but so much of it would cause indigestion, which could prove fatal to us."

But could somebody please explain why murderous bovine traffic jams seem to be a more pressing danger here than elsewhere in Canada?

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